Ireport News
A place for public safety updates, department stories, and community reporting resources. Follow along as we share Ireport news, platform improvements, and ideas that help citizens and public departments stay better connected.
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Flock Cameras: Surveillance State or Public Safety?
Wesley Hartkemeyer // SEPTEMBER 17, 2026
When a web of cameras can track your movement across the country, are citizens' rights to privacy in public still intact? With the recent debate surrounding Flock cameras, societal norms and expectations are struggling to keep pace with ubiquitous technological advancement. The key question is becoming harder to ignore, what is an acceptable amount of surveillance in the name of keeping communities safe?Ireport puts the citizen first. Increasing a community's ability to communicate with local law enforcement has always been at the core of what makes our system unique, and today we find ourselves in the middle of a larger conversation about citizen sovereignty, technology, and surveillance.Current UsageFounded in 2017, Flock Safety now operates about 120,000 AI-powered cameras across 49 states.¹As a police officer with more than a decade in the field, my personal experience with Flock cameras has been limited. The cameras positioned throughout Dane County would occasionally notify our department of nearby vehicles associated with stolen autos, AMBER Alerts, or missing persons. From an officer perspective, my initial impression is that Flock cameras are an excellent investigative tool. But any privilege law enforcement has access to only maintains legitimacy if it is used responsibly and for legitimate law enforcement purposes.What makes Flock so effective is also what makes misuse so concerning. A master key may make perfect sense in an emergency. That does not mean we stop asking who has it, when it can be used, and what doors it opens. The people always must remain more important than the institution.Citizens are increasingly exhausted by technologies that promise convenience or safety, only to become more intrusive over time. We need to embrace powerful technology while building transparency into the system from the beginning. Better technology should not require surrendering more control to the institutions using it. Identifying the Fear of Flock Cameras There are two prevailing rationales surrounding Flock. One side argues there is no expectation of privacy while in public. The other believes these systems represent another step toward a surveillance state.Before cameras, databases, and location data could be connected at national scale, the idea that there was little expectation of privacy in public made sense. An officer can see your vehicle on a roadway. Your license plate is visible. In many circumstances, that plate can be lawfully checked. But there is a meaningful difference between an officer observing a vehicle and a network capable of recording and searching where that vehicle has traveled over time.Thousands of cameras linked databases, broader access, longer retention, and technology capable of building a picture of someone's movements create a much different level of government visibility than anything previous generations had to consider.A surveillance state does not arrive all at once. It grows through reasonable decisions made one at a time. Another camera. Another database. Another integration. Another agency with access.Another reason to retain the information longer. Eventually, the infrastructure exists whether society ever clearly agreed to it or not. And this does not even account for the existing wave of artificial intelligence. The concern can soon extend beyond what these systems can record to what they can infer from everything they see.This conversation cannot simply be dismissed with, "You have no privacy in public."Another common response is that our cell phones already track us. But there is another critical difference. Citizens choose whether to own a smartphone, which applications to use, what permissions to grant, and whether to carry that device at all. A government surveillance network offers no comparable choice. You cannot opt out of driving past a camera mounted over a public roadway. There is a meaningful difference between choosing to carry technology that can track you and having government infrastructure built to do it regardless.Florida recently moved to remove license plate readers from state highway rights-of-way, citing concerns surrounding privacy, misuse, and surveillance.That is important because this is not an anti-police argument in the slightest. You can strongly support law enforcement, recognize the investigative value of Flock, and still believe there should be clear limits on how much surveillance government is allowed to build.Ireport is at the Intersection of Citizen-First TechnologyWhen did we stop trusting people to participate in public safety and start outsourcing that responsibility to machines? Ireport offers a different approach built around community collaboration. Every report submitted to local law enforcement begins with a real citizen.A person sees something. A neighbor knows something. A business owner notices something. Someone has information that could matter to police. Instead of relying on technology to continuously observe the public, Ireport uses technology to give the public a better way to communicate with law enforcement. This distinction matters because ownership encourages responsibility, while concentrated control invites resistance.Flock uses technology to gather more information about citizens. Ireport uses technology to give citizens more agency in public safety.We know Flock cameras can help keep cities safe, but a society should be very careful when safety begins requiring the surrender of liberty as its price.So can we embrace the obvious benefits of technological advancement without slowly surrendering the privacy and sovereignty of the people we are supposed to serve.Public safety and civil liberty do not have to work against each other.Technology should help strengthen both.That means taking the best parts of technological advancement, putting the citizen first, and reimagining what public safety can be.Footnote:¹ Reuters, “Florida bans highway license-plate readers as backlash over surveillance spreads,” September 3, 2026.Learn more about Ireport and see how it can benefit your community. Contact us at 715-828-5543 or info@ireport.us to schedule a demo and discuss how Ireport can support your department.
