
Carolyn Fath Ashby
Koval: “I’m not going to continue to facilitate this ongoing dynamic of questioning what MPD needs and ignoring the answers. I’ve grown weary of it.”
Mike Koval is fed up with Madison politics. On Sept. 29, he announced on his blog that he was retiring as chief of police, effective immediately. The news from the city’s top cop came two days before Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway announced her first operating budget proposal. Koval’s quick exit is in protest of the mayor not including funds for more patrol officers.
“It became clear I wasn’t going to get any more cops in the mayor’s budget. Rather than go through the literal torture of seeing us potentially not get the cops we need, this seemed like the right moment to pull that scab and to pull it now,” Koval tells Isthmus over the course of a one-hour interview. “The timing of [my retirement] was it’s better to do it right before the budget, as opposed to making this into a sideshow about me versus her. I’m not going to continue to facilitate this ongoing dynamic of questioning what MPD needs and ignoring the answers. I’ve grown weary of it.”
In his budget request to the mayor, Koval asked for 10 new officers. He says his department is 31 officers short of “appropriate staffing levels” and has already cut specialized positions to put more cops on patrol.
“We have scaled back all the community policing stuff, all the educational opportunities, traffic enforcement, gang officers, you name it. We are just trying to continue to survive the calls for service,” says Koval. “I have failed to give my people the necessary bodies for them to do their jobs safely. So I must step aside and I’m hopeful someone else will be able to change the current political landscape.”
Koval is dismayed by what he sees as an unfair narrative about the department he has served for 36 years, five as chief. He says the mayor and others “are hell bent on placating a small group of dissenters that despise MPD.”
“It’s easy to call the chief of police a racist and his department a reflection of his influence,” says Koval. “So we shall see. Madison will have the chance to test that theory with a new chief.”
Rhodes-Conway unveiled her operating budget proposal Oct. 1 at the Goodman South Library.
“We are adding increased wellness training for police officers, which was one of their top asks. We’re also adding additional training in terms of interacting with folks that are in mental health crisis,” Rhodes-Conway said at the budget press conference. “We’re also giving them some HR tools to incorporate into their hiring process.”
Additionally, Rhodes-Conway is proposing to spend $200,000 to create a new independent police auditor to oversee MPD. And while she rejected Koval’s request for new officers, Rhodes-Conway did authorize the department to apply for federal COPS grants that would allow new officers to be hired. But Ald. Mike Verveer says there’s no guarantee Madison will receive the money.
“We have applied for plenty of COPS grants over the years that we didn’t end up getting,” says Verveer. “The Trump administration is very political. One thought on why we didn’t receive a COPS grant last year is because the city isn’t fully certified as being helpful to [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”
It was no secret Koval was planning on retiring sometime before the end of the year. But the mayor says she wasn’t given advance notice of his sudden departure.
“I learned over the weekend that the chief was going to retire just like everybody else,” said Rhodes-Conway. “I haven’t heard anything directly from him about why.”
Koval tells Isthmus that tension has been building between him and Rhodes-Conway for months.
“I was hoping, her being a data-driven person, I could persuade her to reconsider her campaign position on no more cops. That obviously didn’t happen,” says Koval. “It’s reaching crescendo levels how burnt out [officers] are. How bad the morale is. They are asking when is the cavalry coming?”
Koval is also critical of Rhodes-Conway for her response to a June 3 incident involving the police and a teenager experiencing a mental health crisis. A video of the emergency detention went viral on social media and shows an officer punching the young man. The mayor said what occurred “will never be acceptable as best practice in the city of Madison.” The findings of an external investigation released on Sept. 20 found that officers “acted reasonably” but they could have done more to de-escalate the situation. A likely civil lawsuit is pending over the police action — the latest of several this decade.
Koval says the mayor’s comments — released before the investigation was complete — were “wholly inappropriate.”
“Call me crazy, I still believe in due process” says Koval. “I’m okay with asking hard questions because we want to do better. We want to train differently if that’s what’s called for. But I’m not willing to throw officers under the bus because that’s the path of least resistance.”
It isn’t just the mayor. Koval says over the last few years Ald. Paul Skidmore has been the only city council member to author a resolution recognizing Madison cops during National Police Week. This year, he wanted to see what would happen if Skidmore didn’t take the initiative.
“Would any of Skidmore’s colleagues on the council or the mayor give a tinker’s damn about National Police Week? The answer was no,” says Koval. “That’s just fine because I don’t want to force or spoon feed leadership into understanding that these little things matter. They don’t get it. They miss opportunities like that all the fucking time.”
The former chief, known at one time as “Kumbaya Koval,” has had a less than harmonious relationship with some local officials and community members since he took the helm of the department in 2014. In a 2016 Isthmus opinion piece, Bill Lueders described him as a “petulant bully who lacks self-control — a hothead with a gun and a badge.”
A complaint against Koval was filed with the Police and Fire Commission in 2017. Koval was charged with banging on a desk during a council meeting, and for allegedly making a threatening gesture after the meeting. He also called the grandmother of Tony Robinson — who was shot and killed by a Madison police officer — “a raging lunatic.” He was admonished by the PFC for the comment, but not disciplined.
Koval confesses that he “doesn’t play the skilled act of political diplomacy.”
“I am a strong-willed individual who takes the mission of the Madison Police Department very much to heart. I’m a straight talker. I say what I mean, and mean what I say,” replies Koval, when asked if he’s too defensive. “But this is an exceptional department and I will always defend that. Our women and men do an extraordinary job.”
He says some critiques do get “his Irish up.”
“You can chant ‘pipeline to prison’ a thousand times at a Madison school board meeting — that doesn’t mean you have the facts to back that up. Show me the numbers that defend that position,” says Koval. “I hold my people accountable. We are fiduciary agents of trust. If a cop violates that, it tarnishes the badge and tarnishes the relationship [with the community] moving forward for all of us.”
In terms of Madison politics, Koval says he’s had it.
“We are part of that national narrative and you can’t build up a firewall against it. But we shouldn’t be having mayors interjecting themselves into processes that are unfinished,” says Koval. “We shouldn’t have school board members using an undisciplined tongue to describe police officers as Nazis in some convoluted metaphor,” adds Koval, referring to a controversial Facebook post made by board member Ali Muldrow in August. She has since apologized.
Koval admits that he has become bitter.
“My wife, Jane, told me, ‘You can work as long as you want. But the man I married is not the man I’m living with now. Because you’re increasingly cynical. You leave every morning filled with hope and willingness to change to world. You come back at 7:30 at night and all you want to do is drink a Jameson and yell and curse about what didn’t go right,’” says Koval. “Something had to change.”