Third of three stories.

Marijuana was the second most-common target in residential drug searches conducted by police in Milwaukee County in 2019, well behind cocaine but ahead of heroin, a review of search warrant filings found.

Trailing far behind and seldom searched for were meth, opiate painkillers, and Ecstasy, according to an analysis by Marquette University journalists.

Rarely was marijuana – which Milwaukee County and many municipalities have taken steps to decriminalize – the sole drug targeted by police in a particular raid. That was the case in just 11 of 433 drug search warrants carried out at Milwaukee County addresses in 2019.

That year was chosen for the review because it was the most recent year unaffected by the COVID pandemic, which affected law enforcement and court operations.

But marijuana was in the search mix in 54% of warrant requests, most of them by Milwaukee police and multi-agency drug task forces. 

Here’s the breakdown of how often police targeted each drug in the 433 searches:

• Cocaine: 67%  
• Marijuana: 54%
• Heroin: 51.5%  
• Meth: 9%   
• Illegal Painkillers: 5%  
• Ecstasy: 4%  

Police reported nabbing 26 pounds of pot on a summer day in 2019 at a home on Milwaukee’s northwest side, but court records show no charges against the suspect until a separate incident in 2021.

In south suburban Greenfield, police investigated alleged gang members and made multiple arrests on marijuana, heroin and cocaine charges with help from a home search following neighborhood complaints in 2019.
 
No matter the drug, searches of residences were pretty effective in finding potentially incriminating evidence.

Police found drugs in at least two out of every three residential searches (67%). (Excludes canine drug sniffs outside homes.) 

Sloppy or inconsistent reporting by police on public search warrant documents makes that statistic a little squishy. The actual number is likely higher. Sometimes police report finding evidence but don’t attach the inventory or otherwise specify results.

The “success” rate in finding evidence rises to 81% when including things such as weapons, drug paraphernalia, ammunition, and business records of dealing. (Again excluding the sniffs.) 

Nearly every canine “odor search” included pot as a target in 2019, the review found.

That might be changing for some police departments as marijuana legalization spreads in the U.S. – though not yet in Wisconsin.

“Many jurisdictions that are buying drug dogs now are not having those drug dogs trained to detect marijuana, in anticipation of potential legalization in this state,” said South Milwaukee Police Chief William Jessup.

“If you have a dog that's trained to detect marijuana, you can't untrain that dog,” he added.

Jessup said South Milwaukee police are moving away from doing odor searches for marijuana.

What is the track record of “Bravo” and “Rex” and all those other drug-sniffing dogs that local police have reported using outside residences to build a case for doing a search of a residence?

The Marquette review found that in odor searches, police report the dog almost unfailingly found the presence of drugs. Police used positive dog hits to beef up their applications for far more intrusive search warrants. But the accuracy of police dogs has been questioned, and studies have shown that there are a significant number of false alerts – enough to raise questions about the usefulness of any single drug sniff.

The Marquette review found less interest in marijuana searches by anti-drug task forces that go after higher-level drug traffickers and employ officers from multiple agencies – local, state and federal. 

The individual municipal police departments that conducted searches – and not all of them did – showed more interest in searching for pot. ​

Second of three stories
​
When police enter Milwaukee County homes without notice or invitation to search for evidence in the war on drugs, they overwhelmingly target low-income and predominantly Black neighborhoods in the city of Milwaukee.

Nine of every 10 drug searches in 2019 were in the city rather than suburbs, and 75% of properties searched were occupied by Black residents, according to a new analysis by Marquette University journalists of every residential drug search in the county that year, the last before the pandemic curtailed many law enforcement activities. 

In the somewhat rare instances of police searching the properties of White suspected dealers, they found illegal drugs slightly more often than at Black-occupied places subjected to searches (76% to 71%), the Marquette investigation found.

There were 433 drug searches in the county in 2019, or more than one a day. Given their geographic concentration, it’s safe to say that some ZIP codes in Milwaukee’s central city have seen many hundreds, even a thousand drug raids or more since drug enforcement ramped up starting in the 1970s. 