2 days
A Day in the Passenger Seat
Nicholas Uthe // JULY 01, 2026
Many citizens do not understand police work because they rarely see it up close. The job can feel unfamiliar and intimidating. These observations are valid given officers have ranks, protocol, military-grade gear, firearms and culture that most people only encounter during stressful moments. This profession is vastly different from most careers making it naturally unrelatable to many. Without even mentioning that last traffic ticket you might have received, the distance and unrelatability of officers alone lays the foundation for adverse perspectives. At Ireport, we’re all about connecting communities with public departments. So, we decided to jump in the passenger set of the squad car, to experience the day in the life of a Madison, Wisconsin Patrol Officer, Wesley Hartkemeyer. The purpose of this story is to shine a light on the realities of the job and hopefully help our audience find more understanding. The first thing I noticed were Wesley’s unconventional hours. Wesley was working first shift from 6:00am to 2:00pm. I joined him mid shift at 10:00am, after filling out the ride along paperwork.We started inside the north precinct. I met command staff, toured the station, saw the locker room, armory, and roll call meeting room. The environment was formal, but not unlike other commercial offices. Still, from a citizen perspective, I can understand why the protocol, uniforms, and structure feels foreign.Then the radio broke the calm. Call #1: Narcotics Search Warrant“We have a narcotics task force requesting assistance at twelve-zero-two East Washington, the Lakeview Apartments.”We rushed to the location and arrived just after SWAT had executed the search warrant. One juvenile male was being detained. During a light rainfall, we witnessed SWAT members moving around the scene with rifles and calm precision. In contrast, the juvenile was in the middle of a tender yet chaotic, and potentially life altering situation. The first call of the day set the tone and immediately showed the tension of patrol work: professional control on one side, a young suspect in distress on the other. Call #2: Check PersonAlmost consecutively to the first call the radio sounds again.“We have a check person request at seven-four-one North Point Drive, the Harbor View Apartments. Caller is reporting that he heard knocking on his shared apartment wall and is expressing concern for his neighbor's welfare.”We arrived at an older apartment complex. An elderly man met us in the grass, energized but incoherent. He walked us to his neighbor’s door.We knocked. No answer. We knocked again. Still nothing.As we were leaving, the neighbor opened his sliding door near where we had parked. He was calm, coherent, and completely fine. He said he had not been knocking on the walls.It was an unfounded call. No crime. No emergency. Only time, attention, and patrol resources spent sorting out a situation that went nowhere. Call #3: BOLO Stop The radio sounded again without pause. “We have a BOLO (be on the lookout) stop in progress at South Park Street and Badger Road. Central four-one is out with the suspect matching the description from the earlier retail theft of $150 dollars from the Kwik Trip on Regent Street. Central four-two is requested to respond to the location to assist as the secondary squad."We arrived as the secondary squad and the primary officer already had the suspect detained.The man appeared unhoused and under the influence. When asked if he had been at the Kwik Trip, he denied it.The officer pressed him.“I’m going to give you one more chance to tell the truth. We have you on camera. Did you take one hundred and fifty dollars out of a wallet and throw the empty wallet back into the bathroom stall?”After a few more questions, the man confessed. He pulled out his wallet and handed over about a hundred dollars in crumpled cash. The officer placed it into an evidence bag.On paper, it was clean police work: suspect identified, confession secured, stolen money recovered.In person, it felt heavier. We were watching a man with almost nothing hand over the last dollars he had.Call #4: Warrant Surrender One call after another.“We have a warrant surrender at twelve-sixteen Spaight Street. A female caller at her residence states she has an active arrest warrant for a domestic restraining order violation and wishes to turn herself in to officers. Central four-one is requested to respond to the location to contact the subject and verify the warrant."When we arrived, an older man flagged us down and led us to the apartment. The woman stepped outside and asked if she could make a statement before being taken into custody.At first, it sounded like a routine warrant pickup. Then the story changed.The woman said the man who held the restraining order against her had convinced her the court-ordered timeframe had expired. She claimed he pulled her back into contact and then used the violation against her.While she spoke with the primary officer, the man who met us outside pulled Wesley aside. He explained that everyone had been on the lake drinking the day before. Later that night, the boyfriend allegedly assaulted the woman, grabbed her by the hair, slammed her head into a garage