Where we're fighting

Records obtained from the Ashland County Sheriff's Office, August 17, 2026. The county produced its Flock sharing list, its camera policy, its contract, and its full network audit log.

The sharing list is the plainest document in the whole campaign. It is the county's own export, and it shows 754 law enforcement agencies across 38 states holding access to Ashland County's camera network. 274 of those agencies also share their own networks back with Ashland County. Wisconsin is the largest single share at 165 agencies, then Illinois at 81 and Michigan at 68.

The county has one camera. It costs $3,000 a year. We have found no record of a public vote on any of it.

The audit log is the other half. Ashland County has one camera, nationwide search is turned on, and the county's own audit log for that account records 4.2 million searches by 3,856 agencies in 47 states since January. Of those searches, the Sheriff's Office ran 107 itself. The reasons it gave are ordinary local work, including nine welfare checks and a copper theft out of Gogebic.

Two things that log does not say, and we will not claim it does. It does not say whether any of those searches returned a read from the camera at 13 and 77. The Chief Deputy told us plainly: the audit does not say if the camera returned anything. And the officer names, plate numbers and case numbers are redacted, so nothing in it can show whether any individual officer misused it. We are not going to pretend otherwise.

The contract was set to renew automatically on September 10, 2026. Chief Deputy Dave Dawson, in writing: "It is handled administratively within the Sheriff's Office and it renews automatically." We asked whether the county gave notice to stop it. His answer: "No notice was given. As far stepping away from the contract, that would have to be run through the legal department."

The order form Dawson signed on March 3, 2025 sets the initial term at 12 months and the renewal term at 24, and it requires notice of non-renewal at least thirty days before the term ends. Thirty days before September 10 was August 11. So this was never a one-year rollover. That August 11 deadline passed with no notice given, and September 10 has now passed as well. Unless something happened that the county has not told us about, Ashland County is in for two more years, and the way out runs through the county legal department.

Records obtained from the Bayfield County Sheriff, July 29, 2026. The county's Flock program runs on three separate agreements, not one. The signed order forms and the invoices add up to about $17,500 a year. Together those three agreements cover six license plate readers and two solar video cameras. The Sheriff signed the video-camera agreement in October 2025, and the order form describes the cameras as an addition to an existing plate-reader install. We have asked the county when they were installed and do not yet have that answer. I have not found any record of a public vote on any of the three.

A plate reader photographs a car and reads the plate. A video camera watches a place, and the people in it. Flock's own website describes a "Guardian Mode" that "automatically detects and locates people and vehicles in the camera's field of view," and under a heading reading "Follow Movements Automatically" says it will "identify people and vehicles, zooming in for identifying details."

In fairness to Flock: the company says that feature "captures fixed points in time, not continuous tracking," and it states plainly that its cameras do not use facial recognition. We have seen nothing to contradict that. Our objection is not that the county bought something sinister. It is that a camera that watches people is a different decision than a camera that reads plates, and we have found no record that either decision was ever put to the public.

Bayfield's plate readers are not up for renewal this fall. The invoices show a 60-month term on the original agreement and a 48-month term on the expansion, which run into 2028 and 2029. Anyone telling you there is a Bayfield deadline in September has it confused with Ashland County. The Bayfield lever is the county budget, not a contract clock.