More than half of drug searches (222) were in Milwaukee, concentrated in six ZIP codes, five on the north side and 1 on the near south side. They are 53206, 53209, 53212, 53204, 53210, and 53208. Together, they accounted for 51% of the drug searches in Milwaukee County.

Every case was different but details repeated: tips to police, drug buys by frequent informants, surveillance, allegations of violence, evidence fished from garbage outside suspected drug houses. In Riverwest, police targeted a guy with a prior drug record but came up empty in a search. Near North 5th Street and West Capitol Drive, a search netted 100 grams of cocaine, criminal charges, and a conviction. Some days brought as many as three or four searches; on others, none.

Weapons were frequent companions to drugs, turning up nearly half the time in these searches.

In 2019, weapons – mostly firearms ranging from handguns to assault rifles – were found significantly more often in searches involving Black suspects than suspects of other races (48% to 38%).

Police more frequently searched Black-occupied properties for weapons (66% to 46%), the Marquette analysis found.

Police and prosecutors in part explain the disparities by saying they focus on drug dealing, not possession, and that drug sales in predominantly Black, lower-income neighborhoods are more public and generate more violence and neighborhood complaints than in wealthier areas. 

It’s common for far-suburban drug users to drive into the city or adjacent suburbs to buy and then return home to use.

It’s about economic ability -- the fact that somebody who lives in a million-dollar suburban house isn’t going to be dealing drugs out of the house and also can easily get drugs, said William Jessup, a longtime Milwaukee police assistant chief and current chief in suburban South Milwaukee.

“They just have to drive somewhere to get it, or call somebody to have them delivered,” Jessup said.

In the view of police-reform activists, politics plays a role.

Decisions by lawmakers, police and prosecutors to punish some crimes and not others and penalize some drug crimes more heavily than others shows that determining who is a “criminal” is a political decision.

“It’s a decision of who is policed, and who is punished,” said Devin Anderson, who has coordinated the LiberateMKE campaign to reduce the size of the Milwaukee police budget. He is a manager at the African American Roundtable.

Jessup said that while working under Edward Flynn, Milwaukee’s police chief from 2008-2018, the department determined that it was conducting too many police searches of homes every year, considering the results and costs. They cut back on drug raids, he said.

Still, in 2019, police in the county conducted 433 drug raids on properties.

Milwaukee police dominated the action, along with special state-federal task forces that go after higher-level narcotics organizations with assistance from MPD and other locals.

But in the two years since 2019, the number of drug search warrants in Milwaukee County fell dramatically, down to 279 in 2021, coinciding with the COVID-19 crisis and the racial reckoning following the killings of Breonna Taylor during a botched police raid in Kentucky and George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis.

An MPD spokesperson, Sgt. Efrain Cornejo, said there was no particular reason for the drop, and that police continue to support the effort against drug trafficking.

Economics lesson

Despite police success in using searches to arrest drug suspects, some with experience in law say America can’t arrest its way out of the drug problem.

The root problem is that drug dealing is still attractive in areas where jobs and opportunities are less available, said David Budde, who worked eight years in the Milwaukee Metropolitan Drug Unit conducting drug investigations.

“It’s about a lack of economic health,” Budde said. “Why do men and women deal drugs? It’s the lure of easy money.”
​
In the most-searched Milwaukee zip code, the average income per-capita was just $13,743.  

First of three stories.

Recent changes affecting the Milwaukee Police Department could severely limit the use of no-knock searches in the city – but won’t completely end the practice.
 
That’s partly because state, federal and suburban cops conduct a lot of searches in Milwaukee on their own authority. And Milwaukee cops, in some instances, can still ask for no-knock warrants.
 
Another factor is just how normalized no-knocks became in the War on Drugs, with police saying the element of surprise protects officers and evidence.
 
As recently as 2019, Milwaukee police investigating drug dealing sought permission to use no-knocks in 77% of their searches, according to an investigation by Marquette University journalists.
 
And Milwaukee County court commissioners and judges almost always granted those requests (92% approval rate), the research found.

