Wisconsin’s Flock Retreat: At Least 32 Communities, Four Charged Officers, and a Price County Blind Spot

Last updated: October 2026

TL;DR: At least 32 Wisconsin communities, counties, and school districts have now voted to remove, disable, defund, or cancel their Flock Safety license plate cameras. The published tally kept by the advocacy group DeFlock America says 25, but that list omits cancellations we have verified ourselves, including Milwaukee County, Wausau, Oconomowoc, Waukesha, Wisconsin Rapids, Cottage Grove, and Monona. The Wisconsin Examiner has independently confirmed votes or removals in at least nine of them, including Stevens Point, Sheboygan, Winnebago County, Fond du Lac County, Dane County, Verona, Monona, Milwaukee County, and Wausau. No Wisconsin county has banned Flock countywide. Milwaukee County banned it from county park property only. Four Wisconsin police officers have been charged with misusing the cameras, three of them to track romantic partners.

Which Wisconsin communities have dropped Flock?

The list is moving fast enough that any published count goes stale within weeks. What follows separates what has been independently reported from what rests on a single advocacy tally.

Beyond those nine, the Examiner and regional outlets have reported additional removals in Racine, Oconomowoc, Waukesha, Menasha, Wisconsin Rapids, Cottage Grove, Appleton, Oshkosh, and Kaukauna. We have read headline reporting on those but have not reviewed each vote, so we are naming them without dates or vote counts.

That table is not complete, and it is not meant to be. DeFlock America’s tally puts the figure at 25 communities and local government bodies. The Examiner’s reporting confirms specific votes without adopting that number, and the nine in the table above are the ones we have verified against reporting we read directly.

The 25 is a floor, not a total. We re-counted DeFlock’s cancellation tracker on Oct. 21, 2026 and found 24 distinct Wisconsin entries — then found eight more cancellations we had verified from reporting that the tracker does not list: Milwaukee County, Wausau, Oconomowoc, Waukesha, Wisconsin Rapids, Cottage Grove, Monona, and the Oconomowoc Area School District. That puts the verified count at at least 32.

Read the unit carefully, because it explains why larger figures circulate. Three different things get counted, and they are not interchangeable.

Municipalities and counties are what the lists above count. One county decision can end Flock use for several departments at once — Winnebago County’s move covered the sheriff’s office and the police in Menasha, Neenah, Fox Crossing, Winneconne and UW-Oshkosh, so counting police agencies instead of places inflates the total quickly.

School districts are a separate account class. A K-12 district can hold its own Flock contract alongside the city it sits in. The Oconomowoc Area School District leased four cameras at the high school entrances from December 2023 and ended them in September 2026, a decision distinct from the city of Oconomowoc’s own 5-2 vote to cancel its contract that same month. That is two Flock accounts in one town, and both belong in a count of who has walked away.

What does “banned” actually mean in Wisconsin?

Almost every headline using the word “ban” is describing something narrower than a reader will assume. No Wisconsin county has prohibited Flock or automated license plate readers countywide. The actions taken so far fall into four distinct categories, and they are not interchangeable.

Milwaukee County passed a property ban. The county board voted unanimously on Oct. 1, 2026, to remove Flock cameras from county park property, and the resolution allows the county to replace them with conventional security cameras. That governs parks. It does not govern the city of Milwaukee, and it does not govern the Milwaukee Police Department.

Dane County withdrew funding. The board pulled the appropriation for the sheriff’s office subscription, which ends the arrangement without banning the technology.

Racine, Oconomowoc, Verona, and Sheboygan terminated contracts. The cameras come down or get shut off, but nothing prevents a future council from signing again.

Bagging is a fourth act, with its own logic. When Stevens Point and Wausau directed staff to cover the lenses, the point was not just to stop local police from querying the network. It was to stop Flock itself from using cameras the city still had under contract and had not yet stopped paying for.

Four Wisconsin officers charged with misusing Flock

The misuse cases changed the politics. The Wisconsin Examiner documented four officers across the state charged with misconduct in public office and related offenses for how they used the cameras, and in three of the four cases the target was a current or former romantic partner.

Josue Ayala of the Milwaukee Police Department received a year of probation and avoided jail time earlier in 2026. Cristian Morales of the Menasha Police Department pleaded no contest in Outagamie County and was sentenced in August to six months in jail followed by three years of probation. Frank McGrath, a former Kenosha County sheriff’s deputy, was charged with misconduct in public office in September. Tehrangi Chapman, a Milwaukee police detective, was charged in July.

