Flock Cameras, the Governor’s Race, and Who’s Writing AI’s Safety Laws: Inside Wednesday’s UNJ LIVE

Milwaukee, three drones landed on a police district station roof this week while an officer was walking out the door. That’s not a movie. It happened two miles from where most of you are reading this, and it’s part of why Marcus Hart spent Tuesday afternoon inside a Marquette Law School community meeting instead of behind a desk.

Wednesday night’s Urban News Journal livestream covered three stories that all come down to the same question: who’s actually in the room when the decisions that affect you get made, and who’s holding them to it afterward. Watch the full broadcast below, or read the breakdown.

Flock cameras: who’s watching, and who answers for it

Milwaukee police have used license-plate reading technology since 2016, and the Flock camera system specifically since 2022. Department policy requires every officer who runs a plate to attach a case number and a reason, and a review happens roughly every 30 days to catch officers who skip that step. That audit is reactive: it catches misuse after it’s already happened.

It already has. An MPD officer, identified in reporting as Ayala, was convicted in June for misusing the Flock system. That case is a direct reason Mayor Cavalier Johnson rolled out new citywide restrictions on September 3rd: access is now locked to MPD supervisors only, no outside agencies, and use is limited to the most serious crimes, including homicide, sexual assault, aggravated assault, trafficking, and missing-persons cases. A public dashboard and a twice-yearly independent audit from the Fire and Police Commission are both part of the new policy.

At Tuesday’s session, Marcus put a direct question to the department’s representative, Heather Hoff: why isn’t a warrant required, the way one would be for a cell phone search? Her answer was that a license plate is considered public information the moment a car is on a public street, which is how courts have historically treated it, though she acknowledged that standard could change and the department says it would follow suit.

One line from the room summed up the room’s mood better than anything official said. A woman in the audience stood up and said the guardrails only ever show up after something bad has already happened. Nobody on the panel disagreed with her.

The department also walked through the rest of its surveillance toolkit: ShotSpotter, which listens for gunfire and automatically alerts dispatch; Community Connect, where private businesses and homeowners can let police tap their security cameras during an active incident; drones, which the department says are logged publicly online with a stated reason each time they fly; and cell phone location data, which does require a warrant. When someone in the audience asked what happens if the federal government demands this data for something bigger than a local case, the department’s answer was that it would require the federal government to go through its own warrant process first, but acknowledged that if a threat were serious enough, the department would cooperate. None of that is settled law. It’s policy, and policy can change.

The race for governor: closer than either side wants to admit

The most detailed public polling right now, from Marquette Law School, shows County Executive David Crowley leading Congressman Tom Tiffany 49 to 44 among likely voters. Among all registered voters, it’s a flat 44-44 tie. Either way, that’s inside the margin of error, and Crowley only won his primary by a razor-thin margin himself.

The crosstabs are where it gets interesting. Independents are breaking hard for Crowley, 55 to 16, but roughly a third of them remain undecided. Crowley’s own favorability isn’t overwhelming either, at 31 percent favorable to 29 percent unfavorable, with 38 percent still undecided about him personally. Tiffany’s numbers are rougher: 39 favorable, 42 unfavorable.

Enthusiasm may end up mattering more than either candidate’s favorability. Republicans in this poll report being more fired up for Tiffany than Democrats are for Crowley, and that kind of gap is exactly what decides close races when turnout, not persuasion, becomes the deciding factor in November.

Who’s writing the rules for AI?

When lawmakers write a law meant to regulate a company, the company being regulated shouldn’t be the one drafting the language. Reporting this month found that Google has been directly involved in drafting AI chatbot safety legislation in multiple states, the same laws meant to hold companies like Google accountable, and some of the language reportedly includes loopholes that would make the rules easier for the industry to live with while letting lawmakers claim they passed real reform.

To be fair, industry input on legislation isn’t automatically corruption; companies weighing in on rules that affect them happens across nearly every piece of legislation. But there’s a real difference between being consulted and being the one holding the pen, and when that happens quietly, most people watching the news have no way of knowing it occurred. These chatbots are already talking to kids, to parents, to people going through a hard night alone at 2 a.m. If the guardrails on that get written soft on purpose, the failure doesn’t show up until it’s already hurt somebody.

Accountability check: nothing new, and that’s the honest answer

The certified demand letters to seven Milwaukee-area offices, requesting a State Fair after-action report following the August 17th disturbances, still have not gone out. The holdup has been the cost of certified mail for seven separate pieces. Marcus committed on air this week that the letters go out Friday, and that commitment stands. The real 15-business-day clock does not start until they are confirmed mailed.

Everything else sits where it’s been: the press inquiry to Wisconsin State Fair Park has gone unanswered for more than a month, the inquiry to West Allis PD remains unanswered after an initial bounce, and a call to the Milwaukee County Executive’s office was met with a ten-minute hold followed by a redirect back to the same inbox that hasn’t responded. That’s not being called a conspiracy. It’s being called what it is: offices built to slow a request down without ever technically saying no.

Friday’s broadcast will carry the real update, whatever it is.

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