35 Flock Cameras. 39 Genetec. 80 Axon Patrol Cars. Milwaukee Wrote Rules For One #Shorts
The short version: Milwaukee's touted Flock restrictions ignore its Genetec and Axon plate-reader systems, leaving 119 cameras outside the new oversight rules entirely.
Our Take
Credit to Flock U for catching what the press release writers hoped nobody would notice: Milwaukee's mayor rolled out genuinely solid-sounding rules — supervisor-only access, no outside agency sharing, Part I crimes only, public dashboard, independent audits — and then named exactly one of the city's three license plate reader systems. Flock gets 35 cameras and a leash. Genetec's 39 cameras and Axon's readers in 80 patrol cars got nothing, and MPD wouldn't say whether the safeguards apply to them at all.
This is the oldest trick in the surveillance-oversight playbook: regulate the brand name everyone's heard of while the other systems quietly keep doing whatever they were doing before. A policy that only covers a third of your plate-reading infrastructure isn't a policy, it's a press release. And given that a former MPD officer was just convicted of misconduct tied to this same ecosystem, the idea that two-thirds of Milwaukee's ALPR capacity has no named audit trail should worry anyone who lives there.
Check our camera map to see what's actually watching your routes, and if you want to push back on rules that leave most of the cameras untouched, start with our take-action guide.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Flock U, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.