Milwaukee police chief defends Flock cameras after 2nd officer charged with misuse

Our Take

Credit to TMJ4 News for staying on this story, because it's the second time in recent memory that a Milwaukee officer has been charged with abusing Flock Safety's license plate reader network. That's not a glitch, that's a pattern. When the same system produces repeat misuse cases, the problem isn't just one bad actor — it's a tool that was deployed with far more trust than oversight.

Police chiefs love to say these cameras are only used to "solve serious crimes," but every time an officer gets caught running plates for personal reasons, stalking an ex, or settling a score, it proves what critics have said all along: once a surveillance database exists, it will get misused, and audits after the fact don't undo the harm already done. Milwaukee residents are being asked to trust a system that keeps failing its own integrity checks, and the response so far has been to defend the program rather than overhaul how it's governed.

This is exactly why we track where these cameras are going up block by block — check our map to see if Flock has quietly landed in your neighborhood, and if you want to push back on unchecked ALPR deployment where you live, our take-action page has concrete steps to start with.