door, pulled a knife, and threatened her life.The man witnessed it, but said he felt powerless to intervene because he was unhoused and relied on the woman and his daughter for a place to sleep.What started as a simple warrant service turned into a domestic violence investigation. Wesley and his partner could have treated it as a pickup and moved on. Instead, they stayed, asked questions, and uncovered a much larger situation.Now they had an arrest to complete and a complex domestic abuse report to write.We transported the woman downtown to the Dane County Jail. The intake lobby was a revolving door of inmates being transferred and newly arrested people being processed.Then the ride-along came full circle.Sitting in a plastic chair, almost fully processed and waiting for a cell, was the same teenager from the narcotics arrest at the beginning of the day.Ride Along ThoughtsBy patrol standards, this was a relatively good day.No one ran. The calls were uncomfortable, sad, and revealing, but they were still the kind of calls an officer can document and move on from. The shift before mine, Wesley had been called to a knife fight. He had to apprehend someone with deep gashes across his face and neck, covered in blood, then collect the knife, check it into evidence, and keep going. This is what most citizens do not fully understand about patrol work. An officer doesn’t really know what kind of day he is walking into. It could be a retail theft stop, a knife fight, or something worse. The job lives inside of that uncertainty. From the outside, police work can feel unfamiliar and intimidating. From inside the squad car, it’s more human and more complicated. We experienced some unfounded calls, and we experienced some conflicting calls. Everyday officers like Wesley are balancing law, emotion, discretion, danger, paperwork, and professionalism, often all within the same hour.This ride-along showcased first-hand how the job is heavier, stranger, and more emotionally complex than most people realize. Fortunately, anyone can apply for a ride-along. Whether you have strong opinions about the police, or have never thought much about the job at all, I would strongly recommend spending a shift in the passenger seat. Much of what makes the job appear controversial is that most citizens have never seen it closely enough to understand it.All call locations referenced in this article have been fictionalized for privacy and safety.Learn more about Ireport and see how it can benefit your community. Contact us at 715-828-5543 or info@ireport.us to schedule a demo and discuss how Ireport can support your department.
3 months
Trust the Badge Podcast: How Ireport Is Helping Police Departments Modernize Non-Emergency Reporting
Wesley Hartkemeyer // JUNE 19, 2026
In Episode 26 of the Trust the Badge Podcast, Officer Wesley Hartkemeyer, a Wisconsin police officer and co-founder of Ireport, joins the show to discuss the future of non-emergency police reporting and the growing role of technology in modern law enforcement.Wesley explains how his experience as a patrol officer shaped the idea behind Ireport, a self-reporting platform designed to help citizens submit non-emergency police reports, tips, photos, videos, and related information directly to their local police department. After seeing how many routine calls for service continued to pull officers away from higher-priority work, Wesley came to a simple conclusion: “There has to be a better way to do this.”Built from the patrol perspective, Ireport helps reduce front-end reporting work, improve communication, and give officers more time for proactive policing, community engagement, training, and follow-up when it is actually needed.The conversation also explores one of the major challenges facing police departments today: officers are being asked to do more with fewer resources. Between non-emergency calls, report writing, follow-up, staffing shortages, officer burnout, and declining public trust, departments need practical law enforcement technology that supports both officers and the communities they serve.Ireport is presented as a modern police reporting software solution that can help departments streamline low-priority and non-emergency submissions without replacing officer judgment or removing human follow-up. Instead, the goal is to give patrol officers a clearer starting point, reduce unnecessary workload, and create a more accessible reporting option for citizens.Wesley also discusses Ireport’s long-term vision: becoming a trusted standard for self-reporting in police departments across the country. He shares how the platform has grown beyond its original reporting concept to include photo and video uploads, messaging, notifications, public feed tools, and event-based information collection.For command staff, city leaders, patrol officers, and citizens interested in community policing technology, Episode 26 offers a practical look at how modern police departments can improve efficiency, strengthen community connection, and make non-emergency reporting easier for everyone involved.Learn more about Ireport and see how it can benefit your community. Contact us at 715-828-5543 or info@ireport.us to schedule a demo and discuss how Ireport can support your department.
