David Michael Miller
Does the Madison Police Department live up to its own high standards? That’s the question a consulting firm kept running into during its yearlong study of the department.
The report from OIR Group, released on Dec. 14, finds the department is “an agency with many strengths” that is “unusually progressive, effective and ‘ahead of the curve’ when it comes to training and the evolution of best practices.” But the top-to-bottom review of the department also finds that some of the department’s own officers perceive “gaps between professed ideals and felt realities.” Similar sentiments were also expressed by community members interviewed as part of the analysis.
Most critically, the report found that the police department does not conduct regular performance reviews or track how officers spend their time. So while the report’s lead author, Michael Gennaco lauds Koval’s professed commitment to the department’s historic reputation for pioneering practices, he says the chief doesn’t have the data to assess whether his officers are, in the field, engaging in community policing. And that lack of transparency is leading some in Madison to doubt its police department.
“There’s no formal evaluation process for any officers in the Madison Police Department. If they don’t get performance evaluations, how do you know that a particular officer is spending half of their time on?” Gennaco tells Isthmus, citing Koval’s pledge to devote half of all officers’ time to problem-solving in the community.
“That’s why we are recommending that [MPD] start collecting daily activity logs from its officers. So the department has a better idea of what the heck its officers are doing day-to-day. There’s no way a sergeant, lieutenant or a captain, would know — from any documentation — what any particular officer did on any particular shift.”
The review grew out of community concerns over racial bias among officers and the department’s use of force, as well as a perceived lack of trust between the public and department. But the consultants were given a broad mandate to look at all aspects of police operations.
Gennaco says that if a majority of its 146 recommendations in the $372,000, 245-page report are implemented, it would “put the city and the department in a way better place… There will be an exponential increase in public trust in the department.”
The report is fueling the political debate over whether the department needs more officers, as Koval contends. On Jan. 8, the city’s Finance Committee approved funding for eight more officers, but some on the Common Council are likely to oppose the hires based on the consultant’s report.
“The city doesn’t have enough information to make a fiscally responsible decision on whether more officers are needed,” says Ald. Rebecca Kemble. “Not even the department knows whether its policies are working.”
The Common Council hired the California-based OIR Group in November 2016 to do a comprehensive review of the police department. The report was commissioned after several officer-involved shootings, both in Madison and nationally, prompted protests and calls for greater community control over the police.
Gennaco says in the past 16 years he has provided detailed “check-ups” on police departments for dozens of communities around the country. Before becoming a consultant, he worked for nearly two decades in Washington, D.C., for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, prosecuting police misconduct throughout the country. He also spent six years as an assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting cops for constitutional violations in the Los Angeles area.
The report finds that “MPD’s pride in its long standing commitment to community policing exists alongside recent signs of drift from those principles and their benefits.” Its recommendations are intended, in part, to bridge that divide. Recommendations range from small fixes — relaxing requirements so on-duty officers can attend community events out-of-uniform — to structural changes in the department, such as naming an independent auditor to “provide continual oversight” of the department.
Gennaco says one of the key recommendations is to reinstate a performance evaluation system “that collects and incentivizes progressive policing activity.” The report also recommends regular audits of these evaluations “to ensure that supervisors are uniformly documenting officer activity objectively and fairly.”
Police spokesperson Joel DeSpain tells Isthmus the department is in the “midst of formulating responses to each recommendation” and in the meantime Koval isn’t giving interviews about the report. The chief did respond by email to a question about why annual performance reviews were eliminated, saying that shift happened decades ago under former Chief David Couper, who retired in 1993.
“Rather than exclusively ‘evaluate’ an employee, the notion of embracing our work as a mechanism for coaching, mentoring, problem solving and teamwork became a more ‘attractive’ and affirming mechanism for producing positive outcomes,” writes Koval. “The department had already been committed to exploring other ways of achieving these objectives.”
But Gennaco says it’s a problem that it’s “not clear” whether police officers are being evaluated. “That’s part of the disconnect,” Gennaco says. “I don’t think the department really has an understanding of what its officers are doing on a day-to-day basis.”
The same goes for the department’s specialized officers, which the agency often cites as examples of its commitment to community policing.
“Mental health officers, neighborhood officers, school officers. Again, the department doesn’t collect data — on a granular basis — on the kind of work its officers are doing in those capacities either,” Gennaco says. “Our recommendations say they should.”
In addition to recommending “daily activity logs” for officers, the report suggests the department devise metrics for evaluating the work of neighborhood and other specialized officers in order to prepare “at least annual performance evaluations” on the effectiveness of these programs.
The report finds that the department also needs more rigorous standards regarding the use of force. It notes that the department’s default approach is “to vigorously defend to the hilt each officer’s decision to use deadly force.”
It suggests a more robust review is needed of incidents where officers deploy force, stating “there is no documented review process that concludes whether a use of force is within policy, let alone one that ensures supervisors are meaningfully examining each incident to identify performance issues — both exemplary and otherwise.”
The OIR report found it problematic that the police chief is also not subject to performance reviews. The group recommends the city institute “protocols for a performance evaluation process for the chief of police at fixed intervals.” By state law, the Police and Fire Commission is the only body that can fire a chief for “just cause.” The report suggests that the evaluation of Madison’s highest ranking officer be used as a potential basis of cause “should the chief’s performance fall significantly below community expectations.”
The debate over what to do with the recommendations is just getting started. The department will respond to the report at the end of January. Meanwhile, the Common Council invited the OIR Group to a meeting on Jan. 11 to discuss its findings.
Ald. Paul Skidmore voted against funding the study. But now that the report has been released, he calls many of the recommendations “solid” and sees them as a way for the city to come together.
“I think some of my colleagues were hoping for some sort of smoking gun in this report. I didn’t see anything like that,” Skidmore says. “A lot of what the OIR Group hinted at is that we need good data. I can support that.”
But Ald. Kemble sees the recommendations related to performance reviews as a “bombshell,” especially while the city contemplates whether to hire more officers.
“How can you have continual improvement if you have no benchmarks?” asks Kemble. “MPD can’t say whether they are living up to community standards. They have no way of knowing.”
