Can a police chief justify promoting an officer who misused surveillance tech?

Our Take

Credit to Winnebago Watch for pressing a local police chief on the gap between ALPR policy on paper and accountability in practice. It's one thing to tell the public that misusing license plate reader data is a fireable offense — it's another to explain why the officer involved in a documented abuse case got promoted instead of shown the door. That contradiction is exactly the kind of local accountability journalism this fight needs more of.

This pattern isn't unique to Winnebago. Departments nationwide roll out Flock Safety networks with assurances of strict audit logs and harsh discipline for misuse, but when an actual violation surfaces, the consequences often evaporate into a write-up, a reassignment, or in this case, a career bump. Policies are only as good as the willingness to enforce them, and when the enforcement mechanism is the same chain of command that benefits from looking the other way, the public is left trusting a system that has already shown it won't police itself.

If there's an ALPR network watching the roads in your town, you deserve to know who has access to that data and what happens when they abuse it. Check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and visit our take-action page for ways to push your local council and police department for real transparency, not just talking points.