The year 2019 was chosen for this project because it was the most recent year unaffected by the coronavirus pandemic, which hampered law enforcement and court operations.
 
No-knock applications presented by police sometimes pointed to strong evidence about suspects’ ties to firearms, violent histories, use of video surveillance, and use of guard dogs. In other cases, the evidence was more abstract, referring to the tendency of most drug suspects, but saying little or nothing about the specific suspect at issue.
 
The Marquette review also found that:

• Officers were far more likely to seek a no-knock when the suspect was Black than when White. It was nearly an 80% likelihood in Black cases, but close to a 50-50 proposition in cases involving Whites, the analysis found.
• While most raids yielded evidence, police still came up empty in one of every six searches, many of which were authorized as no-knocks.
  ​

Looking ahead, there are strong reasons to think no-knocks will be far fewer in number.
 
Even before the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission acted last November to limit them, the number of no-knock requests had been declining for two years in Milwaukee. That in part is likely to be attributable to the pandemic, which slowed police activity of all sorts. And out in the field, the actual use of no-knocks in real life – as opposed to just having permission to use one –had fallen close to zero in 2021, according to the Milwaukee Police Department.
 
The reality, however, is that the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission’s action in November 2021 didn’t completely ban no-knocks,  even though the commission said it did.

City police officers working with multi-agency task forces, for example, can still help carry them out if they can convince top Police Department brass that announcing police presence before pushing inside is too dangerous or would harm evidence-gathering. It’s common for MPD officers and other local police to work on these task forces or special units.

And suburban police investigating a drug crime that spills over into Milwaukee face no prohibition on requesting a no-knock for a Milwaukee residence unless their own communities have banned them. 

A suburban request came in Dec. 21 – after approval of the no-knock limits – when a police officer from Cudahy working with an FBI task force asked for and got judicial approval for a no-knock near W. Greenfield Ave. and S. 23rd St. in Milwaukee. The officer had evidence the alleged dealers would be armed. The search turned up heroin, cocaine, cash – and a gun, court records show.

But otherwise in December the new no-knock policy made a difference: no MPD officer requested a no-knock. 

Milwaukee County Court Commissioner Barry Phillips approved the no-knock in that Cudahy/ FBI task force case, but he stood out in 2019 in a different way.

Phillips in 2019 showed a willingness to turn down police no-knock requests, a rarity among the 33 judges or court commissioners asked to approve them that year, the Marquette review found. He declined about 20% while handling considerably more search warrant requests than most others. By contrast, in cases handled by other judges or commissioners, only 2% of requests were declined – just three cases in total.

No-knock Future

A national anti-no-knock movement flared in early 2020 after Louisville police killed Breonna Taylor during a botched drug raid. In Milwaukee, the debate over no-knocks also was influenced by the killing of Milwaukee Police Officer Matthew Rittner in 2019. He was shot while he and other officers were trying to enter a drug suspect’s home with a battering ram while carrying out a no-knock search.

Some in law enforcement see problems with overuse of no-knocks and the dangers the element of surprise carries.

One suburban police chief, South Milwaukee’s William Jessup, sees them fading away. He gives them extra scrutiny in South Milwaukee. That community, along with West Allis and Oak Creek, are the suburbs most involved in doing drug search warrants, based on the review of court records.
​
“A no-knock doesn’t necessarily make the officer safer,” Jessup said. “There’s probably some benefit in reducing the amount of drugs that are flushed or hidden, but to me that’s negligible.”

In low-level drug cases Jessup’s officers often do “knock and talks” instead of home searches when dealing is suspected. That can yield admissions of guilt, and an end to dealing, in exchange for avoiding imprisonment, he said.

David Budde, a former Milwaukee Metropolitan Drug Unit member and District Attorney chief investigator, helped conduct many no-knock drug raids.

“They’re dangerous – not just to the people inside, but they’re dangerous to us,” Budde said.

