Rep. Ryan Clancy Confronts Police Violence, Surveillance With New Bill Package, “freedom From Fear”

MADISON, Wis. – Today, Rep. Ryan Clancy announced a package of bills designed to blunt the rise of law enforcement surveillance, abuse of power, and violence during the second Trump Administration. Milwaukee-area police, including the Milwaukee Police Department, have recently adopted AI-driven facial recognition technology with zero meaningful oversight.

The bill package includes:

• LRB-0354, requiring the decertification of law enforcement officials who violate basic regulations on uses of force, among other standards set by the Law Enforcement Standards Board;
• LRB-3376, a prohibition on use of facial recognition technology, a technology built on unregulated artificial intelligence already being used in Milwaukee County to share, sell, and potentially misuse people’s data;
• LRB-0423, banning the use of automatic license plate readers, unsecured technology that’s extremely vulnerable to hacking – and has already been used to monitor hundreds of thousands of vehicles in the United States without oversight;
• LRB-3386, a prohibition on law enforcement officers or agents requesting, obtaining, or receiving access to any individual’s personal data in exchange for payment or a thing of value, without a warrant;
• LRB-0430, setting a clear, common sense policy for the release of body camera footage following incidents like “officer-related deaths,” where delays give law enforcement the motive and opportunity to edit or delete footage;
• LRB-0040, a prohibition on police trainings that include content on “excited delirium,” a nonscientific, nonmedical term often used to justify police violence and other abuses of authority and;
• LRB-0265, a prohibition on notoriously dangerous and ineffective “Warrior-style training” methods which have directly led to unnecessary injury and death, in favor of aikido training focused on self-defense, deescalation, and the disarming of threats.

MPD and other law enforcement agencies have recently moved to trade data –in MPD’s case, 2.5 million mugshots for access to AI-driven facial recognition technology– despite overwhelming opposition from democratically elected local officials. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office has by its own admission installed surveillance-focused Flock cameras without any meaningful approval process or oversight from the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors.

Milwaukee-area law enforcement continues to regularly injure and kill community members, including a woman killed by an MPD squad car during a wellness check on Tuesday.

Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-19) issued the following statement:

“In this critical moment, as military forces take over cities across the United States one by one, at President Trump’s whim, we cannot continue investing more public resources and power in unaccountable law enforcement. As state legislators, we have the elected duty and authority to check government overreach In Wisconsin – that overreach is at its most dangerous when done in secret, while armed, and in cooperation with an increasingly openly fascist President.

The Milwaukee Police Department and other law enforcement agencies in the area are giddily trading the data of hundreds of thousands of people for access to technology that will let them exploit, and inevitably misuse, that same data. It’s technology that’s untested and unregulated, owned by a company called Biometrica with a history of slipshod security and loose data practices. It’s the worst kind of government and corporate excess, where the public insures the risk, while Biometrica profits.

This bill package will prevent this ongoing abuse of sensitive data, without oversight, that MPD and other law enforcement agencies have simply given themselves permission to collect and misuse. We won’t heal the damage done, or move forward, without securing the kind of basic protections we’re proposing today. These bills are a start, but an important one.”

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.