What the contract lets Flock do with the data
Through August 2026, Wausau police told residents that “no data is sold to third parties,” but Section 4.3 of the contract gives Flock “a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free license to use and distribute” so-called anonymized data from Wausau’s cameras in its other products.
Racine County’s sheriff tore his cameras down over this, calling it “not what we agreed to, and it is not what the public was led to believe.” In Sheboygan, a Flock sales representative offered to sell the city five years of traffic data from its own cameras, and the council voted unanimously to terminate afterward.
A vehicle record with the plate removed still carries the make, color, and stickers, along with a pattern of times and places, and that’s often enough to identify one household.
Who can search the cameras, and who checks
From 2023 until May 2026, Wausau’s cameras were part of Flock’s nationwide network, and a captain can switch that sharing back on. Even with it off, roughly 205 Wisconsin agencies can search Wausau’s cameras, and any one of them can run a search on someone else’s behalf. A June 2023 FBI query that reached Wausau’s network listed immigration as its reason.
The check on all of this is the department’s annual audit, which samples 10 searches per six months out of more than 10,000 a year.
A Milwaukee officer searched two former partners’ plates 179 times while on duty. It came to light because a victim discovered it, not through an audit, and the detective assigned to investigate was later charged with similar conduct. The Institute for Justice counts 67 incidents nationally of officers using plate readers to track romantic interests.
Do the cameras reduce crime?
Fifteen years of controlled research, much of it funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, finds that plate readers recover more stolen cars but do little or nothing measurable for crime rates or arrests. The National Institute of Justice’s CrimeSolutions registry rates them “Ineffective” as a crime deterrent.
In Wausau, the department cites “over 30 cases” closed in three years but hasn’t published a count of arrests, charges, or convictions. That works out to roughly one closed case per 650 searches, and about $6,500 paid to Flock for each one.
An Institute for Justice review counted at least 27 wrongful stops of innocent drivers since 2018 involving plate readers, and officers drew guns in nearly two thirds of them.
Legal risk to the city
Wisconsin has no statute on plate readers, so nothing in state law limits retention, requires a warrant, or restricts sharing. If something goes wrong, the liability is the city’s. The contract caps Flock’s liability at one year’s fees and disclaims “incomplete, corrupt, or inaccurate data.” Aurora, Colorado paid $1.9 million after one wrongful stop.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2026 decision in Chatrie v. United States reopened the Fourth Amendment question, and in September a conservative law firm sued Waukesha County and 11 municipalities over Flock. Separately, Wisconsin’s public records law makes every image and search log a record the city must be prepared to produce.