How Grafton's Flock Camera System Works

What the cameras capture, what the Village pays, who can access the data, and which rules govern its use. Every claim below is sourced from Village of Grafton records, public records responses, and Grafton Police Policy 427.

What Are Flock Cameras?

TL;DR: Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) that photograph every vehicle, capturing license plates, vehicle characteristics, and location data. All information stored for 30 days and searchable by 1,294 organizations.

Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) that photograph every vehicle passing by. These cameras capture far more than just license plates:

License plates + vehicle characteristics (make, model, color, bumper stickers, damage)
Motion-activated, solar-powered, capture 6-12 images per vehicle
Data stored for 30 days in cloud (Amazon Web Services)
Real-time alerts for "hot list" vehicles (stolen cars, wanted suspects)
Historical search capability by plate number or vehicle description

Key Points

Technology captures MORE than just plates - creates detailed "vehicle fingerprints"
Officers can search without probable cause or reasonable suspicion (per Grafton Policy 427)
No facial recognition, but tracks vehicles and by extension, their owners

What's Happening in Grafton

TL;DR: Grafton began deploying Flock cameras in 2021 without documented public debate. Village budget documents describe seven cameras at $17,500/year; the department's transparency portal reported nine as of August 2026. Camera data is shared with 1,294 organizations nationwide.

Timeline

Date	Event	Details
January 2021	Initial Authorization	Village Board approved Flock contract
June 2021	System Operational	5 cameras deployed at entry/exit points
FY 2023	Expansion to 6 cameras	Added sixth camera
December 12, 2023	Public Safety Committee Approval	Recommended 5-year contract extension
December 18, 2023	Village Board Approval	Authorized 5-year agreement through 2028
FY 2024	Expansion to 7 cameras	The figure carried in Village budget and contract documents
On or about February 18, 2026	Transparency portal enabled	Grafton PD switched on Flock's optional public transparency portal, roughly three months after telling a records requester it had not done so
August 7, 2026	Portal reports 9 cameras	Grafton PD transparency portal reports nine LPR cameras, two more than budget documents describe and one more than the 2028 plan
Planned 2028	Expansion to 8 cameras	Planned expansion per Capital Improvement Program

How many cameras does Grafton have? Village budget documents, the signed contract, and the Capital Improvement Program all describe seven cameras, expanding to eight by 2028. The department's own transparency portal reported nine LPR cameras on August 7, 2026. We have not found a public document explaining when the eighth and ninth cameras were added or how they were funded. Until the Village accounts for the difference, this site cites seven as the documented figure and nine as the figure the department itself publishes.

Contract Details

Initial Contract: Year-to-year at $2,500/camera annually
Current Contract: 5-year agreement signed October 20, 2023, running December 2023 through December 2028
Cost: $2,500 per camera/year (locked in; new customers were quoted $3,000)
Budgeted annual cost: $17,500 for seven cameras
Total contract value: $88,150 as stated in the signed agreement
Funding Source: Property tax levy
Installation Fee: $250 one-time per camera
Includes: Installation, maintenance, cellular service, cloud hosting, software updates

A note on the price-lock savings figure

Earlier versions of this page repeated a "$11,500 savings" figure. That number does not reconcile and has been removed.

On the documented terms, seven cameras at the locked $2,500 rate over five years is $87,500. The same seven at the $3,000 rate quoted to new customers would be $105,000. The difference is $17,500, not $11,500.

Two things complicate any single savings number, and we would rather show the arithmetic than publish a figure we cannot source. First, the signed agreement states a total value of $88,150 rather than $87,500, a $650 difference we have not been able to account for from the documents published so far. Second, the department's transparency portal now reports nine cameras rather than seven, so the number of cameras billed may not be constant across all five contract years.

If you have the per-year schedule from the signed agreement, send it to us and we will publish the year-by-year table instead of an estimate.

Public Process

Based on available public records:

Capital Improvement Program budgets confirm Village Board authorizations for camera purchases
Detailed meeting minutes from January 2021 authorization are not publicly accessible through standard records requests
Individual trustee votes are not documented in available public records
Public comments or opposition are not documented in accessible minutes

Note: This may reflect record-keeping practices rather than absence of public input.

Chief's Justification

Police Chief Jeff Caponera cited retail theft as primary concern:

118 retail thefts reported in 2020
Strategic placement at "every major point of ingress and egress"
Goal: "capture data within the village so we know who is here"

What Data Is Collected?

