Dane County is considering installing 26 automatic license-plate readers as the Sheriff’s Office looks to replace equipment previously supplied by Flock Safety. Four companies submitted proposals for the work: Axon Enterprises Inc., based in Scottsdale, Arizona; Chicago-based Motorola; Lucidia IT of Indianapolis; and Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Ubicquia. The replacement covers roughly $80,000 worth of equipment. County staff will review the bids before the Sheriff’s Office negotiates a contract. Any agreement would then go to the Dane County Board for approval. County Board member Keith Furman, chair of the Public Protection and Judiciary Committee, said it is not yet clear when the contract will reach the full board. County Executive Melissa Agard is expected to include funding for the readers in the county budget. Automatic license-plate readers, commonly called ALPRs, capture license plates and other vehicle characteristics at designated locations. The resulting information is stored in a cloud-based system that can be made available to law enforcement agencies outside Wisconsin, depending on a department’s participation and access settings. The proposed locations are spread across Dane County. The system would replace the Sheriff’s Office’s Flock cameras after the County Board voted in April to void the county’s agreement with the company and revoke access to its data. The decision came amid growing concern over how private surveillance companies operate inside public safety systems. Residents have questioned whether ALPR programs measurably improve safety, how long data is retained, which agencies can search it and what protections exist against tracking people who are not suspected of crimes. Those concerns have prompted a series of local contract cancellations. Monona and McFarland ended their Flock agreements after the County Board’s action. UW–Madison police ended their contract in June, Stoughton’s City Council voted to terminate its agreement in July, and Middleton ended its contract in August. Sun Prairie Police recently became the latest Dane County agency to cut ties with Flock. Police agencies in Maple Bluff, Columbus and at the State Capitol still have Flock contracts covering more than a dozen cameras, according to the information presented with the county’s vendor review. The debate has also been fueled by reports of law enforcement using ALPR networks to monitor people’s movements without clear safeguards. In one Wisconsin case this summer, Brown County deputies used Flock data to track a man suspected of traveling between Green Bay and Michigan to purchase marijuana. The county’s next decision will determine not only which company supplies the cameras but also the rules governing access, data retention and information sharing. Those policies will be central to whether the proposed replacement addresses residents’ concerns or continues the same broad surveillance model under a different vendor.