The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee met last week to approve a $4 million supplemental appropriation for the Wisconsin Department of Justice.
The supplement supports grants to law enforcement agencies for data-sharing platforms under a new program created by 2025 Wisconsin Act 58. Act 58 created a short-term grant program for the acquisition and adoption of data-sharing platforms.
According to the law, the platform must be able to “integrate data from common law enforcement systems on a real-time basis” and “provide advanced, configurable search, analytics, and visualization capabilities that support common mission needs for law enforcement.”
Although the bill passed in the Senate along party lines, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats against, the Democratic Senators on the Joint Finance Committee did not object to last week’s supplemental allocation, including Sen. Kelda Roys, who voted against the actual bill.
Act 58 had bipartisan support in the Assembly.
A Peregrine Technologies Inc. representative appeared at a public hearing in May 2025 in support of the Senate bill that became Act 58.
The company “hopes to turbocharge local police department access to surveillance data, while curbing cops’ abuses of their technologies,” according to a 2024 Forbes profile of company founder Nick Noone, who previously worked at Palatir. Forbes called Peregrine’s platform “a super-powered Google for police data.”
Noone and cofounder Ben Rudolph formed Peregrine after they embedded with the San Pablo, California, police department over 18 months.
Shortly before Act 58 was enacted, the Brennan Center discussed the impact of centralized data sharing hubs and warned that “new data fusion tools risk embedding biases and chilling free speech.”
“(T)hese data sharing capabilities may be a boon to police departments,” wrote the Brennan Center. However, “the easy access to massive troves of data and ability to repurpose sensitive information far beyond the purpose for which it was initially collected can also facilitate intrusive searches and misuse of data for non-law enforcement purposes.”
Peregrine’s data sharing interface allows departments to generate data sharing requests and access information from other police departments, including departments not associated with the platform.
Peregrine Senior Account Representative Kyle Whyte demonstrated aspects of the company’s interface at the May 2025 hearing. He showed what officers could access for a given individual with a profile in the database.
The overview for a fictional suspect, Travis Kameko, showed a “connections count” and possible associates from a shared home address or case. A blank box in the presentation was for personal history, which the software could populate though generative artificial intelligence.
Whyte estimated the program could be run across Milwaukee-area police departments for $2 million a year. The city of Milwaukee would individually operate at around $400,000, Whyte said. A small department like Waukesha would cost $75,000.
Whyte said the technology could connect different departments’ different systems. Ostensibly, Peregrine could make data from jurisdictions that employ facial recognition technology available to agencies that are prohibited from acquiring it.
Whyte said Peregrine has a proven track record of “reducing overtime and boosting morale.”
Grants under Act 58 must be awarded on or before June 30, 2027.
WJI has submitted open records requests to the Wisconsin DOJ regarding its full budget and grant applications under Act 58 and to the Milwaukee Police Department regarding use of Peregrine. We have not yet received a response from either entity.