Information Captured

✓ License plate number
✓ Vehicle make, model, year, color, body type
✓ Distinguishing features (bumper stickers, damage, roof racks)
✓ GPS location of camera
✓ Date and timestamp
✓ 6-12 still images (not video)

NOT Captured

✗ Facial recognition
✗ Identifiable images of people inside vehicles
✗ Audio recordings
✗ Continuous video

Data Retention

30 days before hard deletion (per Policy 427)
Exception: Data relevant to investigations can be downloaded and stored as evidence
Encryption in transit and at rest

Who Controls It

Flock Safety, Inc. owns and operates the hardware and the cloud platform. The Village leases the equipment; it does not own the cameras
The Village nominally owns the data. Grafton's Flock transparency portal states plainly: "Data is owned by Grafton WI PD and is never sold to 3rd parties"
But the signed agreement grants Flock a "non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free right to use and distribute" Anonymized Data derived from the system, for product development and "other Flock offerings" (Contract, Section 4.3)
The agreement also permits Flock to disclose footage to "law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or third parties" where it believes disclosure is legally required or reasonably necessary (Contract, Section 5.3)
Grafton Police Department has access; 1,294 organizations have access through network sharing

Ownership on paper is not the same as control in practice. The accurate criticism is not that Flock owns Grafton's plate reads, because the contract and the portal both say otherwise. It is that the Village owns data it cannot meaningfully govern: it runs on infrastructure the Village does not control, it is licensed back to the vendor in derived form in perpetuity, and once shared with any of 1,294 organizations, its retention is governed by their policies rather than Grafton's.

Policy & Oversight

TL;DR: Grafton's policy prohibits misuse but has no independent oversight, no public reporting on usage, and the department doesn't track how external agencies access Grafton's data.

Grafton Police Department Policy 427

Adopted September 2021, updated September 2025
No warrant required for ALPR searches
No reasonable suspicion required for searches
Officers must document search reason and link to case number
All searches automatically logged with audit trail
Prohibits "blanket searches absent bona fide reason"
Restricts to "official and legitimate law enforcement business"

Authorized Uses

Identify stolen vehicles, wanted persons, missing persons
Assist criminal investigations
Locate witnesses or victims
Verify vehicle information

Prohibited Uses

Personal surveillance
Tracking individuals based on protected characteristics
Blanket searches without legitimate purpose
Non-law enforcement uses

Oversight

Audit logs reviewed by supervisors
No independent civilian oversight
Public usage statistics are vendor-generated. Grafton has enabled Flock's transparency portal, which publishes 30-day counts. Flock produces and controls that display; no independent auditor verifies it, and it reports no outcomes
No published audit results, though Policy 427.5(e) requires regular audits
Department does not track external agency access to Grafton data

Key Findings from Public Records Request

In response to a public records request (October 28, 2025), Grafton Police Department provided the following information (November 11, 2025):

Department does NOT track how many times external agencies access Grafton data
No separate MOUs governing data sharing beyond Flock system access
No direct federal agency access, but department "not aware" if federal agencies have accessed through network
Other agencies bound by "their own departmental policies" for data retention - no Grafton control
Use restricted to "legitimate law enforcement purposes" but no enforcement mechanism

The Transparency Portal: What It Shows, and What It Doesn't

Update: Grafton Police enabled Flock's public transparency portal on or about February 18, 2026. When this site first published, they had not. The portal is a real improvement and is credited as such below, but it publishes counts rather than accountability, and several of the figures it publishes raise new questions.

Flock Safety offers an optional "transparency portal" that agencies can enable to make usage data publicly viewable. Grafton Police enabled theirs on or about February 18, 2026: transparency.flocksafety.com/grafton-wi-pd.

As published on August 7, 2026, the portal reported the following for the preceding 30 days:

Measure	Reported figure
LPR cameras	9
Unique vehicles detected (30 days)	211,813
User search sessions (30 days)	36
Hotlist hits (30 days)	823
Hotlist sources	NCIC, NCMEC Amber Alert, Wisconsin DOJ
Data retention	30 days
Organizations granted access to Grafton data	1,294
Organizations sharing data with Grafton	818

Source: Grafton WI PD Flock transparency portal, retrieved August 7, 2026. Figures are generated by Flock Safety, not independently audited.