3 months
Police First Then Civic Leaders
Nicholas Uthe // APRIL 08, 2026
We live in a platform world.Hotels became Airbnb. Taxis became Uber. Marketplaces became Amazon. Communication became global social networks. Entire industries transformed once we built the right infrastructure.Much of this innovation followed the path of least resistance. Entertainment is easy to optimize. The internet became incredibly good at delivering high-velocity snackable content, and today our phones feed us endless streams of media engineered by algorithms competing for our shrinking attention spans.In many ways we’ve taken micro-entertainment as far as it can goBut while the world optimized for attention, one major system never received the same technological evolution: public institutions.Police departments, public infrastructure, city planning, and local government still operate through fragmented communication channels. Citizens report issues through phone calls, emails, outdated forms, or scattered social media complaints. Information arrives inconsistently, and once it does, it often disappears into disconnected workflows.Ireport exists to modernize this layer of society.Police FirstPublic safety is the hardest civic system to modernize. Trust matters, reliability matters, and departments cannot run on fragile infrastructure.Our platform organizes non-emergency reporting into a structured system where every submission attaches to a citizen profile, enters a review workflow, and becomes part of a searchable historical record. Officers can review incidents, assign ownership, track report status, and identify repeated issues.This creates operational structure for departments and visibility for command staff. Reports no longer disappear into inboxes or fragmented systems. Leadership can see what is outstanding, where backlog exists, how quickly reports move through review, and which issues appear most frequently.Organizations improve when they can see their problems clearly.The ExpansionThe system we built for police reporting becomes the foundation and rails for broader civic infrastructure.The Ireport Citizen Portal is the entry point. Citizens get modern reporting flows, while departments receive structured operational data. Once that infrastructure exists, new public department systems can launch directly on the same platform.One of the first areas we plan to expand into is Ireport Streets. Cities struggle to see infrastructure issues clearly. Citizens see them first: potholes forming, streetlights failing, sidewalks breaking, intersections becoming unsafe. The future Streets system, built on this same reporting foundation, will turn those observations into structured reports that public works departments can track and analyze over time.Another expansion is Ireport City Planning. Cities often seek input on projects such as park construction, road expansions, or zoning changes, but that feedback rarely becomes part of a visible public record. The City Planning system, as the next layer of the platform, will create a structured environment where citizens can review proposals and submit feedback tied directly to those initiatives.Communication with elected officials faces a similar challenge. Emails disappear, town halls reach limited audiences, and social media rarely produces organized dialogue. The Ireport Civic Leadership layer will allow citizens to ask questions, raise concerns, and provide policy feedback while giving officials clear visibility into what their communities are asking for.Across all departments the model stays consistent: citizens report issues, departments receive structured information, officials gain visibility, and every interaction becomes part of a historical record.As Wesley Hartkemeyer, Police Officer and Co-Founder of Ireport put it:“Government still runs behind layers of red tape and outdated systems. People are expected to participate, but the systems make it hard. Airbnb made it simple for anyone to rent out a home. If we can make participating in your community that easy, we’ve done our job.”Police solve the hardest credibility problem first. Once that foundation is trusted, the same infrastructure can expand across the rest of municipal government.The Long-Term VisionModern technology, largely consumed through our mobile phones, gave society extraordinary visibility into media, entertainment, and commerce. We instantly see what products are trending, what content is spreading, and what conversations are happening across the internet.Yet the systems governing our communities remain largely invisible.Local government operations still live inside disconnected databases, inboxes, and fragmented communication channels. Citizens rarely see how issues surface, how they move through departments, or how decisions evolve.Consider something simple: a pothole forming on a neighborhood street. Residents notice it immediately. They call the city, send emails, or post about it online. The information scatters across systems, and weeks later the city may still struggle to see the full pattern of infrastructure issues and those same residents have no visibility on how the problem is being managed. Institutions needs a transparency and structurally upgrade and Ireport applies modern platform infrastructure to this layer of society.We certainly don’t want to turn government into another social media channel, chasing attention but we do want to bring structure, visibility, and historical record to civic operations.Police departments establish the foundation because they operate in the most demanding civic environment, where systems must work reliably under pressure and public trust.Once that foundation is proven, the platform expands outward to infrastructure reporting, public works, city planning, and civic leadership. Each department runs on the same model: structured reporting, transparent workflows, operational visibility, and permanent records.When information moves through a clear system, organizations improve. Problems surface earlier, departments coordinate faster, and communities gain a visible record of how their local government operates.Learn more about Ireport and see how it can benefit your community. Contact us at 715-828-5543 or info@ireport.us to schedule a demo and discuss how Ireport can support your department.
