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Despite hundreds of people giving public testimony across Fire and Police Commission meetings and budget hearings, and over 40 organizations representing tens of thousands of people asking the mayor and the police chief to end the contract with Flock Safety, the Milwaukee Police Department decided to renew the Flock contract – disregarding the sentiment and opinion of the public and other elected officials.
So why all the controversy over Flock cameras in Milwaukee?
I’ll start here: According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Milwaukee’s racial demographics are 38.5% Black, 21% Latino, 34% White and 15% mixed individuals. This means a heavy majority of the city is nonwhite.
Racialized surveillance
This matters because surveillance technology has been, and still is, racialized. Surveillance in America started with slave catchers who monitored the movement of Black people to catch so-called runaway slaves and return them back to slavery once they had been caught. This also is the origin of American policing.
This was crimeless surveillance: The pretext for monitoring was the presumption of guilt based on the color of one’s skin. It was eventually codified in law through what was known as the Fugitive Slave Act, and there began a federal task force to catch Black people who escaped from slavery and return them back to bondage. You can find a parallel system set up for immigrants later.
We overcame slave catchers, but we have not overcome racialized surveillance, and the racialized presumption of guilt – both of which are legacies of slavery.
A threat to liberty
Pervasive surveillance in our everyday life is a threat to liberty. The FBI counterintelligence program, also known as COINTELPRO, is a great example of surveillance threatening our freedom. One of the aims documented in COINTELPRO was to stop the rise of a “black messiah,” so they went after any leadership that disturbed the status quo. Certain leaders were assassinated or made political prisoners and whole organizations dismantled for daring to envision a future with freedom, justice and equality for all – not some.
Back then it was a “black messiah,” but today it is anti-fascist sentiment, criticism of Christianity, capitalism, the actions of the federal government or any kind of political dissent, which are now considered indicators of terrorism.
The only difference between historic surveillance and now is that before it was done with boots-on-the-ground agents and informants who required costly salaries. It was very expensive to conduct; but today everything is done with cameras, trackers and on the internet, where data is kept in a massive database and where information on everybody can be used for commercial and mass surveillance purposes. This is much less costly for law enforcement, but much more pervasive.
The sprawling and indiscriminate use of Flock technology and other automated license plate readers makes COINTELPRO surveillance look like child’s play. Flock cameras record everyone and are capable of building patterns of life on all people recorded without probable cause or a warrant.
They keep so much information that they use it to try to predict future movement and behaviors. They deem unusual driving patterns suspicious, and if combined with other surveillance tech, they can know you better then you know yourself.
Abuse of Flock
A simple Google search will bring up countless abuses of Flock technology, including in Milwaukee. Yet the mayor and the police chief still want Flock cameras. Even after Flock has consistently misled city governments and law enforcement across the country, these city leaders are unmoved and determined to keep Flock.
We cannot rely on our data to be protected by Flock, nor the police, because our data has likely been accessed by the federal government for immigration enforcement purposes even after Milwaukee was promised by MPD that they wouldn’t share data with immigration enforcement. Yet another example of racialized surveillance in a city already segregated by race.
How far will the surveillance go?
We live in a time when cities like Memphis have the National Guard doing everyday policing, patrolling the streets in Humvees and military fatigues, and on Nov. 2 shooting and killing a man. The Milwaukee Police Association, the labor union representing local law enforcement, publicly expressed a desire for the National Guard in Milwaukee to do day-to-day policing like Memphis, and the mayor and police chief are providing the surveillance infrastructure necessary to assist this desire if it materializes.
The police built and renewed this surveillance infrastructure clandestinely by purchasing contracts under $50,000, so they don’t have to be transparent and publicly scrutinized when they purchase surveillance technology. The Common Council recently voted to change the city charter so that Flock and other automated license plate reader systems have to be voted upon by them.
Since the chief of police, with the support of the mayor, ignored thousands of Milwaukee residents and decided to renew the contract with Flock, we must encourage our alders to intervene and stop the renewal of a new contract and end this terrible practice of warrantless mass surveillance upon our residents.
Nickolas X Doherty is the Confronting Mass Incarceration coordinator at the Milwaukee Turners.
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