City adds Flock license plate cameras

MANAWA – Manawa is the latest Waupaca County community to add Flock automatic license plate-reading cameras to assist law enforcement.

The Common Council unanimously approved the installation of two Flock cameras at a meeting last week. The cameras will be installed near the intersection of State Highway 22 and Pine Street, and near the Manawa Masonic Center.

Manawa Police Chief Jason Severson said the cameras are funded by the Masonic Center and Treehouse Foods for the first year. Each organization is donating $650 for the installation of a camera and $3,000 to cover the initial year of service.

Unlike the city’s current live-stream traffic cameras, the Flock system is designed specifically to capture license plates and unique vehicle characteristics such as luggage racks or stickers, and features improved night vision capabilities, he said.

Severson said the system is a critical investigative tool, noting it recently helped solve a high-speed pursuit and a credit card skimming case elsewhere in Waupaca County.

“The benefit of it, in my opinion, far outweighs the concerns that people have because it is heavily monitored,” Severson told the council

Manawa’s decision to install the cameras comes at a time when residents in other parts of the state are pushing back against Flock systems. According to the ACLU of Wisconsin, privacy advocates have successfully lobbied to end or reject Flock contracts in Dane County, Verona, Sturgeon Bay and Oshkosh.

Critics of the Flock technology argue that tracking the daily movements of vehicles constitutes an invasion of privacy. There have also been several recent high profile cases of law enforcement officers misusing the cameras, including a Milwaukee police officer and a Menasha police officer accused of using the cameras to track former romantic partners.

Severson said the technology has built-in privacy safeguards and requires a case number and a reason for every search, creating an audit trail. He said the system features an AI tool that alerts administrators to unusually high search activity by an individual officer. He added that the city will have a public transparency website allowing citizens to track how many plates have been scanned and to review the case numbers associated with police searches.

Local police chiefs and the county sheriff recently met with Flock representatives and secured access to the broader Flock network for all law enforcement agencies in Waupaca County regardless of whether they have physical cameras stationed in their municipalities, he said.