The details matter more than the charges. McGrath used Flock and a separate squad-car tracking system called Polaris to monitor his girlfriend, who was herself a Kenosha County Sheriff’s deputy. Chapman allegedly used both Flock cameras and car-mounted GPS trackers on someone he had been monitoring since 2019, years before Flock arrived in Milwaukee. Ayala and Chapman were reported to police by the people they were tracking. McGrath was caught when a supervisor noticed suspicious queries in a routine audit.

That last detail is the one worth sitting with. Three of the four were not caught by the oversight systems that are supposed to catch them. Two were caught by their victims.

In Racine County, the district attorney acknowledged that additional unnamed officers have been investigated over their Flock use.

Wausau: 20 cameras, a 5-0 vote, and a closed session

The most recent action came Oct. 19, 2026, when Wausau’s Public Health and Safety Committee voted 5-0 to seek an immediate halt to the city’s Flock cameras and an end to payments for them. The Wausau Pilot & Review reported that the vote came before a packed council chamber and followed a closed session with legal counsel. The meeting agenda described that session as advice on litigation in which the city “is or is likely to become involved regarding termination of contract with Flock Group Inc.”

Alder Kristin Slonski’s motion split the question in two. One recommendation went to the Finance Committee to strike the Flock appropriation from the 2027 and 2028 budgets. The other went to the full council to direct the police department to stop using all 20 cameras immediately and bag them.

What about Price County’s own cameras?

Price County has not voted to drop Flock. The cameras here remain in place, and the public record on them is thinner than residents might expect.

Our own count in July 2026, drawn from the volunteer mapping projects deflock.org, alpr.watch, and alprmaps.com, found 11 surveillance devices across Price County. That was never an ALPR-only figure. It bundled four Flock license plate cameras, three unbranded plate readers, and four acoustic gunshot detectors, different device classes counted together, which is why it reads as a contradiction against maps that only plot plate readers.

Count only the plate readers and the number is four: two in Phillips, two in Fifield. A commercial site called MyTownView reports those same four locations, and the National ALPR Atlas published by Andy Parrish, built on DeFlock and OpenStreetMap data, independently places its four Price County cameras within a quarter mile of the same two towns. Two sources that share no data agree. Neither has been confirmed by the sheriff’s office, and a records request remains the only authoritative route.

If you want the authoritative answer, the route is a written public records request to the Price County Sheriff’s Office for the contract, the deployment list, and the audit logs. We published a walkthrough for filing one: Flock Camera Map Wisconsin.

Why the ground shifted

Two things changed between spring and fall 2026. The first was the misuse cases, which turned an abstract argument about data retention into a concrete one about officers tracking ex-girlfriends. The second was Sheboygan’s discovery that Flock had been collecting traffic data the city did not know about and then offered to sell it back.

Stevens Point Mayor Mike Wiza put the case in a press release in early September: “Reports are surfacing all over the country about the system being misused by municipal and state employees who have access to the data.”

The counterargument is not frivolous. Police departments credit the network with solving carjackings, kidnappings, homicides, drug trafficking cases, and shootings, and more than 5,000 agencies held Flock contracts in late 2025. A rural county with a handful of deputies has no other way to get that kind of coverage. The question before every board that votes on this is whether the auditing is real or theoretical. In Kenosha County, it was a supervisor reading a log. In Milwaukee, it was two victims filing reports.

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See also: what makes Price County communities special

See also: our guide to Price County public records

Frequently asked questions

Has any Wisconsin county banned Flock cameras?

No county has banned them countywide. Milwaukee County banned them from county park property in October 2026. Dane County withdrew funding for the sheriff’s subscription. Both are narrower than a countywide ban.

How many Wisconsin communities have dropped Flock?

At least 32, counting communities, counties, and school districts. DeFlock America’s published tally says 25, but its tracker omits at least eight cancellations we verified from reporting. There is no official state tally, and figures differ mainly because sources count different units: municipalities, police agencies, or K-12 districts with their own contracts.

How many Flock cameras are in Price County?

It depends which map you read. Volunteer projects counted 11 devices in July 2026. MyTownView reports four locations. Neither figure has been confirmed by the sheriff’s office. A public records request is the only way to settle it.

Have Wisconsin police officers been charged over Flock misuse?

Four, according to the Wisconsin Examiner: Josue Ayala of Milwaukee, Cristian Morales of Menasha, Frank McGrath of Kenosha County, and Tehrangi Chapman of Milwaukee. Three of the four used the system to monitor romantic partners.

Can I find out if my plate was searched?

Not through Flock. The company does not offer plate owners a lookup tool. The only route is a records request to the agency that holds the account.