NEENAH (NBC 26) — More than 50 people packed a Neenah committee meeting Tuesday night to voice opposition to Flock cameras installed throughout the city, raising concerns about privacy, stalking, and government overreach.
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Residents lined up to share their stories and concerns about the license plate reader cameras positioned over neighborhood streets.
Neenah neighbor Christian Brunel was one of many who spoke.
"A neighborhood watch is fine, but this is an unending neighborhood watch, everywhere, at all times," Brunel said.
One woman told the committee she fears the cameras could be used as a tool for stalking.
"You have the time now to help keep myself and other survivors safe, please do the right thing by removing these cameras and in turn, removing the target from my back finally," Meg Johnson said.
Flock representatives pushed back against several concerns raised at the meeting, saying the data collected is not shared nationwide — except for a small portion of images used for internal training purposes.
"It's actually less than one percent of images that are retained for the use to train our machine learning algorithms," Flock Safety Director of Public Trust and Technology Max Weinstein said.
Neenah Police Chief Aaron Olson said the technology has helped solve dozens of cases, but acknowledged the community's frustration with the answers provided by Flock at the meeting.
"I can't say they're honest or dishonest, I hope they're honest. I think that we probably could have gotten some better answers, and we're frustrated with that," Olson said.
Olson and other city leaders say they plan to fact-check the information Flock presented at the meeting, and will make changes if necessary. Neenah's contract with Flock expires in the fall of 2028.
