AI incident ·
Milwaukee Police Detective Allegedly Used Flock Safety License-Plate Reader 20 Times to Track Two People in Violation of Department Policy
In brief
An AI system built by Surveillance technology developers, Flock Safety and 1 other and deployed by Tehrangi Chapman, Police departments in the United States and 2 others allegedly harmed Victim three in Tehrangi Chapman investigation, Victim four in Tehrangi Chapman investigation and 2 others.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 2 reports
What happened
A Milwaukee County criminal complaint alleges that Police Detective Tehrangi Chapman used Flock Safety license-plate readers 20 times to track two people from January 2024 to January 2025, entering "test" or "training" as search reasons. The complaint says Chapman later admitted using Flock to track both people in violation of Milwaukee Police Department policy. He was charged with misconduct in public office; a separate count concerned an unauthorized GPS tracker.
Editor's notes
(1) 01/10/2024–01/03/2025: documented Flock searches of Victim Four. (2) 01/07/2025: three searches of Victim Three; the complaint does not state how the two targets were connected. (3) 02/05/2026: Victim Four contacted MPD Internal Affairs; a department audit subsequently surfaced Chapman's Flock use. (4) 05/29/2026: Chapman was interviewed and admitted policy-violating Flock use. (5) 07/08/2026: criminal complaint filed. (6) 09/23/2026, incident ID created.
Laws that address this harm
No recorded instrument yet addresses this use case where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (2)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Tehrangi Chapman Police departments in the United States Milwaukee Police Department Law enforcement
- Alleged developer
- Surveillance technology developers Flock Safety Automated license plate reader (ALPR) developers
- Alleged harmed party
- Victim three in Tehrangi Chapman investigation Victim four in Tehrangi Chapman investigation Privacy Individuals subjected to unauthorized surveillance
AI systems implicated
Surveillance technologyFlock Safety automated license plate reader systemAutomated license plate readers (ALPR)
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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Related incidents
Linked by editors or by text similarity in the source dataset.
Source record: incident #1706 on the AI Incident Database · all 2 reports