Flock Safety cameras have been in the news a lot lately — nationally, statewide, and here in Milwaukee County. With that attention has come a fair number of questions from readers about whether Whitefish Bay uses them. The short answer is yes, and has since early 2023.
Here’s what we found.
What is Flock and why is the technology drawing attention?
Flock Safety is an Atlanta-based company founded in 2017 that sells automated license plate reader systems, usually shortened to ALPR. It began by selling to homeowners associations and moved into contracts with governments and police departments in 2020. It now operates roughly 120,000 cameras nationwide and contracts with about 7,000 law enforcement agencies — around 40 percent of departments in the country. An ALPR is a fixed camera, often solar-powered and mounted along a roadway, that photographs every passing vehicle and reads the plate out of the image. According to Flock’s website, its cameras also log make, model, color and identifying details. Each sighting is time-stamped and location-stamped and feeds into a searchable database, so an officer can enter a plate number or vehicle description and see where and when that vehicle was photographed. The system also sends automatic alerts when a camera spots a plate on a “hot list,” such as the FBI’s database of stolen vehicles.
Two features generate the most discussion. First, retention: Flock’s default had been 30 days, though departments could adjust it. On August 13th, amid national backlash, Flock announced it was cutting its recommended default to seven days, but existing customers keep their current retention periods unless they opt in. Second, sharing: if a department wants to search cameras outside its own network, it must in turn share access to its own. Most agencies search and share nationally according to the NY Times.
Locally, two Milwaukee police officers have been charged with abusing the system. Last month an MPD officer pleaded guilty to using the department’s Flock system to track an ex-girlfriend and her partner, the Journal Sentinel reported. Urban Milwaukee reported in July that a second MPD officer (one of the internal affairs investigators on the first case) faces felony misconduct charges for similar misuse.
Supporters of the cameras make a straightforward case. Former Ozaukee County Sheriff Maury Straub argued in a Journal Sentinel op-ed in May that the technology captures plates on public roads rather than tracking individuals, and that documented misuse is an argument for stronger rules/policies rather than full removal. Flock now requires an audit tool that flags unusual search patterns and logs each search along with who ran it and why.
Critics focus less on individual misuse than on what a 120,000-camera network makes possible. Barry Friedman, an NYU law professor who directs the Policing Project, told the NY Times the practice amounts to “indiscriminate data collection, not targeting specific crimes.” The ACLU has raised similar objections, noting the absence of a warrant requirement and the fact that searches aren’t limited to serious crimes.
The North Shore picture
A crowdsourced website called DeFlock.org lets anyone log the location of an ALPR they spot on a pole. Zoom into the North Shore and the map shows reported cameras in Bayside, Brown Deer, Fox Point and Glendale, plus a few at the edges of Whitefish Bay. Shorewood and River Hills show none — and going back through public documents for both, the WFB Buzz could not find any budgeted dollars going to Flock Safety from those two communities. One caveat: the map is user-reported rather than official, so a blank spot means no one has logged a camera there, not necessarily that none exists.
What Whitefish Bay has and what it costs
The Whitefish Bay Police Department confirmed to the WFB Buzz that the Village leases three Flock cameras. Those are located on Silver Spring at Lydell, on Oakland at Glendale Avenue, and a third on Hampton at Estabrook Park — the last of which actually sits within the City of Milwaukee rather than the Village (PD did not confirm the exact locations). The department signed a contract with Flock in late 2022 and the cameras were installed in early 2023. The initial contract covered three cameras for four years and was paid for through a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Administration, accounting for a $31,050 check recorded in the Village ledger in January 2023. That term expires toward the end of this year. The Village has since moved to a one-year agreement, with $7,500 budgeted for 2026.
Who can search the data
Flock’s system lets each department decide whether to share its data. The WFB Police Department told the WFB Buzz that any outside agency must request access to the Village’s camera data, and that the department can revoke it at any time. The reverse applies as well: Whitefish Bay must request access before searching another agency’s database.
How the department uses them
The Police Department told us that the cameras are a useful tool, citing their role in investigating retail thefts from local businesses, package thefts from residences, and motor vehicle thefts. The department has also used the system to locate people reported missing/endangered due to mental health issues, as well as one case of a missing person under the state’s Silver Alert program.
In 2024, after a pediatric wheelchair was taken from the curb outside a Whitefish Bay home, officers used Flock to identify the vehicle involved, locate it, and return the wheelchair to the child’s family.
Stolen vehicles are one of the more measurable use cases. According to the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer, Whitefish Bay police reported 17 stolen vehicles in 2024 and 2025 combined — a figure the department confirmed. All 17 were recovered. Asked whether Flock played a role, the department said it could not attribute any specific recovery solely to the cameras, but described the system as an investigative tool used routinely that can and has helped narrow down where to look.
The damaged camera at Estabrook Park
In March, the Village-owned camera near Estabrook Park was damaged. Asked for an update on the investigation, the Police Department said it had none to provide.
The incident drew coverage from TMJ4 at the time, which reported it as part of a broader pattern of Flock cameras being vandalized in Milwaukee County and in several other states. The station’s story quoted a Whitefish Bay resident who said he hadn’t been aware the cameras were in the community, and who was frustrated that someone had chosen to deface the camera rather than discussing it with the Village in a reasonable manner.
A WFB Buzz visit on August 17th found the camera has been recently defaced again, this time with a sticker.
The Village’s original four-year term expires later this year, and the cameras will now come up for renewal annually. The Police Department shared that they were not aware of any resident raising the topic at any public meetings over the past few years.
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