Still, both men agreed with a position advanced by top Milwaukee police officials during Fire and Police Commission debate: no-knocks should be an option if risk of injury to police is too high. (Police found firearms or ammunition or both in 45% of drug search warrants in 2019 in the county, according to the Marquette review of 312 cases for which full data was available).  

Another former law enforcement official, former Milwaukee County prosecutor Hanna Kolberg, said no-knocks “should be used judiciously and carefully, but there are times where if you take the right tool away, things can happen and maybe worse or better.”
​
In Madison, majority Republicans in the state Legislature are considering reversing Milwaukee’s ban on no-knocks.

By Gretchen Schuldt

​Complying with a federal court settlement to end race-based stops by Milwaukee police "seems an afterthought" to many city officials, including those at the top,  according to the settlement monitor.

"It is not integrated into the daily work, strategic planning, and service to the community for all of government," the monitor, the Crime and Justice Institute, said in its second annual report on the settlement. 

"Dedicated professionals" are seeking to implement the settlement, "and yet, they seem to toil without a citywide mandate or the highest-level leadership confirming that this work matters," the report said. 

"Up to this point," the report said, "we have not seen any leader organize all relevant agencies in a conversation that drives the Defendants toward compliance. Each agency seems left to its own to set a plan without oversight, coordination, or direction." 

Neither Mayor Tom Barrett nor Common Council President Cavalier Johnson responded to requests for comment on the consultant's findings.

"Unfortunately, too few seem focused on the path of hard work towards compliance," CJI said.. "Or even on the important, long-term reforms that compliance permits."

Police traffic and pedestrian stops still show evidence of bias, CJI said, and the city remains out of compliance with many terms of the 2018 settlement.

The settlement followed a federal court lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Wisconsin, the national ACLU and the law firm of Covington and Burling. The Police Department, the Fire and Police Commission, and the city agreed to undertake a number of reforms, including an end to race-based pedestrian and traffic stops.

"Many reforms embedded in the agreement require substantial government involvement, following the notion that creating and living in a safe community should not just concern the public and police...." the report said. "Effective oversight is a responsibility of and should be a concern for all aspects of government." ​

The city's financial concerns may lead it to underfund compliance efforts.

"Achieving the reforms set forth by the settlement agreement, to which the defendants agreed, comes with some costs," the report said. Sufficient staffing, for example, is necessary, it said.
​
Barrett has proposed a $300,000 budget for settlement implementation in 2021, the same amount as this year.

The report said bluntly that Barrett and the Common Council should appoint new Fire and Police Commission members to fill two vacancies and the seat held by a commissioner whose term has expired. Commission members are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council.

"The vacancies limit the roles for interested community members, and consequently also limit points of access for the community," the report said. "There are likely many qualified individuals in the city who would be interested in serving, so it is unclear why the vacancies remain....The settlement agreement envisions a more robust and effective FPC and the demands on the FPC will only expand with the work toward compliance."

"It is imperative that the Mayor and Common Council act to fill these vacant positions," the report said.

By Gretchen Schuldt

Municipalities would be required to maintain police funding at current levels or lose state aid, under a package of police-related bills to be introduced by Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine).

The requirement would have a devastating impact on local governments that are under enormous economic stress because of revenue lost during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Gov. Tony Evers called the Legislature into session on Monday to consider his nine-bill police reform package. Wanggard responded Thursday by announcing eight police-related bills of his own. State Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) is a co-sponsor on all eight bills and Rep. Janel Brandtjen, (R-Menomonee Falls) is a co-sponsor of a bill dealing with the make-up and operation of Milwaukee and Madison fire and police commissions, according to the Racine County Eye.

Below are the Legislative Reference Bureau's summaries of the Wanggaard bills. 

Bill 1: This bill creates an independent use of force review advisory board. Under the bill, the board conducts independent investigations of deaths and serious injuries to law enforcement officers and deaths and serious injuries to others resulting from an action or omission of a law enforcement officer. The board must recommend measures to reduce the probabilities of deaths and serious injuries from similar causes and must also review its previous recommendations to determine if they were implemented and evaluate their effectiveness.

