Elliot Hughes
On Jan. 13, 2013, about 200 people, including Sam Stevenson (above), gathered outside the City-County Building to protest the findings of a police department internal investigation that cleared an officer in the shooting death of local musician Paul Heenan.
Iconic TV cop Joe Friday used to say, “Just the facts, ma’am.” So, let me give you only the facts on the just-approved new layer of oversight on the Madison Police Department.
It started with the fatal shootings by Madison police officers of Paul Heenan in 2012 and Tony Robinson in 2015. Though multiple investigations found no wrongdoing by either officer, the city council and mayor created an ad hoc citizens committee to review the department’s policies and culture with regard to use of force and other issues.
The committee recommended hiring a consultant to help them with their work and the mayor and council agreed to move forward on that in 2016. Ultimately, the city paid $372,000 to a California firm to do a deep dive examination of the Madison police department. While the final report included criticisms of the MPD, it concluded that the agency was “far from a department in crisis.”
The ad hoc committee digested the report and last year it came up with 177 recommendations.
Two of those recommendations were to create a civilian oversight board and a police monitor position. This would be over and above the existing Police and Fire Commission, made up of five citizens, which state law invests with the power to hire and fire the police chief and to hire, fire and discipline police officers.
In addition, Madison has a Public Safety Review Committee, made up of seven citizens and three alders. Its mission is to “review and make recommendations concerning departmental budgets; review service priorities and capital budget priorities of the police and fire departments; serve as liaison between the community and the city on public safety issues; and review annually and make recommendations to the Common Council regarding the annual work plans and long-range goals of the departments.”
Finally, the police budget is set by the mayor and city council and the council is made up of 20 part-time members, fairly characterized as a citizen council. Moreover, the chief reports to the elected mayor on a day-to-day basis and the department is subject to ordinances and resolutions passed by the council.
So, the oversight board and monitor would be in addition to all of that. The monitor would be paid between $103,000 and almost $140,000 and the oversight board members would be paid a stipend. The stipend would break with precedent. Of the hundreds of citizens who serve on dozens of citizen committees and commissions, virtually none are paid for their service. There are only two exceptions. Board of Public Works members are paid $100 per year and Board of Review members are paid $20 per meeting, but those payments are required by state law.
There would also be a fund to pay lawyers’ fees to file complaints against Madison police before the PFC. In a memo to the council the city attorney noted that in some cases this could amount to using taxpayer money to fund lawyers’ work to build eventual civil suits against the city. Essentially that would amount to using taxpayer money to sue taxpayers.
The overall budget for the auditor and board would be $456,000. Due to the necessary public health shutdowns, the city faces an unprecedented budget shortfall for the current year which is very likely to bleed into at least 2021. The budget deficit could be as much as $25 million.
The proposal calls for the oversight board to be made up of 11 members. Nine of these members would come from specifically-named community organizations while the others would be appointed by the council and the mayor.
Among the nine organizations selected by the council is Freedom Inc. That group has called for defunding the Madison Police Department and for the immediate release of all inmates held in the Dane County jail. At about the time they made that demand Sheriff Dave Mahoney said that there were 473 people in the jail and a sampling of their offenses included murder, pedophilia, aggravated battery, attempted homicide and multiple drunken driving offenses. And as of last month, that group would also include the three teens accused of murdering 11-year- old Anisa Scott.
The group disrupted several Madison School Board meetings in an attempt to remove school resource officers from Madison’s four high schools, over the strong objections of the police department. This spring Freedom Inc. organized a protest at the home of board president Gloria Reyes in which they covered her lawn in American flags, some defaced with obscenities. Following unrest in the wake of the killing of George Floyd the board and the council both voted to end the SRO contract before any contingency plans were put in place to address the security void left by the withdrawal of the SROs. In over two decades of service there had been no misconduct complaints about SROs in the Madison schools.
In the days following widespread looting on State Street in June, many community leaders tried to make a distinction between peaceful protesters and the looters. But Freedom Inc’s co-director M. Adams was quoted as saying, “Stop murdering Black people and your glass will be safe.”
In the last several years Freedom Inc. has received about $1.1 million in state and federal taxpayer money and about $64,000 from the city of Madison.
Among the nine groups selected, none represents neighborhood associations, business groups or crime victims advocacy organizations. Madison has experienced a summer of random gunfire and murders concentrated on the southwest and far-east sides, but it appears that no one will be appointed to represent any of those neighborhoods.
However, at least one member needs to have a criminal or arrest record.
The council approved all of this last week.
In mostly simple declarative sentences and with as few adjectives as I can muster, those are just the facts. I’ll add one word of commentary. Madness.