What the Portal Establishes

Grafton operates 9 cameras, not 7. Village budget and contract documents describe seven. The portal reports nine. The Village has not published an explanation for the difference.
211,813 unique vehicles were detected in 30 days against 823 hotlist hits. That is roughly one hit for every 257 vehicles: about 99.6% of vehicles detected in Grafton generated no hotlist alert at all. This is a Grafton-specific figure from the department's own reporting, not an estimate borrowed from another state.
Grafton officers ran 36 searches in 30 days. That is low, and it is a point in the department's favor. It also means the 30-day database of a quarter-million vehicle records exists largely unused by Grafton itself.
Federal agencies are on the access list, which the department's November 2025 records response did not disclose. See the agencies page.
The portal states Grafton owns its data and that it "is never sold to 3rd parties," and that multi-factor authentication is required. Both are meaningful commitments.

What the Portal Still Does Not Answer

It does not show who outside Grafton searched Grafton's cameras. The 36 searches are Grafton's own. Nothing on the portal reports how many of the 1,294 organizations with access ran searches against Grafton data, or why.
It is vendor-generated. Flock produces these numbers, controls what is displayed, and can change the display without notice. No independent auditor verifies them.
It does not publish search reasons. A 30-day search audit is offered as a CSV download, but the portal itself shows no breakdown of why searches were run. Wisconsin Examiner's 2025 review of other departments' audit data found reasons as thin as a single period.
It does not report outcomes. No arrests, no case clearances, no cost-per-arrest. 823 hotlist hits is not 823 crimes solved; hits include suspended registrations and stolen plates, and Grafton's own policy requires human verification before action.
It is not a substitute for the audits Policy 427 already requires. Section 427.5(e) requires regular audits. None have been published.

Where this leaves the ask: enabling the portal was a genuine step and the remaining requests are narrower than they were. What Grafton still owes residents is external-access reporting, published audit results under its own policy, and outcome data.

Wisconsin-Specific Concerns

A 2025 Wisconsin Examiner investigation analyzed Flock audit data and found troubling patterns:

221 Wisconsin agencies used Flock from January to May 2025
Many agencies entered vague search reasons like "investigation" with no context, or simply used a period (".") as the reason
West Allis PD led the state in using only "." as a search reason - over 1,200 times
Brown County Sheriff's Office (Wisconsin's 2nd highest Flock user) has NO Flock-specific policy
Top statewide search reason: "investigation" (vague, no specifics provided)

Milwaukee PD Accessed Illinois Cameras for "Classified" Investigation

In May 2025, Wisconsin Examiner revealed that Milwaukee Police Department's intelligence unit (STAC - Southeastern Threat Analysis Center) accessed Flock cameras in Danville, Illinois for a "classified" investigation. Key findings:

Three searches conducted in July and October 2024 logged as "HSI investigation" (Homeland Security Investigations)
By tapping into Danville's network, Milwaukee accessed 4,893-5,425 Flock networks nationwide - demonstrating how one agency's data opens access to thousands of others
MPD stated the investigation was "classified," claiming it was a federal drug trafficking investigation (HIDTA)
ACLU Wisconsin raised concerns about lack of oversight and public notification

Implication: This case demonstrates how network sharing allows agencies to access cameras far outside their jurisdiction. A single search by one Wisconsin agency can pull data from thousands of networks across the country without the knowledge or consent of the communities being surveilled.

ACLU of Wisconsin (Amanda Merkwae):
"If law enforcement told us that they wanted to put a tracking device on every single car in the country so that we know where every car is every single moment of the day, and we're going to build a database of all those locations run by an unaccountable private company, and accessible to every law enforcement agency across the country without needing any type of a warrant, I think we would be alarmed."

ACLU of Wisconsin (John McCray Jones):
"This level of opacity is unacceptable. Vague entries like 'investigation' or a period provide no meaningful oversight and violate the spirit of transparency and democracy. This kind of documentation undermines any public trust or accountability."

Note: Grafton Police Department did not appear in the Wisconsin Examiner's analysis, suggesting either lower usage or that Grafton's audit data was not accessible through the public records request methods used. Grafton's own portal reports 36 searches in the 30 days ending August 7, 2026, which is consistent with low usage.

Among neighboring Ozaukee County agencies, Grafton's portal lists Cedarburg PD as [Inactive] in the network. Mequon PD, Port Washington PD, Saukville PD and the Ozaukee County Sheriff's Office all appear in Grafton's sharing lists, but we have not confirmed whether any of them publishes a transparency portal of its own. If you can confirm one way or the other, tell us and we will update this page.

Continue Reading

Now that you know how the system works, see why it raises constitutional and civil-liberties concerns.

Why It's a Problem Search the Sharing Network Read the Source Documents