Waukesha Police Reconsider Traffic Cameras After Realizing Cameras Actually Record Things
A statewide backlash against Flock Safety technology has Wisconsin police departments questioning whether surveillance is worth the privacy concerns.
WAUKESHA — Following similar moves across Wisconsin, Waukesha's Public Safety Committee this week reviewed the city's use of automated Flock Safety traffic cameras, a network of 14 license-plate-reading units installed along Sunset Drive, Grandview Boulevard, and the Highway 164 corridor since 2023. The review, prompted by a statewide backlash against the technology, produced a 34-page report whose central finding committee members described, more than once, as difficult to argue with: the cameras work.
Committee member Captain Robert Hamann, 51, told reporters the cameras "observe vehicles during traffic violations, which is technically effective, but also deeply unsettling to everyone," a sentence he read directly from page 9 of the report and then repeated, nearly verbatim, twice more during a 40-minute public comment period.
What The 34 Pages Actually Say
The report, compiled over six weeks by the Waukesha Police Department's Office of Technology Compliance, reviewed 11 months of footage retention logs, 212 resident complaints filed through the city's online portal, and one lengthy email from a Meadowbrook resident who asked, in bold and underlined text, whether the cameras could "see into my garage, hypothetically." The department's written response, reproduced in an appendix, states that they cannot, though it notes the resident did not specify which garage.
Its overall conclusion, quoted in full at the department's request, reads: "The cameras see everything, do their job, and make people uncomfortable about being seen." The sentence appears on page 31, is repeated as a pull-quote on the report's cover page, and was read aloud by City Clerk Pamela Osterhaus at Tuesday's meeting to what minutes describe as "prolonged silence."
"They observe vehicles during traffic violations, which is technically effective, but also deeply unsettling to everyone."
— Captain Robert Hamann, Waukesha Police Department
The Lens-Covering Compromise
Rather than recommend removing or expanding the 14-camera network, the report proposes a middle path: keeping the cameras operational but covering the lenses with a weatherproof shroud between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., a measure the report describes as being done "out of politeness." Captain Hamann said the covers, which the department has already ordered in a batch of 16 from a Sheboygan industrial supplier at $47 apiece, would be manually attached by an on-duty officer each evening and removed each morning, a task estimated at 35 minutes per full route.
Councilman Gary Puchalski, who sits on the Public Safety Committee, said he supported the lens-covering measure "in spirit" but questioned whether it addressed the underlying concern. "If the worry is that the cameras see things, and we cover them for eight hours and leave them uncovered for sixteen, I'm not sure we've solved a two-thirds problem," Puchalski said, before voting yes anyway.
The committee approved the covering measure 6-1, with Hamann himself casting the lone no vote, telling colleagues he found the compromise "logistically sound but philosophically confusing."
The Backlash, Such As It Is
Wisconsin's broader reconsideration of Flock Safety technology has touched at least nine municipalities since July, according to figures cited in the report, after reporting elsewhere in the state raised questions about how long footage is retained and which agencies can request it. Waukesha's own retention window is 30 days, a figure the report notes "meets or exceeds nothing in particular" but which committee members repeatedly described as reassuring.
City resident Deb Colangelo, 58, who addressed the committee during public comment, said she was less concerned about the cameras themselves than about the report's tone. "They spent 34 pages telling us the cameras basically work as intended, and somehow that's the scandal," Colangelo said. "I came here worried about surveillance. I left worried about whoever wrote page 31."
What Happens In October
The committee tabled a final vote on the camera program's future, with a formal decision on retention, coverage hours, and whether to expand the network to Les Paul Parkway expected by the committee's October 6 meeting. Captain Hamann said the department would continue operating all 14 cameras uncovered in the meantime, "as normal, because that is currently allowed," and confirmed the shroud order remains in the mail.
Asked whether the department had considered simply not covering the cameras at all and living with the discomfort, Hamann paused for several seconds before saying the department "had discussed that option internally" but that it "did not test well" with the committee's sense of what the report called, on page 34, "basic neighborliness."