Flock camera pushback: Fond du Lac, Racine counties ending use

We have some breaking news, six more Wisconsin police agencies are ditching their flock cameras as the backlash accelerates against the nation's largest vendor of automated license plate readers. Fox six investigator Brian Paulson has the latest developments from our newsroom. Kim first, it was Kenosha than Sheboygan today. Six more law enforcement agencies in southeastern Wisconsin announced they are shutting down their flock. A. L. P. R. Cameras effective immediately. Racine County is already dismantling the polls and cameras that have been tracking vehicle movements across the county. These pictures came along with a friday afternoon press release and that came a little more than an hour after this joint statement from five agencies in Fond du Lac County, including the Fond du Lac County Sheriff and police departments in Fond du Lac North Fond du Lac upon and ripping. It says they are discontinuing use of their flock systems effective immediately. They cited concerns over how quickly flocks technology has expanded beyond traditional plate reading systems. You're starting to see a pretty big pull away. Kenosha Police Chief Patrick Patton says they were told flock strictly reads license plates and captures unique vehicle features because if it's doing more, if there's some sort of backside to it that we're not aware of, we have some concern there. Patton says the sudden loss of trust in flock started with an email from a flock sales rep to the city of Sheboygan public works department back in March, offering to sell the city five years of traffic volume and speed data. Their cameras were already collecting. In other words, flock license plate readers do a lot more than read license plates and many police chiefs say that revelation has caused them to lose trust in the company. In august, Sheboygan covered up its flock cameras, setting off a wave of cancellations that continues to grow. The Racine County Sheriff writes, this is not what we agreed to and it's not what the public was led to believe. Both Kenosha and Sheboygan have flock on the agenda Tuesday as police are asking each common council to formally terminate their flock contracts. But that doesn't mean fixed pole license plate readers are necessarily going away. Kenosha has already signed a 10 year deal with axon, another vendor to do the same thing. We're gonna have more on what that means next week. Right now in newsroom, Brian Polson, Fox six investigators. There's so many threads to this flock technology. You pull one string and all this other stuff is coming to light. Do you get the feeling that this was kind of a domino effect that Sheboygan said, hey, they're trying to sell us data and then that's what kind of started this domino effect. Well, I think there's a lot going on. You're right, Kim. There's that piece of it because the chiefs are all talking to each other. There's also the public backlash over all of the officer misuse around the country. We now know of more than 150 cases of individual officers who have been caught misusing the system. Many of them have been criminally charged, including a couple right here in Milwaukee. All right, Brian Paulson, I know you are working on this story and there's still so much more that we need to look into. Brian Paulson from the newsroom.