De Pere to end use of ALPRs, Green Bay to continue with updated policy

BROWN COUNTY – While the De Pere Police Department announced this week that it would be ending its use of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), the city of Green Bay reaffirmed its position on continuing to use the technology with updated policies ensuring their safe and appropriate use.

Both Green Bay and De Pere currently have contracts with Flock for their ALPR systems. Green Bay signed a new five-year contract earlier this year while De Pere will allow its current contract to expire Nov. 15 with department access to the system ending immediately, bags being placed over the cameras this week and camera removal anticipated shortly after the contract expires.

“The De Pere Police Department is ending use of Flock Safety ALPR products based on concerns regarding data integrity, transparency, and public trust,” said Chief of Police Jeremy Muraski in a media statement. “Limited deployments of ALPR cameras can be tremendously valuable in solving crimes efficiently, detecting violent offenders coming into De Pere from other areas, and detecting missing children, seniors or veterans (Amber Alerts, Silver Alerts, Green Alerts). However, recent information updates and public sentiment have caused significant public trust concerns if Flock use continues… Ending our use of Flock Safety products enables us to preserve public trust, safeguard sensitive information, and ensure accountability in our use of technology. The city of De Pere remains committed to responsibly leveraging effective tools for community safety.”

But in Green Bay, officials say ALPRs are “highly effective” at solving crimes and improving public safety in ways that justify their continued use.

“My first obligation to the people of Green Bay is to maintain and enhance public safety, or what some call the first civil right — the right to be safe and secure in one’s home and neighborhood…” said Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich. “When we see a technology that’s constitutional, non-invasive and highly effective at solving crimes and thereby preventing crimes, we’d be derelict of our duties if we didn’t deploy it, and that’s how I view ALPR cameras… Still, it’s more than fair to have concerns about the potential for abuse.”

The Green Bay Police Department is taking steps to ensure ALPR data is used appropriately by codifying practices it already implements, like requiring officers to input a reason and a case number before a search can be completed.

“We have to be able to show that we access the data for a legitimate reason and not just some sort of fishing expedition. If we have a legitimate public safety need to access that data for things like solving crimes or locating missing people or things like that — there has to be a legitimate public safety reason before we’re going to go looking in that data,” said Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis, referencing a quote he gave in an interview when Green Bay first started using ALPRs in 2022. “That was true then, and it’s true today, and it’s very important for us. We take our responsibility as police officers very seriously to maintain the public trust.”

Also included in GBPD’s policy changes are a reduced data retention period from 30 to 7 days.
Davis said GBPD has already limited its data sharing with other departments, but the new policy will require any agency data will be shared with to have similar policies in place.

But it’s not concerns over internal use of data that led the De Pere Police Department and other area agencies to end their contract with Flock.

In discontinuing their use of Flock’s ALPRs, the De Pere Police Department cited several reasons including violations by Flock of contract and data management agreements, unauthorized data disclosures and misrepresentation of system capabilities.

“Flock offered to sell a neighboring agency five years of historical traffic analytics — a clear departure from agreed-upon data deletion terms…” Muraksi’s statement explained. “Another neighboring agency ended all Flock systems after learning that search data tied to active investigations had been released to the public under another state’s open-records laws. A second Wisconsin county suspended use after discovering their Flock data had been shared without their consent, potentially compromising ongoing investigations and personally identifiable information across multiple agencies… Fox Valley officials rescinded their contract after Flock misrepresented technical features, including its analytics capabilities.”

Acknowledging such concerns, Genrich said, “we’ll continue to enforce the terms of our contract with Flock and if there is any violation of that contract, we will not hesitate to end that relationship.”

“We have very clear contract provisions with our ALPR vendors about what they can do with our data,” Davis said. “The contract specifically says that the data belongs to us, it’s our property and so we have property rights for that data… I am comfortable with the contract provisions that we have in place to keep sensitive data safe.”