TL;DR: The Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission meets tonight, February 5, 2026, to discuss and potentially approve a facial recognition policy for the Milwaukee Police Department. The department wants to hand 2.5 million mugshots to Biometrica, a private surveillance company, in exchange for free access to their facial recognition system. 73% of city council members oppose the deal. 804 residents signed a petition against it. The Equal Rights Commission voted unanimously against it. Every community member who testified at the April 2025 hearing opposed it. But Wisconsin's Act 12 gives Police Chief Jeffrey Norman the power to adopt it anyway. Tonight is the test.
What Happens Tonight
The Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission meets at 6 p.m. in City Hall Room 301-B. On the agenda: a potential new policy governing facial recognition use by MPD.
This isn't a snap decision. This meeting is the result of nearly a year of public hearings, community organizing, petition drives, and political maneuvering. The police department first floated the Biometrica deal in April 2025. Ten months later, the city still hasn't resolved whether its cops should be able to scan your face.
The meeting will be livestreamed. Public comments are accepted in person or by email to [email protected] with 24 hours advance notice.
The Deal That Won't Die
Here's the trade MPD proposed: hand Biometrica your entire mugshot database (2.5 million booking photos going back years) and in return, MPD gets two free search licenses for Biometrica's facial recognition system. One goes to the criminal investigations unit. The other goes to the Southeastern Wisconsin Threat Analysis Center, a DHS fusion center.
Read that last part again. One of the two licenses goes straight to a federal fusion center.
Additional licenses would cost $12,000 each. But the real currency is the mugshots themselves. Biometrica gets millions of faces to train and improve their product, then sells that improved product to police departments nationwide.
What happens to your mugshot after Biometrica has it? Wisconsin has no biometric privacy law like Illinois' BIPA. No consent requirement. No deletion rights. No notice to the 2.5 million people whose faces become a private company's commodity.
And remember: mugshots include everyone who's been arrested, not just people convicted. People found not guilty. People whose charges were dropped. People who were never charged at all. Their faces would be traded to a surveillance company forever.
The Opposition Is Overwhelming, On Paper
The numbers paint a clear picture:
- 11 of 15 aldermen signed a letter opposing facial recognition in May 2025
- 804 community members signed a petition against the technology
- 29 of 29 community members who testified at the April 2025 commission hearing opposed it
- Unanimous vote by the Equal Rights Commission against adoption
- 19 community organizations formally opposed
The ACLU of Wisconsin has been sounding the alarm for months. The League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County opposes it. Alderman Marina Dimitrijevic, who circulated the opposition letter, says support for blocking the technology may have grown since May, partly because of "the atmosphere surrounding immigration enforcement."
That's a polite way of saying: with ICE raids escalating nationwide, handing mugshot data to a private company that could share it with anyone feels riskier than ever.
The Act 12 Problem
Here's why all that opposition might not matter.
Wisconsin's Act 12 gave Milwaukee's police chief the authority to set department policy. Chief Jeffrey Norman can adopt facial recognition without asking anyone's permission. The Common Council can only respond after the fact, and they need a two-thirds vote (10 of 15 members) to override it.
They've got 11 letter signatures. But a letter isn't a vote. When it comes time to actually override the chief, will all 11 hold firm?
And there's a timing problem. The council can't act until MPD formally drafts a Standard Operating Procedure. By the time that happens, the technology could already be in use. Your mugshot could already be in Biometrica's database. Unscrambling that egg is a lot harder than preventing it.
Who Is Biometrica?
Biometrica is a private data analytics and facial recognition company. They've told the city they "do not do any work in or with immigration enforcement" and that their system doesn't contain immigration records.
Critics aren't reassured. As a senior EPIC counsel put it: Milwaukee would "offer millions of mugshots that most likely are disproportionately of people of color in order to train a surveillance technology that will likely be used disproportionately on people of color."
The company hasn't publicly explained what it plans to do with 2.5 million faces. When Gizmodo asked, Biometrica didn't respond. What we know: the mugshots will "likely" be used to train their facial recognition algorithms, which are then sold to law enforcement agencies across the country.
Your Milwaukee booking photo could end up running against probe images in cities you've never visited.
The Accuracy Problem No One Can Solve
Facial recognition gets it wrong. And it gets it wrong in a pattern.
The ACLU of Wisconsin's Amanda Merkwae put it plainly: "Nearly every publicly known wrongful arrest due to police reliance on an incorrect result has been of a Black person."
In a city where police-community relations are already strained, adding a technology with documented racial bias isn't a trust-building exercise. It's a liability.
MPD has argued the technology "helped generate leads in serious crimes, including homicides." But generating leads and being accurate are different things. A lead based on a false match doesn't solve a crime. It derails an investigation while violating an innocent person's rights.
The ICE Shadow
This vote doesn't happen in a vacuum. It comes during the largest expansion of immigration enforcement surveillance in U.S. history.
DHS now operates a 1.2 billion face image database through its Mobile Fortify app. ICE has been using facial recognition to monitor protesters. Federal agencies are actively seeking access to local law enforcement data, as the Flock Safety rebellion in Mountain View and other cities has shown.
Biometrica says it doesn't work with immigration enforcement. But one of the two free licenses goes to a DHS fusion center. And once mugshot data leaves MPD's control, there are no guaranteed legal barriers preventing it from eventually flowing to federal agencies.
Alderman Dimitrijevic gets it. Her opposition has only hardened as ICE raids escalate.
What to Watch For Tonight
Policy vs. Discussion
Is the commission voting on an actual policy tonight, or just "discussing" one? A vote means things move fast. A discussion means more delay, which may favor opponents who need time to organize a formal council override.
Biometrica Specifics
Does MPD present a formal agreement with Biometrica? What are the terms? Is there any data protection language? Any limitations on what Biometrica can do with the mugshots?
Federal Access Language
Does the proposed policy address the DHS fusion center license? Are there restrictions on sharing facial recognition results with federal agencies? If not, assume it's open season.
CCOPS Ordinance
Do any council members announce movement on a Community Control Over Police Surveillance ordinance? This would require council approval for any future surveillance technology: the strongest possible safeguard.
What's Really at Stake
Tonight isn't just about Milwaukee. Cities nationwide are watching.
If community opposition (804 petition signatures, 11 of 15 aldermen, a unanimous Equal Rights Commission vote, 29 of 29 public testimonies against) can stop a police department from adopting facial recognition, that's a template for every city facing the same fight.
If it can't, if all that organized resistance gets steamrolled by a police chief with Act 12 authority and a company offering "free" surveillance in exchange for biometric data, that's a different lesson entirely.
The Milwaukee Police Department has been quietly borrowing facial recognition access from suburban departments while this debate plays out. The technology is already in use. The question is whether it becomes official policy, with 2.5 million faces as the price of admission.
6 p.m. City Hall. Room 301-B. The livestream will tell us which direction this goes.
References
- Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service - Fire and Police Commission and MPD to discuss facial recognition technology policy Thursday (February 2, 2026)
- Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement - Oppose Facial Recognition Technology at City Hall Meeting (February 4, 2026)
- Wisconsin Public Radio - Milwaukee police might trade 2.5M mugshots for facial recognition technology (2025)
- Gizmodo - Milwaukee Police Propose Trading Millions of Mugshots for Free Facial Recognition Access (2025)
- ACLU of Wisconsin - Calls on Milwaukee County Sheriff to Decline Adoption of Facial Recognition Technology (June 2025)
- Urban Milwaukee - Milwaukee County Facial Recognition Resolution Passes (June 2025)