Hundreds of Milwaukee residents urge Fire and Police Commission to halt facial recognition plans
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Summary
At the Feb. 5, 2026 Fire and Police Commission meeting, scores of Milwaukee residents and civil‑society groups urged the commission to block or pause any Milwaukee Police Department adoption of facial recognition technology, citing privacy, bias, and data‑sharing concerns and a proposed trade of 2,500,000 booking photos to a vendor.
Milwaukee '026-02-05 — Hundreds of residents and civil‑society speakers packed a Fire and Police Commission hearing on Wednesday to demand that the panel and the Milwaukee Police Department stop any adoption of facial recognition technology and reject vendor deals that would trade local booking photos for software access.
"I'm here today to speak out against these cameras," said Paul Smith, a commissioner on the city's Office of Equity and Inclusion and vice president of the Milwaukee Intertribal Circle, who described misidentifications and daily harms he said surveillance causes.
Speakers from the ACLU of Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association and a string of local advocacy groups pressed the commission to block or pause the use of facial recognition technology — often abbreviated as FRT — and to require independent testing, public input and strict limits on data sharing. Amanda Marquay of the ACLU said MPD has considered a deal to exchange 2,500,000 booking records for two licenses to a vendor's system and warned that trading mugshots for software access "creates another pipeline for abuse."
Experts at the meeting raised technical concerns. Katie Kinsey, tech policy counsel at the Policing Project at NYU School of Law, told commissioners the technology can produce meaningful investigative leads but warned the evidence of public‑safety benefits is limited and the risks are real: accuracy problems, higher error rates for some demographic groups and a chilling effect on protest and public participation. Kinsey recommended public reporting of uses, limited scopes (serious violent crimes), training for human reviewers and time‑limited pilots with public reporting.
MPD leadership, appearing virtually, told the commission the department had not purchased any FRT licenses and said it would not obtain technology without an SOP and community engagement. "At this time, we have not taken on any particular program or use of FRT for our particular department," Chief Thomas said, adding that where the department has used FRT in the past it was for investigations of serious violent crime and that any FRT hit would be treated as a lead, not as sole probable cause for arrest.
Still, commissioners and advocates pressed for clearer limits. Several speakers and at least one commissioner urged the FPC to draft a formal recommendation to the common council and to consider a temporary moratorium on MPD's casual borrowing of FRT services from other jurisdictions until a public SOP exists.
The meeting included many memoranda and personnel votes unrelated to the FRT discussion; commissioners adopted a slate of routine promotions and administrative resolutions by voice and roll call during the consent portion of the agenda.
Next steps: commissioners said staff will draft a recommendation and the commission will consider whether to direct the chief to pause external FRT use pending a written SOP and broader public review.
