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# Menasha Pulls the Plug on Flock, Neenah Looks Ready to Follow
- URL: https://foxwatershed.com/menasha-pulls-the-plug-on-flock-neenah-looks-ready-to-follow/
- Published: 2026-09-02T02:24:08.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-02T10:06:35.000Z
- Author: Ethan Rouse
- Tags: Local Politics, Menasha, Surveillance, Municipal Boards, Neenah

Mayor Austin Hammond ordered every Flock license plate reader in the city covered by the end of the day, then said he'll ask the city council to kill the contract outright at a meeting later this month.¹ He blamed privacy, saying there's a real concern over "how the data is accessed and shared."¹ The Menasha Police Department tried bolting on extra safeguards earlier this year. It wasn't enough to keep Hammond on board.

The timing isn't exactly subtle. Two weeks ago, a judge sentenced former Menasha officer Cristian Morales to six months in jail for misconduct in office after he used the department's Flock account to track his ex-girlfriend's car five times over one week in October.³ Morales pleaded no contest. The judge rejected a plea deal that called for half that time, fined him $250, and barred him from law enforcement work or touching a Flock system again.³ He's serving the sentence now and this week lost a bid to stay out of jail while his appeal plays out.⁴

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Neenah's next in line. Police Chief Aaron Olson said Tuesday he'll recommend the city council end its Flock contract too, though he's declining interviews until the council actually votes. He wants the process kept "clean, orderly, and respectful of the Council's role," as he put it in an email to reporters.¹ Neenah residents have been raising privacy concerns about the cameras for months.²

Grand Chute got there first. The town finished swapping Flock for a rival vendor, Axon, the same day Menasha covered its cameras, months after voting in June to walk away.¹ Police Chief David Maas said Flock had left the department with security concerns and cameras that kept breaking, while Axon promised more transparency on how the data gets used.¹ Appleton ended its own Flock contract in May and shut the cameras off by the end of June. Oshkosh rescinded its contract too, joining the same wave over privacy concerns.²

Grand Chute isn't necessarily solving the problem by switching, though. The American Civil Liberties Union said this week that Flock's rivals aren't much better. Axon and Motorola run the same kind of AI-powered plate scanning, and the ACLU argued that swapping vendors "won't necessarily solve any of the privacy and other civil liberties problems" that got Flock kicked out of so many cities in the first place.⁵ Axon does at least run its data sharing on a smaller scale. In Boston's pilot program, Axon blocked officers from pulling data captured by its cameras in other cities, a real contrast to Flock's sprawling nationwide network.⁵

That narrower reach doesn't erase every concern. Axon still bundles its plate readers with Tasers, body cameras, and cloud contracts built to run for years, the kind of deal that makes it harder for a city to walk away later.⁵ The company also holds its own multimillion-dollar contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, separate from anything Flock has going.⁵ Grand Chute's Chief Maas said the switch respects residents' privacy more than Flock did. Maybe so, but there is no evidence to show they are any different than Flock. Regardless of the company behind the lens, if the goal is creating mass-collecting information, organizations like the ACLU will object to their existence and rightfully claim violations of the 4th amendment.⁶

#### Sources & Credits

📸 [User:Royalbroil](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Menasha%5Ftown%5FTownhall.jpg?ref=foxwatershed.com), [CC BY-SA 2.5](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5?ref=foxwatershed.com), via Wikimedia Commons

1. [https://fox11online.com/news/local/menasha-mayor-calls-to-terminate-flock-contract-neenah-seeking-similar-actions](https://fox11online.com/news/local/menasha-mayor-calls-to-terminate-flock-contract-neenah-seeking-similar-actions?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [https://www.nbc26.com/news/local-news/in-your-neighborhood/menasha/2-more-fox-valley-cities-move-to-drop-flock-cameras-over-privacy-concerns](https://www.nbc26.com/news/local-news/in-your-neighborhood/menasha/2-more-fox-valley-cities-move-to-drop-flock-cameras-over-privacy-concerns?ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [https://wtaq.com/2026/08/17/judge-rejects-plea-deal-gives-ex-menasha-officer-6-months-for-tracking-ex-with-flock/](https://wtaq.com/2026/08/17/judge-rejects-plea-deal-gives-ex-menasha-officer-6-months-for-tracking-ex-with-flock/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [https://fox11online.com/news/local/former-officer-denied-bid-to-stay-out-of-jail-during-appeal-of-misconduct-verdict](https://fox11online.com/news/local/former-officer-denied-bid-to-stay-out-of-jail-during-appeal-of-misconduct-verdict?ref=foxwatershed.com)
5. [https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/27/business/axon-motorola-boston-flock/](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/27/business/axon-motorola-boston-flock/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
6. [https://epic.org/vehicle-fingerprinting-through-pervasive-camera-surveillance-likely-violates-fourth-amendment-court-finds/](https://epic.org/vehicle-fingerprinting-through-pervasive-camera-surveillance-likely-violates-fourth-amendment-court-finds/?ref=foxwatershed.com)