The Wichita Police Department is looking to expand the reach of its Real Time Information Center into Wichita schools, a move police say could save lives during a school shooting or other critical incident.
But the plan also has raised alarms for privacy advocates who worry about the government’s ever-expanding surveillance network, particularly the Wichita Police Department’s Arctic program that launched in September 2025.
Arctic, housed inside City Hall, gives officers access to a centralized repository of surveillance systems throughout the city — including Flock license-plate readers, police body cameras and vehicle cameras, private security cameras, gunshot detection technology, aerial drone video equipped with thermal imaging and nearly 300 city-owned surveillance cameras…