MPD ShotSpotter Update (2014 3rd Quarter)
The short version: A decade-old Milwaukee County PR video touting ShotSpotter shows how local governments have long sold acoustic surveillance as pure crime-fighting, with little public scrutiny.
Our Take
This clip, produced by the Milwaukee County Executive Press Office back in 2014, is a straight-up government promotional piece — not journalism, not independent analysis. That matters: when the only footage of a surveillance program's rollout comes from the agency running it, you're getting a sales pitch, not an audit. There's no mention of false-positive rates, the cost of the contracts, or how long that audio data gets stored and who else can access it.
ShotSpotter (now rebranded as part of Flock's ecosystem) and Flock's own ALPR network are two branches of the same tree: quietly-funded, vendor-driven surveillance systems installed under the banner of "public safety" with minimal community input or long-term oversight. A decade after this video aired, we've seen city after city grapple with the same questions Milwaukee glossed over — do these systems actually reduce crime, or do they just generate more police contact and more data trails on residents who never agreed to be monitored?
If you want to see whether your neighborhood already has ALPR cameras feeding into networks like this one, check our camera map, and if you want to push back on unchecked surveillance contracts in your city, our take-action page has tools to get you started.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Milwaukee County Executive Press Office, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.