5 months
Police User Upgrades to Review Status Workflow for Non-Emergency Reports
Nicholas Uthe // APRIL 08, 2026
Most police departments already understand the problem.Non-emergency incidents consume a significant amount of officer time, yet the intake process is often fragmented. Reports arrive through phone calls, voicemail, email, or outdated web forms. Once submitted, those reports frequently enter general inboxes or disconnected workflows that require manual sorting and follow-up.This creates three operational issues.Information arrives inconsistently.Reports are difficult to track once submitted.Command staff have limited visibility into reporting activity.Ireport was designed to introduce operational structure to non-emergency reporting.Instead of treating citizen reports like incoming email, Ireport organizes them inside a centralized Report Database, where every submission is attached to a Citizen Profile and entered into a controlled department review queue.This allows departments to review, assign, track, and analyze reporting activity in a way that aligns with how modern operational systems function.LocalizationDepartments serve defined jurisdictions, yet many reporting channels force citizens to search for the correct department or contact method before they can submit a report.Ireport handles this routing automatically.When a citizen submits a report through the Ireport portal, the system routes it directly into the department’s Report Database based on jurisdiction. Officers receive reports that are already tied to the correct agency, location, and reporting citizen.Once inside the system, officers can immediately open the associated Citizen Profile and view the citizen’s report history in the Reports folder.If the citizen has submitted previous reports, officers can quickly determine whether the incident represents a one-time event or part of a repeated issue within the community.Instead of isolated messages arriving through multiple communication channels, the department receives organized reports tied to identifiable reporting activity.StandardizationInconsistent reporting formats slow down review and increase administrative workload. Officers often receive reports that lack critical details, requiring follow-up before action can be taken.Ireport addresses this by standardizing the reporting intake process.When citizens submit reports, the system captures information through structured reporting fields including location, incident details, supporting documentation, and time windows. These submissions enter the department’s Report Database in a consistent format.Inside the platform, each report is assigned a Review Status that officers and supervisors can quickly identify.Reports can appear as Outstanding, Officer Reviewed and Command Reviewed. Supervisors can assign reports directly within the system by setting an Officer Assignment or Report Owner, allowing incidents to move through the review process without relying on external communication.Officers can also filter and search reports by Incident Type, Officer Assigned, or Report Owner, allowing them to quickly locate incidents related to their responsibilities.This creates a reporting workflow that is structured, predictable, and manageable.Specialization & Operational VisibilityMost online reporting tools used by departments were never designed to manage reporting activity as an operational system. Many simply forward submissions to email inboxes where reports must be manually organized.Ireport was built specifically to manage this reporting workflow.Each report is attached to a Citizen Profile and stored within the department’s Report Database, where officers can review the report, assign ownership, or request additional information if needed.For command staff, the platform introduces visibility that is often missing from traditional intake methods.Through the system’s analytics and reporting dashboard, command staff can quickly see:Which reports have been reviewed.Which reports remain Outstanding.Which incidents are Officer Reviewed or Command Reviewed.Which officers are assigned to specific incidents.Which Incident Types are appearing most frequently.This creates a clear view of operational reporting activity.Command staff can identify whether reports are being reviewed promptly, where backlog may be forming, and how reporting workload is distributed across officers and teams.Operational Value for DepartmentsNon-emergency reporting is not going away. In many jurisdictions, it continues to grow.The question is not whether departments will receive these reports. The question is how organized the intake process will be once they arrive.Ireport provides departments with a structured environment to manage citizen reporting activity.Reports enter a centralized Report Database, remain connected to Citizen Profiles, and move through a clear Review Status workflow.Officers can quickly review incidents, assign ownership, and filter reports by Incident Type, Report Owner, or Officer Assignment.Command staff gain visibility into reporting workflows that previously existed across phone calls, email inboxes, and disconnected forms.Localization routes reports correctly.Standardization improves report quality.Specialization creates operational visibility.The result is a reporting system that supports both patrol operations and command oversight.Learn more about Ireport and see how it can benefit your community. Contact us at 715-828-5543 or info@ireport.us to schedule a demo and discuss how Ireport can support your department.
5 months