Sheboygan ends use of Flock cameras; what we know

development here. Block safety tried to sell traffic data to the city of Sheboygan that had been captured by Sheboygan's own flock cameras. Fox six investigator Brian Polson is here with more breaking news about this embattled company known for scanning license plates. You guys remember last week we talked about this, the company that's known for scanning these license plates. Well, they covered up city of Sheboygan covered up. I should say their flock camera said they were working to cancel their contract with the company. Well, now we know why. And the reason for that Mayor Eric Sorensen telling the Fox six investigators earlier this summer, a flock sales rep emailed the city's engineering department offering to sell the city five years worth of data on traffic speeds and movements captured by those flock cameras. That means Sheboygan's flock cameras have been tracking your driving speeds and movement patterns, something the city says flock never told them about. Flock of course already facing nationwide backlash over officers misusing the data for personal reasons like stalking romantic partners. Chief sample said this new level of undisclosed data collection undermines his trust in the system and he's not alone. Yesterday Kenosha police chief Patrick Patton told me Sheboygan's experience is part of the reason Kenosha is moving on from flock as well. If trust is eroded and we have to then sell that trust that we have with a vendor to the community and that's eroded, I can't maintain the trust I need to have. Now we broke the story yesterday that Kenosha was ditching flock and moving to a competing company called axon for license plate reading services. Just about a half hour ago, the city made a public announcement confirming that move, adding the details on what the city is doing to restrict its license plate data and prevent abuse. That includes a requirement in Kenosha now that all searches done by patrol officers will have to be approved by a supervisor first. And we know this, the cities of Kenosha and Sheboygan both expect to have flock on the agenda for their common council meetings next Tuesday. They say fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. How do we know axon isn't is going to be any better for the city of Sheboygan? We don't right now. And in fact, even the Kenosha police chief has told me we're entering into this contract. We don't know if we'll end up in the same boat with axon or not. They believe they see reasons to feel more confidence. Number one, the default is that they won't be sharing outside Kenosha unless they actively opt in to share with other departments with flock. It's the reverse. You shared nationwide unless you opted out. They think that's going to be something that will hopefully work better in terms of some of this abuse they've seen. But some of this remains to be seen. And we're gonna be talking about this next week, looking deeper into what axon offers and why some privacy advocates say, well, it may just be trading one vendor for another. That's why this is so complicated because we hear in the public flock, we think that's the camera, that's the whole thing. Flock is the camera, but it's also the company that maintains the data. That's right. And there's issues. It's really the data that is potentially so dangerous. The picture of a license plate is one thing, but storing data on all of these vehicle movements all across the country is where some of these concerns. Was it a lie of omission on flocks part? Or did did the chief say, what else are you collecting? And they said nothing. Or did they just not revealed to them at the time of the contract? I think that remains to be seen. I've tried to reach out to flock safety to ask these very questions. They have not responded to me for the last couple of days, but I think those are questions we're gonna be asking as we go forward and moving forward. I'd like to know the difference. Is there a visible difference between the flock camera or the axon camera? Like when I'm looking and I see a camera slightly, they look very similar. One thing I'll tell you that's different about them is the axon cameras come built in as a two and one camera with live streaming capability for flock. That was an add on. They could do the same thing. But so this will now mean not just still photos of cars, but they'll be able to live stream video from those cameras as well from a central communication center. Brian Paulson, you've been on this and are staying on it. We appreciate it. Of course. Thanks. We're gonna be right