Under the bill, if the board conducts an investigation of an incident involving an officer that resulted in death or a serious injury, its investigation may begin only after any mandatory or criminal investigation concludes. The bill grants the board access to all complete criminal and administrative investigation case files, models or renderings used in an investigation, and evidence and also to the state crime laboratories. The board must acquire experts and use advisors as needed to perform its duties; the experts and advisors include a certified firearms instructor, a defensive and arrest tactics instructor, an expert in cultural competency, a master instructor in professional communications, a master instructor in tactical response, a victim advocate, and a mental health professional.

When the board completes an investigation, it must prepare an advisory report to be made public and be submitted to the legislature, all law enforcement agencies, and the Law Enforcement Standards Board. The report must identify events or developments that led to the officer-involved death or serious injury and make recommendations to prevent similar incidents in the future. The report must provide demographic information about each incident, share best practices used by law enforcement officers, and recommend practices that the board learns when exercising its review.

Note: The makeup of the board would be heavily weighted toward law enforcement and police unions. According to the bill, the board would include 

• (1) The director of the training and standards bureau, or his or her designee.
• (2) One member, appointed by the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association.
• (3) One member, appointed by the Badger State Sheriffs' Association.
• (4) One member, appointed by the Wisconsin Professional Police Association.
• (5) One member, appointed by the Wisconsin Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffs Association.
• (6) One member, appointed by the Wisconsin Troopers Association.
• (7) One member, appointed by the Milwaukee Police Association.
• (8) One member, appointed by the Wisconsin District Attorneys Association.
• (9) One member, appointed by the Wisconsin police executive group.
• (10) One member, appointed by the Wisconsin training academy directors.
• (11) An attorney specializing in criminal defense, appointed by the State Bar of Wisconsin.
• (12) A mental health professional, appointed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Wisconsin.
• (13) One member, jointly appointed by the dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School and the dean of the Marquette University Law School.​

Bill 2: Current law requires each law enforcement agency to have a publicly available policy or standard regulating the use of force by law enforcement officers. This bill requires each such policy or standard to provide the instances in which a use of force must be reported, how to report a use of force, and a requirement that officers who engage in or observe a reportable use of force must report it. This bill also prohibits disciplining a law enforcement officer for reporting a violation of an agency's policy or standard regarding the use of force. 

Bill 3: Current law requires each law enforcement agency to prepare a policy regarding the use of force by its law enforcement officers and to make the policy available for public scrutiny. This bill requires the law enforcement agency to post its policy on the law enforcement agency website or, if the agency does not have one, on a site maintained by the municipality over which the law enforcement agency has jurisdiction. Under the bill, if the policy is changed, the law enforcement agency must ensure that the updated policy is posted as soon as practically possible but no later than one year after the change is made. The bill also requires a law enforcement agency to prominently post a means to request a copy of the policy and to provide a copy of the current policy at no charge as soon as practically possible but no later than three business days after a request is made. 

Bill 4: This bill makes a number of changes that affect the board of fire and police commissioners of a 1st class city (presently only Milwaukee), the board of police and fire commissioners of a 2nd class city with a population of 200,000 or more (presently only Madison) (jointly referred to as affected PFC boards), and the protective services departments of 1st class cities and 2nd class cities with a population of 200,000 or more (jointly, populous cities). The changes include altering the makeup of affected PFC boards, requiring certain training for affected PFC board members, establishing certain requirements related to hiring and oversight of chiefs of protective services departments in populous cities, creating an executive director or independent monitor position in populous cities, and altering the judicial review process for police and fire department disciplinary cases in a 1st class city.

Under current law, the board of fire and police commissioners of a 1st class city consists of seven or nine members selected by the mayor. Boards of police and fire commissioners of other cities, including a 2nd class city, consist of five members selected by the mayor. Under this bill, a board of fire and police commissioners of a 1st class city consists of nine members selected by the mayor, and confirmed by the common council. The board of a police and fire commission of a 2nd class city with a population of 200,000 or more consists of seven members selected by the mayor. Each of these boards must contain at least one member selected from a list provided by each of 1) the employee association that represents nonsupervisory law enforcement officers and 2) the employee association that represents fire fighters. 

