Numerous other officers have been investigated or charged with misusing Flock around the country. In Racine County, the district attorney admitted that a few unnamed officers have been investigated for their use of Flock cameras.

The rash of misuse is not the only thing motivating local communities to drop Flock. When the city of Verona decided to cover its cameras in February, Mayor Diaz said that while the community trusted its police department, it no longer trusted Flock Safety. At that time the first cases of misconduct were beginning to emerge in Wisconsin, and many people had expressed fears about how the federal government — especially immigration enforcement — could leverage local Flock networks for its own priorities. Trust was also broken in Oshkosh months later, after the police chief learned that the cameras could create heatmaps of vehicle movements, contrary to what a company representative had said.

The sheriffs and police departments in Fond du Lac County recently announced they will cancel their contracts because out of state agencies had used open records requests to obtain audit data the sheriff said was confidential and in some cases linked with ongoing investigations. Journalists and other citizens nationwide had begun requesting Flock audit data from local police departments to learn how the cameras were being used.

In 2025, a Wisconsin Examiner analysis showed that at least 221 law enforcement agencies were using Flock in Wisconsin. Many of the searches used vague search terms such as “investigation,” “suspicious,” or non-law-enforcement terms such as “cooch,” or single characters such as “.” or “s”. Some of these vague search terms have appeared in confirmed misconduct cases. Officers in other parts of the country have also used Flock for controversial reasons, such as tracking women suspected of traveling out of state to get an abortion.

Isiah HolmesArticles

More Wisconsin communities are dropping Flock

Isiah HolmesArticles

More Wisconsin communities are dropping Flock