The city’s Common Council approved the department’s purchase of Flock Safety cameras, to be installed at undetermined locations, in an 8-1 vote on Tuesday evening. Flock cameras already are installed in Reedsburg, Lake Delton and throughout Sauk County, as the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office uses them, along with police departments in the other two municipalities.
No taxpayer funding is needed for the one-year pilot program; fundraising of just more than $20,000 is covering the cost. There will be six cameras, with five located in fixed locations throughout the city, likely on the edges, according to Baraboo Police Chief Justin Carloni. The remaining camera will be used in different locations, particularly at special events.
Carloni said during Tuesday’s meeting that the department will seek grant funding for continued Flock operation past 2026, adding that he does not plan on attempting to fit it into the city budget in the coming years.
The cameras and their software will be networked with the neighboring municipalities that use Flock. Those departments would be notified if a vehicle connected with a crime in Baraboo entered those areas, and vice versa. Information and footage are only shared with other law enforcement agencies, Carloni said.
“This is a tool that will help my law enforcement officers to be safe and it will also aid the community, I believe, in helping to solve crimes going forward,” Carloni said. As an example, he said Flock cameras helped track his car when it was stolen from him in Milwaukee, where he worked for 24 years within the city’s police department. “It works in a multitude of ways.”
District 1 Ald. David Olson cast the lone vote against installing the plate reader cameras in Baraboo. He is concerned that the cameras represent an invasion of privacy for residents and travelers through Baraboo and said that data from the cameras could be used to help federal agencies, particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with apprehensions of suspected undocumented immigrants.
“If you scratch the surface on these Flock cameras just a little bit, it’s being widely reported that they are being used, for example, by ICE to support their operations,” Olson said at the meeting.
Baraboo Police would not be required to provide network information to ICE or any other agency if they chose not to, Carloni said, but Baraboo Police could not dictate whether data from other municipalities could be shared with ICE.
“I will not support the deployment of these cameras in our community for that reason,” Olson said.
Sauk County Sheriff’s Office has an intergovernmental agreement with ICE for housing undocumented immigrants that went into effect on April 1, which was a cause for concern for Olson.
Since then, the county has housed 68 undocumented individuals in its jail. Costs surrounding those detentions are reimbursed by the federal government.
“The revenue generated by contract housing helps to reduce our reliance on tax levy dollars, to the benefit of taxpayers,” county Sheriff Chip Meister said. “This revenue ensures that the Sheriff’s Office continues to provide a high level of law enforcement services to the citizens of Sauk County.”
Meister added that ICE-related bookings have not interfered with the jail’s ability to house people charged with crimes in Sauk County and ICE determines who is housed at Sauk County Jail.
Carloni said that Flock cameras and other license plate readers do not track individuals in a similar manner to a GPS system but take photos and log their time and location in a database for law enforcement to access. He added that he has not seen or heard instances of Flock camera data being used to assist ICE.
Flock Safety data is monitored through standards established through Wisconsin’s Law Enforcement Standards Board, Carloni added, including officers needing a case number to access the data. The database would likely not be accessed for minor infractions, such as speeding citations, but for more serious crimes in the area, the chief said.
Use of Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers has largely been ruled constitutional in court cases in Wisconsin and nationwide, according to Sauk County District Attorney Michael Albrecht.
“I am confident the City of Baraboo would be well served by the implementation of this technology, as have other jurisdictions in Sauk County,” Albrecht wrote in a letter supporting Baraboo’s Flock pilot program.
Reedsburg and Lake Delton installed Flock cameras in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
“Flock Safety cameras have assisted the Reedsburg Police Department in hundreds of investigations over the last 2.5 years since their deployment to include Auto Thefts, Burglaries, Thefts, Missing Persons, Assaults and many more,” Reedsburg Police Chief Patrick Cummings wrote in his letter supporting Baraboo plate readers.
Flock cameras instantly worked to Lake Delton’s advantage, according to village Police Chief Eric Thunberg, who wrote in his support letter that a suspect wanted for an infant homicide in 2022 in the village was arrested in 2023 after a plate reader camera found his vehicle in Colorado.
The city’s Public Safety Committee, of which Olson is a member with District 6 Ald. John Ellington and District 9 Ald. Brett Topham, decided to forward the program to the Common Council without a recommendation for or against it.
Prior to its approval, a city resident and Baraboo Police Det. Sgt. Jeff Shimon spoke in support of the Flock Safety program.
“I’m a little surprised that this is even an issue,” resident Robert Hanes said, adding that the cost for the cameras’ first year is covered by donations and that county law enforcement supports and uses the system.
Shimon said that the Flock System helps law enforcement improve its job performance and that cell phones track people more than the Flock cameras do.
© 2025 WiscNews. Visit www.wiscnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
