Crowley directive to limit Flock cameras

more restrictions could be coming to those license plate cameras watching you drive. And today the county executive calls for changes to flock one day after the city did the same. Jason Kelby is in the newsroom with what comes next. Jason. Hey Mary. Hey Ted. Fox 6 has learned Milwaukee County has 42 flock cameras. The county's cameras are on county parkland. That includes 14 near the lakefront and also around county parks. These snap your license plates as you drive by. County Executive David Crowley calls for limits on flock. What exactly? He calls on the county attorneys in the county's tech division to come up with binding standards. So this is a plan for a plan. The standards will answer questions like what cases would allow for using flock, who is allowed to use the database, when and what partners can get in. The county exec says federal immigration work would not be able to use it without a judge's warrant. The county exec calls for a public web page that you can use to check out and see how the county is using flock. Yesterday Milwaukee police announced it agreed to changes including only allowing supervisors access to the flock system. It comes after three Milwaukee police officers were investigated for flock misuse. MPD now only allows supervisors to get into the flock system. So Fox 6 asked the chief if that means it'll slow down finding suspects and finding missing people. Does this make things a little bit more, could be time-consuming in regards to just the different steps that our frontline men and women have to do? Yes, but I will say that it's better to have a compromise and still be able to use, which we feel that the LPR technology, license plate reader technology, is still a helpful tool to find missings, to locate suspects. But we do understand the responsibility behind it. So a lot still on the horizon for Milwaukee County as they dig into what the policy should be in the county. Jason, just reading some of this, let's talk about access to the cameras. Why does county executive David Crawley have any say over the county cameras when the sheriff's office is independently elected? Who has the final say in whether they remain turned on? Well yeah, you're right. The county executive has no authority over the elected sheriff. The sheriff is elected by the people independent, not under the authority of the county executive. But all 42 of the county's flock cameras, which I mentioned at the lakefront and at the county parks, those are on county parkland, which is the purview of the county executive. In addition, when you look at the flock contract with Milwaukee County, it's with the department that's under the county executive, that's the department of administrative services. So that means county executive does have a say in the flock system, even though it's the sheriff independent of the county executive, whose deputies use the system. Well, let's get to that. What is Sheriff Danita Ball saying about who in her staff can access these cameras? Yeah, so she is pointing out that the department does, the office does have checks and balances. She says that in her office, none of the deputies have had any cases of misuse. She says that the flock cameras, the 42 of them that I mentioned, have solved violent crime and have helped find missing people and they've saved stolen cars. So that's what she's saying is happening thanks to those flock cameras. She also, her office is saying that there are checks and balances in place, already in place in Milwaukee County. That includes reducing how long it saves the data. So it had been saving it for 30 days, it's going to cut that down to a seven day holding of that information, holding of that data. The sheriff's office is planning, you heard how the county executive wanted a website. The sheriff's office says it's planning a website that will let you see how the county is using flock. And right now it's also limiting what kind of cases would allow you to tap into that system, into that database. It limits those searches to stolen cars, violent crime and missing people. That's very similar to what Milwaukee's new standards are calling for to use it in those situations. So Milwaukee County does not allow searches related to immigration status. You heard the county executive say he didn't want to see federal immigration agents being able to have access to the database. And what we're hearing from the county sheriff's office is that they don't allow searches related to immigration status. It's also going to limit access to Milwaukee County's cameras. Right now they've been sharing with statewide partners, but they are going to start limiting that to only the Milwaukee County sheriff's office being able to utilize the database of Milwaukee County cameras. Changes both in the city and the county. Jason Calvi in the newsroom. Thanks.