This bill provides a method for selecting members of affected PFC boards when the mayor fails to make an appointment to a vacant position. If the mayor fails to make an appointment within 120 days of the occurrence of a vacancy, the common council may make the appointment, except when the vacant position is one that must be filled from one of the lists described above. In this case, the association that provided the list may make the appointment without confirmation by the common council.

In a 1st class city, a three-member panel of the board of fire and police commissioners may conduct and decide a trial to evaluate a complaint against a member of the police or fire department. This bill specifies that when a three-member panel conducts such a trial, at least one member of the panel must have professional law enforcement experience if the accused is a police officer, and at least one such member must have professional fire fighting experience if the accused is a fire fighter.

The bill also requires each member of an affected PFC board to take a training class provided by the city in which it operates. The training class must cover the mission and role of the board, the procedures that apply to disciplinary hearings, the conduct policies of the police and fire departments, and use of force guidelines of the police department. A member may not participate in any action of the board until he or she completes the training class and any other training required by the city.

The bill also creates the office of executive director in a 1st class city and the office of independent monitor in a 2nd class city with a population of 200,000 or more. Despite the different titles, these positions have the same duties and requirements. This person acts as the principal staff of an affected PFC board, reviews certain situations or investigations involving the police or fire department, evaluates police and fire department policies and practices, and issues periodic reports to the public relating to the status and outcome of complaints that have been filed. The executive director or independent monitor is appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the common council and serves a four-year term, at the pleasure of the board. 

This bill also specifies the following related to affected PFC boards:

​1. When an affected PFC board appoints a protective services chief, the board must meet in closed session with representatives of the employee association whose members will serve under the proposed chief.

2. When an affected PFC board appoints a protective services chief, the board must hold at least two public meetings to hear comments from residents of the city and other interested persons.

3. When a member is appointed to an affected PFC board, the common council must hold two public hearings that include public comment periods with regard to the appointments.

4. If an affected PFC board accepts an additional application for chief of police after the application period for accepting these applications has closed, the board must reopen the application period for an additional seven days.

5. If the common council adopts a resolution by a two-thirds majority to conduct a performance review of a protective services chief, an affected PFC board must conduct the review and provide a written report to the common council.

6. A PFC board member may not continue in office after the expiration of his or her term, unless reappointed and, in a 1st class city, confirmed.

​Currently, if a board of fire and police commissioners of a 1st class city discharges, suspends, or reduces in rank an officer or member of the police or fire department, the disciplined person may appeal that decision to a circuit court. This bill specifies the scope of review under which a court is to review an appeal of this sort. Under the bill, a court must review the evidence independently and without deference to the board's findings; must reverse the board's decision if it finds that fairness or correctness of the action has been impaired by material or procedural errors; and must set aside or modify the board's decision if it finds that the board erroneously interpreted a provision of law, or may remand the case to the board for further action that is consistent with current law. The bill also requires the court to reverse the board's decision if it finds that the board's exercise of discretion is outside of its delegated powers; is inconsistent with a board rule, policy, or practice, unless the board's deviation is adequately explained; or violates the constitution or the statutes. The bill also authorizes a court to take additional testimony, depositions, and interrogatories, and to grant requests for additional discovery.

Bill 5: This bill establishes a $600,000 grant program, administered by the Department of Justice, for cities with a population of 60,000 or more to fund community-oriented policing house programs.

Bill 6: Under this bill, if in any year a municipality decreases the amount of its municipal budget dedicated to hiring, training, and retaining law enforcement officers so that it is less than the amount dedicated to that purpose in the previous year, the municipality will receive a county and municipal aid payment that is reduced by the amount of that decrease. The bill provides that the amount of all such reductions will be distributed to the municipalities that did not reduce their law enforcement budgets in proportion to each municipality's share of the total amount of county and municipal aid payments. Furthermore, the amount of the reduced payment that the municipality receives becomes the amount of county and municipal aid that the municipality will receive in subsequent years.

