Milwaukee Police Chief to ban department’s use of facial recognition technology

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Following the latest round of criticism over Milwaukee Police Department’s effort to acquire its own contract with a facial recognition technology vendor, Chief Jeffrey Norman is issuing a moratorium on the department’s use of the technology, 12 News has learned.”Despite our belief that this is useful technology to assist in generating leads for apprehending violent criminals, we recognize that the public trust is far more valuable,” an internal department memo obtained by 12 News said.Facial recognition technology takes one image and compares the image to a database of photos of known individuals to help identify the person in the original image. Milwaukee Police have been outsourcing facial recognition requests to neighboring police agencies, who already have their own FRT contract, to assist in Milwaukee Police investigations. During previous Fire and Police Commission meetings, department officials shared how the assistance from the outside agencies helped identify and arrest suspects in various violent crimes.In Spring 2025, the department officials announced plans to partner with tech company Biometrica for its FRT software. The officials said it would provide access to 2.5 million booking photos and jail records, in exchange for years of access to Biometrica’s service.”MPD will not proceed with the acquisition of any facial recognition software at this time,” the internal memo added.During a Fire and Police Commission meeting on Thursday, Milwaukee residents and others spent 3 hours opposing the use of the technology, in part, because it has been the subject of extensive research which found the software can often produce false positives, particularly in cases involving people of color.In May 2025, a 12 News Investigates special report documented examined how department officials were weighing the risk and benefits of the technology.Chief Norman, who attended Thursday’s meeting virtually, said the department had not entered into any contract for…

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