Milwaukee Police Department claims to seek community input on tech they've been secretly using for two years

The packed meeting of Milwaukee's Equal Rights Commission at Milwaukee City Hall on June 18, 2025, regarding Milwaukee Police Department's use of facial recognition technology. Photograph by Emilio De Torre.

​The Milwaukee Police Department claimed in a recent hearing that it is being transparent with the public about its plan to license facial recognition technology, but the department has been using the technology behind closed doors for more than two years.
 
MPD has been borrowing the technology from neighboring police departments.
 
Milwaukee’s Equal Rights Commission held a public hearing on June 18 regarding MPD’s proposal to acquire two licenses for facial recognition technology.
 
MPD Chief of Staff Heather Hough began her remarks by telling ERC commissioners and the packed hearing room that “Post Act 12, the Milwaukee Police Department . . . does not have to be engaged in these conversations,” but said the department wanted to take the plan to the community.
 
Hough likened the department’s use of the technology to date as sharing passwords on the streaming service Netflix. “We asked our neighbors for too many cups of sugar,” said at the hearing.
 
MPD’s use of the technology currently operates without a standard operating procedure or oversight.
 
While community members attending the ERC hearing held neon signs that stated “FRT is inherently biased,” Hough spun to a different aspect of bias.
 
As though inspired by the phrase “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” Hough said the technology is only biased when the user is biased. She insisted that the two individuals with sole access to the two licenses would not use it in a biased way.
 
MPD showed slides noting more than a dozen instances of prior use of facial recognition technology to assist in apprehending a criminal suspect. The department also shared details of at least three cases when the information led to criminal charges.
 
MPD Major Crimes Division Captain David Anderson described identification of one suspect using facial recognition technology. The results included three individuals who were a positive match rating 97%, 95% or 93%. The individual ultimately charged corresponded with the 93% match.
 
ERC Commissioner (and WJI Policy Analyst) Alexandria Staubach replied that three matches for one individual rating 97%, 95% and 93% demonstrate the real bias issue and called the technology “notoriously inaccurate,” especially for Black and brown individuals. Staubach said MPD’s example shows that the results are “inherently unreliable.”
 
ERC Vice Chair Jacqueline Cook shared Staubach’s concern and said that the facial recognition software on her phone permits her daughter to open it.
 
Hough initially disclosed MPD’s use of the technology at a Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission meeting in March. That meeting centered on MPD’s new drone program.
 
FPC Commissioner Krissie Fung had posed a hypothetical in which MPD’s drones could be updated with facial recognition technology and asked Hough how MPD would deal with software updates they could not control.
 
Hough responded then that the department was already using facial recognition technology on “a case-by-case basis,” but that the technology was a separate issue from the drones.
 
Fung attended last week’s ERC hearing and spoke in opposition to MPD’s use of facial recognition technology. Fung highlighted that MPD has been using the technology “for years” and that “MPD did not choose to be transparent until they were forced to,” referencing Hough’s comments that the department could no longer borrow licenses from partner jurisdictions and now wanted to acquire their own.
 
When asked at the ERC hearing whether MPD had formally brought their prior use to the attention of the Fire and Police Commission, FPC Executive Director Leon Todd said they had not.
 
2023 Wisconsin Act 12, mentioned by Hough as allowing MPD to purchase the facial recognition technology licenses without another body’s approval, largely gutted oversight of the MPD by the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission.
 
Nevertheless, the statute says the FPC must “conduct at least once each year a policy review of all aspects of the operations of the police and fire departments of the city.” And Milwaukee’s Common Council can reverse any MPD policy or standard operating procedure with a two-thirds majority vote.
 
While the common council has not altered any standard operating procedure since Act 12 took effect, ERC Commissioner Tony Snell shared at the hearing that several alders had in fact written to Chief of Police Jeffrery Norman opposing the department’s plan to obtain facial recognition technology.

Attendees and WJI Policy Analyst and commission member Alexandria Staubach at the Milwaukee Equal Rights Commission meeting at Milwaukee City Hall on June 18, 2025, about Milwaukee Police Department's plan to purchase facial recognition technology licenses. Photograph by Emilio De Torre.