Tommy Washbush
On Sept. 29, 2022, Madison police officers responding to a domestic disturbance somewhere in the city delivered an elbow strike followed by two knee strikes to an intoxicated man as he lay on the ground yelling “I didn’t do nothing!” and “I’m not fighting nobody.” Cried out his mother, with whom he had been quarreling loudly, prompting a neighbor to call police, “My baby, don’t beat him!,” according to a transcript of a video she took of the encounter. “I ain’t no victim,” she insisted after her son was placed under arrest.
A few days later, the mother called Lt. Angela Kamoske, who heads the MPD’s Professional Standards & Internal Affairs unit, to complain about what occurred, saying she “believed the force used to subdue her son was excessive.” (The charges against him were suspended when he was found not competent to stand trial.)
The unit reviewed the case and, in a letter to Police Chief Shon Barnes dated Jan. 23, 2023, exonerated the four officers involved of any wrongdoing, saying the use of force was “consistent” with department policy and training. There was no public notification or outside oversight or review.
This case, 2022PSIA-0138, can be found on pages 87 to 95 of a 300-page file released to me on Oct. 9, six months after I made a request for records of all cases of alleged wrongdoing by Madison police officers and staff that were concluded in the first quarter of this year.
Also released were 166 pages of records of the seven cases concluded in 2022 in which officers were disciplined for misconduct. For both requests, I was told not to expect records until May or June of 2024. In early September, I sued the MPD, arguing that asking requesters to wait 10 to 14 months for records related to personnel matters, as the department was routinely doing, violates the state open records laws’ directive to provide records “as soon as practicable and without delay.”
In response, the department took action to reduce its backlog and provide records in a more timely fashion. Records custodian Julie Laundrie, in a letter accompanying the records’ release, explained that the quicker turnaround was achieved by hiring additional staff and authorizing overtime days. I am grateful to the MPD, especially Laundrie, for making this happen. The department has agreed to a settlement which includes covering $3,000 in legal fees and costs to my attorney, Tom Kamenick of the Wisconsin Transparency Project.
As detailed in several articles, I have pushed back against these long delays because I believe the job of providing police oversight is too important to entrust solely to the police. In the 1990s, I was involved in two lawsuits brought by Isthmus and others that secured the right of the public to obtain records regarding complaints against police.
One finding from those earlier lawsuits, affirmed by the newly released records, is that only a very small percentage of complaints against police lead to disciplinary action. To wit: During the first quarter of 2023, the MPD investigated 71 cases of alleged wrongdoing. It imposed discipline in just one case, and even then the details of the infraction, involving the sending of an unprofessional email, were indiscernible from the MPD’s bare-bones summary. (I later obtained more information and was able to provide a detailed account.)
Among the 70 investigations resolved without any action or public disclosure were three that alleged excessive use of force, including the case described above. Sixteen cases alleged violations of the MPD code regarding “Courtesy, Respect and Professional Conduct.” In a few cases, sustained violations led to “documented counseling,” which is not considered discipline.
In each case where a complaint was not sustained or was deemed “unfounded,” the names of accused officers were redacted. This was done, the MPD claims, because people would otherwise not want to become cops — a weak argument that the courts have often rejected in recent years.
In reviewing the two batches of released records, my overall impression is that the MPD takes allegations of misconduct seriously, even though it almost always determines that no discipline is in order. As Laundrie points out in her letter, “The nature of policing means our officers have contact with citizens on often the worst days of their life; there will be unhappy customers.”
But sometimes it sure seems like complaints are not sustained because the investigators trust the police over their accusers. Consider case 2023PSIA-0010 (pages 284-287 of the 300-page file). The complainant said a detective with whom she interacted was the “rudest individual I have ever dealt with.” She said he referred to her as “you people” and told her, regarding a confiscated cell phone, “I’m a busy man. You may never get it back.” The investigator asked the detective if he had used those phrases. The detective said he had not. Case closed.
Of the seven cases in which discipline was imposed in 2022, the two most serious each led to 10-day suspensions with five days held in abeyance. In 2021PSIA-0175 (pages 94-111 in the 166-page file), a police detective twice rammed another vehicle with his personal car, drawing a criminal disorderly conduct charge later reduced to a traffic citation. He blamed the other driver for the whole thing and, in a letter to Chief Barnes, was notably non-apologetic, saying “I firmly believe that this case was poorly investigated.”
In the second case, 2021PSIA-1085 (pages 1-24), a Madison officer at a Green Bay Packers game at Lambeau Field on Nov. 28, 2021, swiped a beer from a vendor and took a combative tone and ran from police when they arrived, drawing an $880 citation for “Unlawful Conduct at a Public Event.” In a letter to Barnes, the officer said “I allowed myself to become far too intoxicated and lost the ability to make rational decisions,” adding that the incident prompted a reassessment of her relationship with alcohol. Good idea. (Another upside: The Packers won.)
All seven disciplined officers are named in the released and now-available reports; they all had a chance under the law to sue to attempt to block the release of these records, but didn’t.
There is, I believe, an undeniable public interest in records of complaints that lead to discipline, and even those that do not. The media ought to request these routinely, and the department ought to provide them promptly.
Bill Lueders, Isthmus news editor from 1986 to 2011, is a writer in Madison and president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.
