Sept 22 speech to the city council
Mayor, Council, thank you for your service and for being here tonight.
My message today is about another case of Rolling Meadows cameras being used for stalking, this time across state lines in Milwaukee.
According to reporting by the Wisconsin Examiner and a criminal complaint filed by the Milwaukee district attorney’s office, Josue Ayala conducted over a hundred searches of two peoples license plates. The two people were in a relationship and later broke up. After the break up, officer Ayala began dating one of the victims and continued using Flock to track the victim while they dated.
The complaint states that Ayala was on duty when he conducted the searches and he pleaded guilty to misconduct. When officers use Flock, they need to put in a reason for the search. Ayala used “investigation” in order to conduct the unlawful searches. This is also the most common search reason used by Rolling Meadows officers according to haveibeenflocked.com. This effectively prevents any meaningful review or audit.
Since I’m standing here telling you this, you already know that Alaya searched Rolling Meadows’ cameras, as shown in our audit logs.
Then this story gets weird.
According to the criminal complaint reported by Urban Milwaukee, Milwaukee Police Detective Tehrangi Chapman, a detective with the internal affairs division, was assigned to investigate Alaya.
While Chapman was investigating that misconduct, prosecutors allege that Chapman himself used Flock for personal tracking. He allegedly searched for the vehicles of two people approximately 20 times between January 2024 and January 2025, using explanations such as “training” and “test.” Again, effectively un-auditable reasons. Chapman has been charged with felony misconduct and misdemeanor misuse of a GPS device.
Rolling Meadows not only violated its own policy in allowing these searches, it also did not document the out-of-state requests as required by Illinois law. Any Milwaukee request for access to Illinois ALPR information should have created a documented record showing who requested the information, why it was requested, and whether the request complied with the law. This is not only Rolling Meadows policy, but also State law.
Without those records, Rolling Meadows cannot show residents that Milwaukee’s searches were reviewed. It cannot show that they were approved. And it cannot show that the searches were limited to legitimate law-enforcement purposes.
The city has a duty to protect residents from this kind of misuse. It also has a duty to protect taxpayers from the liability created when public surveillance systems are used to stalk people.
We’ve been speaking with our state and national representatives and they are watching this meeting and what this council does. Dick Durbin is holding a hearing on ALPRs in the Senate tomorrow.
One of the messages we’re sending them is to not let Flock’s lobbyists let councils like this one off the hook by removing FOIA in new ALPR legislation. FOIA allowed Ayala’s victims to uncover their alleged stalker. In Rolling Meadows, FOIA has helped us show a repeated pattern of what appears to be lying by the city about the placement, review policy and legality of its use of Flock to residents and state law makers. FOIA has allowed us to show a repeated pattern of stalking cases Rolling Meadows appears to have supported in Holiday Hills, Joliet and Milwaukee. And FOIA has allowed us to show twice now that the City has appeared to have violated the State ALPR law. Once in supporting immigration enforcement and a second today in undocumented out-of-state use.
Another message we’re sending is that there need to be stiffer consequences for those who allow these systems to be abused – especially when a repeated pattern is established and ignored.
When Rolling Meadows dismisses bad-apple after bad-apple after bad-apple the blame shifts from the apples using the system to those authorizing and administering the rotten ALPR system itself.
Residents should not have to discover these abuses one victim at a time. The council must end the use of ALPR cameras.
Thank you.