The UW-Madison Police Department has a new crime-fighting tool in the neighborhood – UWPD recently installed a Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) camera at the intersection of University Bay Drive and Lake Mendota Drive.

Flock cameras have been in the news a bit recently. In the interest of transparency, UWPD recently created an informational web page to relay important information about how the system is used here at UW-Madison.

Here are some quick facts:

• The cameras are used only for investigations and crime prevention.

• The cameras capture data on vehicles, not individuals.

• Access to Flock camera data is restricted to trained and approved UWPD personnel and is only shared with other Wisconsin law enforcement agencies upon request and after evaluation and authorization.

• The system does not monitor or track individuals, conduct random surveillance, enforce traffic violations, or track vehicles for immigration enforcement.

• Flock cameras do not have facial recognition capabilities.

As an example of how useful the system can be, data from this particular camera was recently used to identify a vehicle responsible for a hit-and-run collision in the Eagle Heights neighborhood.

If you have questions about the Flock camera or any of the other advanced investigational tools being used by UWPD, please contact me.

Jeff Kirchman

University Apartments Community Police Officer

608-264-2677 | jkirchman@wisc.edu

University Apartments Community Center, Room 131