The Fire and Police Commission (FPC) held its regular session on Thursday, May 7, 2026, commencing at 5:50 PM at City Hall, Room 301-B. Seven commissioners were present: Miriam Horwitz (Chair), Bree Spencer (Vice-Chair), Dana World-Patterson, Ruben Burgos, Ramon Evans, Christopher Snyder, Jeff Spence, and Krissie Fung. Commissioners LaNelle Ramey and Christopher Snyder were excused. The agenda was amended to remove two items (FPC212501 and FPC212521) due to position status updates. The meeting adjourned at 8:56 PM.
Fourteen members of the public spoke, the majority expressing strong opposition to the use of Flock automated license plate readers (ALPR) by the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). Several speakers also supported recent restrictions on police chases, raised concerns about mental health services, and called for a comprehensive governance framework (Community Control Over Police Surveillance, or CCOPS). Key positions:
Item 10 – Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR) Presentation (FPC212509) Taken out of order due to public interest. MPD Chief of Staff Heather Huff and Risk Manager James Lewis presented new auditing measures implemented after a misuse incident. Key points:
Item 9 – Use of Force SOP Modification (FPC212508) – Adopted 7-0. Resolution modifies SOP 460 to require use of force reports when officers draw or display a firearm to effect an arrest.
Item 11 – Minimum Requirements for Police Sergeant Discipline (FPC212510) – Referred to the FPC Testing and Recruiting Committee (May 12, 2026) for further discussion.
Item 12 – SOP/SOI Changes (FPC212511) – Placed on file. Five policy updates: SOP 263 (Records Management), SOP 467 (Conducted Energy Weapon), SOP 475 (Military Deployment Reintegration), SOP 670 (Bomb Threats), and Police Chaplaincy SOI. Changes described as administrative.
Items 7-8 – Examinations:
Department of Emergency Communications:
Fire Department Promotions/Appointments:
Police Department Promotions:
This is the May 7, 2026 regular meeting of the Fire and Police Commission. Present our Commissioners Virgos, Evans, Fung, Spence, Spencer, World Patterson, and myself, Commissioner Horowitz. Commissioners Raimi and Schneider are excused. Also present our FPC Executive Director, Leon Todd, and Deputy Director Jay Puse. Director, please proceed with the agenda. Thank you, Madam Chair. We will begin with item number one, public comment. For those who would like to speak and are here in person, please come up and sit at the front table when your name is called. If you are appearing virtually and have registered in advance to speak, please use the raise my hand feature in the webinar tools and unmute yourself when called upon to speak. Each person will be given up to five minutes to speak. And as usual, we will we will begin with uh people who are here in person. Uh we do have a new public comment form, and I I think there may be some confusion about the additional uh comments and uh uh line where you indicate support or or oppose um an agenda item. Uh, those were meant for for those who did not wish to speak but wanted to uh uh submit uh uh a written comment or note their uh objection uh or or uh support in writing. But uh it appears that uh that may not have been clear. So uh we'll see if we can make the uh the public comment form uh clear in the future, and then I will call out everyone's name, and if you do not actually want to speak, you can just so indicate. Uh but we will begin with Emilio De Torre from uh Milwaukee Turners. Good evening. Good evening. Uh good evening, members of the Milwaukee and Fire, uh Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission. I'm Emilia DeTore with the Milwaukee Turners. Um, it's no surprise to you that Milwaukee is in the midst of a surveillance crisis. It was clear through the year-long push against facial recognition technology that residents don't want to be surveilled by law enforcement and military contractors through weird public-private business relationships. And I'm not even going to get into the personal abuses by individual officers. What we are hearing about Flock is more of the same. Last night, the city of Appleton voted to end their usage of Flock. Just this month, Oshkosh and Sturgeon Bay refused to renew their contracts, and Verona also. Dane County will terminate its contract in May. Mass surveillance. There is a web of over 92,000 flock cameras and counting across the nation, and this creates a drag net surveillance of all people, whether or not they are suspected of a crime or wanted for any particular reason. The cameras pick up everything in range of their view, not just license plates. They use AI to hone in on the licenses, but everything is covered. This has been shown extensively, and regardless of the data accessible through the agreement with MPD. Flock information is shared with the federal government. Flock CEO Garrett Langley says that groups that monitor flock locations and speak against the use of Flock, like DFLOC, are, quote, terroristic organizations whose primary motivation is chaos. A troubling response from someone we are paying to entrust with such power to surveil us. His backers like Mark Andreessen are big donors to the current president and to deregulation of tech and cryptocurrencies like this surveillance. They have clear financial and political interests in the expansion of this tech. Flock claims that it has never been hacked. This is completely false. Musician and engineer Ben Jordan used a commercial search engine to show how easily you can identify and access the administration interfaces of Flock cameras, identifying where they are, and none of the data or information was encrypted. No username nor password was required. They were publicly facing and accessible by anyone. You can click and see every single person, vehicle, place, and activity that the cameras captured over those 31 days. You can watch the footage in real time or access historic footage, not just select police officers, anyone could do this. He watched a man rollerblading and then looked at his phone, and the camera's AI automatically zoomed in on the phone. He watched a couple arguing in a market and then used easily accessible Flock public data and facial recognition technology to identify who who they were, that they had traveled 45 minutes from home to church that day, that they had just had a child, and had debt based on that new baby. One of them had just finished medical school, and the other was suffering from chronic irritable bowel syndrome. All of this from Flock Hammer's. Given how Flock has created and is marketing their new product Nova to provide law enforcement and one stop shopping for an aggregated database for synthesis and sharing, given how Flock financial backers are also supporters of our current federal abuses and practices, and given how Flock's website says that federal agencies are partners with, and I quote, can establish one-to-one sharing relationships with other law enforcement agencies. It is incredibly dangerous and unwise for us to continue to use this invasive product that forms such a large surveillance web to be integrated with other federal surveillance already being used to threaten and criminalize immigrants and political dissenters.