Oshkosh council considers future of license plate cameras
The short version: Oshkosh pulled its Flock Safety contract after public trust collapsed, and now the council must decide whether ALPRs return at all.
Our Take
Credit to WBAY TV-2 in Green Bay for covering a story that too many local outlets skip: a city council actually reversing course on Flock Safety after residents stopped trusting how the cameras were being used. That word "trust" is doing a lot of work here, and it should. These systems log every passing car, build location histories without a warrant, and get shared across law enforcement networks far beyond the town that installed them. When a city rescinds a contract, it's usually because someone finally asked how the data was being used, who could access it, and didn't like the answers.
Oshkosh now sits at a fork that every city with Flock eventually reaches: rubber-stamp a renewed deal with cosmetic tweaks, or use this pause to demand real audits, retention limits, and public oversight before a single camera goes back up. History shows vendors are happy to promise reform while quietly expanding scope elsewhere. Residents and council members pushing for transparency now have leverage they won't have once the contract is signed again.
If you want to see how saturated your own area already is with ALPRs, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for your city council to stumble into a trust crisis before acting, our take-action page has steps for pushing back before the cameras go in, not after.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WBAY TV-2 | Green Bay, WI, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.