Green Bay police chief on Flock camera changes
The short version: Flock Safety is tightening retention limits and audit rules after nationwide misuse scandals, but Green Bay's police chief says nothing changes for his department—and existing customers get to keep their old, looser data-retention periods.
Our Take
Notice the pattern here: Flock only rolls out 'reforms' after journalists and researchers keep catching police departments abusing this technology across the country. Cutting default retention from 30 days to 7 sounds like progress until you read the fine print—existing customers, like Green Bay PD apparently, get to keep whatever retention window they already had. That's not a new privacy standard, that's a grandfather clause protecting the status quo for everyone already plugged in.
The audit assistance and mandatory case codes are steps in the right direction on paper, but they only matter if someone outside the department is actually reviewing that data and there are real consequences for misuse. A police chief telling a local news crew that his own internal audit 'didn't find' problems is not independent oversight—it's a department grading its own homework. We've seen this movie before with other ALPR vendors: announce guardrails, let departments self-certify compliance, move on to the next city council pitch.
Green Bay residents deserve to know exactly how long their movements are being logged, who can search that data, and what oversight actually exists beyond a vendor's press release. Check our map to see if Flock cameras are already watching your community, and if you want to push back on how this surveillance gets deployed near you, our take-action page has concrete steps.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WLUK-TV FOX 11, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.