Former Ald. David Ahrens authored an ordinance in 2018 that prohibits city employees from using city equipment “to engage in, organize, or conduct a grass-roots campaign to lobby…on any matter pending before the city.”
Ahrens says Police Chief Shon Barnes did just that when he used his city blog to opine about a proposed ordinance that would have prohibited the city’s police force from using “tear gas, mace, impact projectile devices” for the purposes of crowd control.
“Gone are the days of the 1960s where officers in Madison used batons and fists to strike demonstrators in crowds, and I refuse to go back. However, this ordinance is walking us back to a place in time where this would be the only option to address violent, riotous behavior by individuals in crowd environments,” Barnes wrote in a Sept. 14 post. “It is imperative that the Common Council defeat this proposal.”
Ahrens agrees with Barnes on this issue. The former alder just doesn’t think the chief should be able to influence public opinion on the city’s website.
“It’s not the job of city department heads to institute their own civic agendas. That’s the responsibility of the mayor and the council. That’s the purpose of the ordinance,” Ahrens tells Isthmus. “Former police chief Mike Koval used to try to sway city residents with his blog to gain support for his own policy position. I didn’t think that was appropriate and it’s one of the reasons I thought we needed this.”
Madison city attorney Mike Haas disagrees that Barnes’ blog post violated the ordinance.
“I do not see anything in the chief’s blog post that requests or solicits action by the public,” Haas wrote in an email to Tell Dylan. “So in my opinion the ordinance does not apply to the chief’s communication.”
Ahrens still thinks the spirit of the ethics policy he championed was violated.
“Whether you want to call it a grassroots campaign or movement or whatever, I think the purpose of the blog was to tell city residents this was coming up and to encourage the public to oppose it,” says Ahrens. “But what do I know? I just helped write the [ordinance].”
The council ended up abandoning the idea of a tear gas ban before its Sept. 20 meeting. Instead, a compromise was reached that requires the city’s new independent monitor to conduct an “after action review” whenever police use chemicals for crowd control. Barnes supported that proposal and it passed 14-4.
