Milwaukee PD renews Flock contract as former detective appears in court for misuse

The Milwaukee Police Department intends to renew its contract with Flock Safety, the multi-billion dollar producer of controversial AI-powered license plate reader cameras. In a statement, an MPD spokesperson said that the contract will be renewed “to maintain the investigative and public safety benefits the system provides.”

Flock cameras store images of traveling vehicles and their license plates in a database which can be searched by law enforcement. While police say that the cameras are valuable tools used to investigate serious crimes like gun violence, theft and kidnapping, Flock surveillance has been criticized as an invasion of privacy. Numerous cases of officers misusing the cameras for personal reasons to surveil people have emerged around the country, including in Wisconsin. 

Two of those cases played out in Milwaukee over the last year. Former Milwaukee police detective Tehrangi Chapman pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to felony misconduct in public office and misdemeanor misuse of a GPS device. Chapman is accused of  using Flock to track the movements of two people 20 times for personal reasons, and also of placing a GPS device on one of their vehicles. He’d kept tabs on these individuals even before Milwaukee adopted Flock in 2022. 

As an internal affairs detective, Chapman was involved in the investigation of Josue Ayala, a former Milwaukee officer who used Flock to track an ex-girlfriend and her new partner over 170 times. Ayala was given probation and avoided prison time. 

Both Chapman and Ayala were reported by the people victimized by their use of surveillance technology. Websites like haveibeenflocked.com helped them determine that they had been tracked. Two other cases of officers or sheriff’s deputies being charged for Flock misuse have also appeared in Kenosha County and the city of Menasha. 

As opposition to Flock grew in the community, Milwaukee PD has gone through a couple of phases of tightening and restricting the cameras. The department restricted access to the system to supervisors only, and limited the kinds of crimes that can trigger Flock use. Following a trend among some other agencies, MPD created a transparency portal describing how Flock is used, and restricted its network to use by outside agencies including  other local jurisdictions. One of the main appeals of Flock is the ability to conduct searches across a network composed of thousands of law enforcement agencies. 

MPD has also increased auditing of the system to flag suspicious uses. The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors voted last week to remove Flock cameras from county property. In arguing to keep the cameras, the sheriff’s office attributed a 43% decline in certain crimes around county parks between 2023 and 2026 to the cameras. 

Their removal from county property follows a cascade of cities and towns across Wisconsin canceling their Flock contracts. Stevens Point, Fond du Lac County, Winnebago County, Sheboygan, Verona, Stoughton, Dane County, Sturgeon Bay, Appleton, Manitowoc, and  other  local governments have worked to cancel contracts and disable their cameras.