FOX VALLEY, Wis. (WFRV) - On Tuesday, several Northeast Wisconsin municipalities chose to end their contracts with Flock Safety for their license plate reading cameras.
The technology helps police departments solve crimes and locate missing people, but have been embroiled in controversy over privacy concerns.
Appleton, Grand Chute, Oshkosh, and Kaukauna are among the area municipalities that have recently decided to stop using the cameras. On Tuesday night, several more municipalities followed suit.
Sheboygan's common council voted unanimously to end its contract with Flock Safety on Tuesday evening.
The decision comes in the wake of an incident that city officials said deteriorated their trust with the technology company.
They said a Flock Safety representative emailed their public works department offering to sell them up to five years worth of traffic data that the city's existing 15 Flock Safety cameras could record.
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City officials said this violated provisions of the city's contract with Flock that limited how long data could be kept and prevented Flock from selling data.
A Flock Safety spokesperson refuted these claims saying that their license plate reader technology and traffic data programs are two different things. The spokesperson said "customers own and control their data and Flock does not sell it."
On Tuesday night, Menasha alders voted to instruct city staff to end its contract with Flock Safety. Crews have already bagged up all the Flock cameras in the city.
"The actions that Flock has taken in other municipalities has greatly diminished my trust in the company," Menasha police chief Matt Albrecht told Local 5 News saying the incident that happened in Sheboygan weighed heavily in his decision to recommend that the city stop using the technology.
Chief Albrecht said that they currently aren't pursuing any other automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology. Ahead of their vote, several alders cautioned that the city needs to make sure they beef up their vetting process for any future ALPR technology they bring into Menasha.
Chief Albrecht acknowledged that the Flock Safety cameras have been helpful to the police department for solving crimes and finding missing people.
"If used correctly with the proper safeguards, ALPR technology can still be a benefit to law enforcement," he said.
The council vote wasn't unanimous with alder Tom Marshall voting against getting rid of the technology.
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"If I go up and make an appointment with the mayor I'm being video taped," he pointed out. "It's what we live in nowadays for people's safety. If you take it away, we're going to be behind the eight ball."
"I recognize that ALPR technology can help officers investigate crimes, but its usefulness doesn't eliminate the serious concerns surrounding privacy and data security," alder Tim Hale, who voted to terminate the city's Flock Safety contract, said.
Alders on Neenah's Public Service and Safety Committee voted to recommend that the city ends its contract with Flock Safety for its ALPR technology.
The recommendation will now go before the full common council for consideration. Neenah's police chief Aaron Olson had initially advocated for keeping the Flock Safety cameras, but said the Sheboygan incident caused him to change his stance.
"What happened with Sheboygan two weeks ago, that was a tipping point," Chief Olson said. "I found out at 4 p.m., 4:30 p.m. made the decision, and 5 p.m. I was in this room saying we're done with Flock."
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Chief Olson said at the committee meeting on Tuesday night that the city has already turned off the cameras and will put bags over them once council makes their decision on the technology's future. Several people who spoke during the public comment section of the meeting said they were happy that city leaders decided to recommend to terminate the contract, but feel like things weren't always handled well.
"Maybe next time you hear from sales people representing a multi-billion dollar company desperate to make a sale you can meet them with at least as much skepticism as the guy who lives down the street who is telling you he's worried about where his tax dollars are going," Nathaniel Miller said during the public comment section of the meeting.
Chief Olson said he's waiting until state legislators make a decision on whether to regulate ALPR technology at the state level before potentially pursuing a new ALPR technology for Neenah.
On Tuesday, the Waupaca County sheriff's office took to Facebook to announce that law enforcement agencies across the county would no longer use Flock Safety cameras.
In the post, it said that law enforcement officials found out that Flock camera data is subject to public records requests in other states. Wisconsin law enforcement agencies sometimes share their Flock data with out of state departments when a suspected criminal or missing person crosses state lines.
Fond du Lac and Winnebago County sheriff office officials announced the end of Flock across both their counties last week citing the same reason.
A Flock Safety spokesperson sent the following statement:
Online databases featuring data about Flock searches are in no way affiliated with Flock and Flock did not release any data to them. Data on these websites was obtained through public records requests filed in other states.
Customers own and control their data and Flock does not sell it.
Last year, Flock updated the Network Audit log, which shows searches by other law enforcement agencies that an agency is sharing data with, to protect officer safety and active investigations. We identified a pattern of people using publicly released audit data to identify undercover officers by name – publishing their contact information alongside details of active investigations. Nearly 200 law enforcement leaders raised this concern directly with our leadership, and we acted on it.
Here's what changed and what didn't: the Network Audit log no longer includes officer names, specific plates searched, vehicle signatures, or open-text search reasons. It still shows the searching agency, date, offense type, and a unique search identifier. All omitted information is preserved in full with the originating agency and remains available to authorized oversight bodies – nothing is deleted.
The Organization Audit, which governs an agency's own users, is unchanged and retains all details of searches by an agency's users.
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