This is a records notice, not an analysis. It states what was asked, what was given and when, and what was recorded and when. Analysis is a separate post.
The Green Bay Police Department runs Flock Safety license plate readers. Its Flock transparency portal lists “immigration enforcement” among the system’s prohibited uses. The same page lists the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) among the hotlist sources the cameras alert on, but it does not say which NCIC files. One of those files, the Immigration Violator file, is populated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On August 25, 2026 I filed an open records request with the department under Wisconsin’s Public Records Law, Wis. Stat. §§ 19.31–19.39, asking which files its system is configured to use.
The timeline#
- August 25, 2026. I sent the open records request to the city’s records address.
- August 31. The city logs this as the date the Law Department received it.
- September 28. The City of Green Bay Law Department responded, reference ORR 456-2026.
Thirty-four days passed from request to response. The city charged no fee.
What was asked#
The request had four items. In short:
- A record sufficient to show which NCIC files or hotlist categories the department’s Flock system is configured to receive alerts from, such as an export or screen capture of the configuration page, including whether the Immigration Violator file is enabled.
- Any record of changes to that configuration since January 1, 2024.
- Any written policy, directive, or configuration documentation implementing the prohibited uses listed on the portal, including how the immigration-enforcement prohibition is enforced in the system’s configuration or in audits.
- If the Immigration Violator file has been enabled at any time since January 1, 2024, a record of the number of alerts it generated.
It also asked for written confirmation, item by item, where no record exists. The full text is in the file below.
What was given on September 28#
The response is an email from the City of Green Bay Law Department, with no attachment. It gave the following and nothing else.
- Items 1, 2, and 4: no records. “The Green Bay Police Department does not generate the reports or logs that were requested.” The letter cites Journal Times, 2015 WI 56, ¶ 55, and State ex rel. Zinngrabe v. School District of Sevastopol, 146 Wis. 2d 629 (Ct. App. 1988), for the rule that a custodian is not required to create a record or answer questions about a topic, only to provide existing records.
- A statement on item 4. The letter adds that “item 4 has never been enabled in Flock for the Green Bay Police Department.” I read that as a statement that the NCIC Immigration Violator file has never been enabled in the department’s system.
- Item 3: granted. The letter identifies the transparency portal as the responsive record, by its web address. It attached no document and named none.
The city withheld nothing and redacted nothing. The letter closes with the statutory notice that the determination is subject to review by mandamus under Wis. Stat. § 19.37(1) or on application to the Attorney General or District Attorney.
What I recorded, by date#
August 5, 2026. Before the request, I printed the portal from a browser: the August print. It listed immigration enforcement among the prohibited uses. It named three hotlist sources, NCIC, NCMEC Amber Alert, and Wisconsin DOJ, where NCMEC is the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and DOJ is the state Department of Justice. It gave thirty-day retention. It listed three agencies in the sharing network: the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, the De Pere Police Department, and the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay Police Department.
September 28, 2026. The response above. I did not capture the portal that day.
October 24, 2026. I printed the portal again: the October print. Against the August print the policy text is unchanged: the prohibited uses, the hotlist sources, the retention period, and the access and hotlist policies read the same. One line changed: the sharing list gained the Hobart-Lawrence Police Department. The thirty-day usage counters differ. The page carries a “Last updated” line reading October 23, 2026. The August print shows no such line.
The same day, I recorded the documents listed on the department’s policy manual page, which the portal’s “More Info” link points to:
- Policy 424, Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR), posted as May 2026.
- A drafted revision of Policy 424, marked draft and dated September 2026.
- The 2025 ALPR annual audit, a memorandum dated May 8, 2026.
- A monthly ALPR report, compiled October 1, 2026.
- The Flock Safety agreement, dated 2025.
- The full policy manual, as of August 2026.
The response identified none of these.
The correspondence#
The request as sent and the city’s response as received, with mail transport headers removed: correspondence.txt.
Corrections are welcome at contact@peopleoverprivilege.com.