Chetek Police Chief Explodes During Flock Camera Controversy

Our Take

Credit to Municipal Minutes for capturing this one, because it's a near-perfect case study in how mass surveillance infrastructure actually gets installed in small-town America: not through a public vote, but through a department head quietly signing on the dotted line. Zach Hodge's public comment at the Chetek Common Council meeting did exactly what residents should be doing everywhere Flock operates — asking who authorized this, when, and under what legal authority. His citation of Wisconsin Statute §62.09(7)(a) cuts to the heart of it. If corporate authority in a city is vested in the mayor and council, a police chief unilaterally locking a town into a three-year surveillance contract months before the public even learns about it isn't a technicality. It's a governance failure.

This pattern repeats across the country: a chief or city manager treats a camera network like a routine equipment purchase, when in reality it's a permanent expansion of government's ability to track every vehicle moving through town. Once that contract is signed and the cameras go up, councils and residents are stuck litigating the deal after the fact instead of debating it beforehand, which is exactly backwards. The chief's reported reaction to being questioned on this only underscores why sunlight matters here — officials get defensive when the acquisition process can't survive basic scrutiny.

If you live in a town that's had Flock cameras appear seemingly overnight, check our map to see what's already been deployed near you, and use our take-action resources to start asking your own council the same questions Hodge asked in Chetek.