The reductions under the bill do not apply to a municipality that transfers responsibility for providing law enforcement to another local unit of government or that enters into a cooperative agreement to share law enforcement responsibilities with another local unit of government. 

Bill 7: Current law requires law enforcement agencies to develop policies on the use of force by law enforcement officers in the performance of their duties. This bill provides that a law enforcement agency may not authorize in its use of force policy the use of choke holds by law enforcement officers, except in life threatening situations or in self-defense. 

Bill 8: Current law requires the Department of Justice to collect certain information concerning criminal offenses committed in Wisconsin. This bill requires DOJ to collect data and publish an annual report on law enforcement use of force incidents, including incidents where there was a shooting, where a firearm was discharged in the direction of a person (even if there was no injury), and where other serious bodily harm resulted from the incident. The bill requires certain demographic information to be collected about each such incident, and reported annually by DOJ on its Internet site.

By Gretchen Schuldt

The Milwaukee Police Department absorbed 62 cents of every new dollar that went toward city departments' operating budgets over the last decade, budget figures show.

That left just 38 cents per dollar to split among the 18 other city departments, including the Health Department, the Milwaukee Public Library, the Department of Neighborhood Services, the Fire Department, and the Department of Public Works.

"We are looking at how we staff the Police Department and what they respond to....We're going to have to rethink a lot of things," said Dennis Yaccarino, city budget and management director.

The Police Department's operating budget increased by $80.5 million, from $216.8 million to $297.4 million, from 2010 to 2020. 

The 18 remaining departments received combined general budget increases of $48.9 million from 2010 to 2020.

All departmental budgets rose $129.4 million over that time, from $527.8 million to $657.2 million.

The number of authorized Police Department full-time positions funded through the general budget fell slightly, by 60, from 2,687 to 2,627, over the 10 years, while the number of positions in the other departments fell from 3,117 to 3,103, a decline of 14, according to budget documents.
​
Police Department spending is sure to be a contentious topic during the Common Council debate over the 2021 city budget. ​Activists want to cut up to $75 million from the police budget in 2021 and allocate the amount to other purposes. The council has suggested a 10% trim for the Police Department.

By Gretchen Schuldt

​Any significant budget cuts to the Milwaukee Police Department will affect staff and could well result in disproportionate cuts in the number of officers of color on the force, city figures show.

"I don't have a magic wand to change that," said Ald. Michael Murphy, chair of the Common Council's Finance and Personnel Committee.

About  95% of the department's operating budget this year, or $281.4 million of $297.4 million, is devoted to wages and fringe benefits, so any significant budget cut would have to include cuts in staffing.

The city's contract with the police union calls for the most recent hires to be the first to lose their jobs when and if the cuts come. If officers are hired at the same time – and officers in the same academy graduating class are considered to have the same seniority date – then their placement on the eligibility list at the time of hire is the tiebreaker, said city Labor Negotiator Nicole Fleck.

Most officers of color are bunched at the low end of the seniority scale, as the chart below shows. There are fewer people of color who become officers in the first place and they leave the job at faster rates than whites.

While there are 112 African-American police officers with fewer than five years' experience, there are just 20 with six to 10 years' service, and 34 with 11 to 15 years on the job.

There are 92 Hispanic officers with fewer than five years' experience, but just 31 with six to 10 years on the job and 34 with 10 to 15 years.

White officers also leave, but at lower rates, which adds to their edge in seniority. There are 271 White officers with fewer than five years' experience, 154 with six to 10 years', and 169 with 11 to 15 years of service.

Whites account for 55% of officers with fewer than five years on the job, but that jumps to 72% of those with six to 10 years of service and 68% of officers with 11 to 15 years on the force.

The city eliminated 60 police officer positions this year through attrition, Murphy said, and the financial situation looks worse for next year. City revenue is taking a hit because the coronavirus crisis is affecting tax collections at both the city and state levels.

The Common Council has indicated it will consider a police budget cut of 10%, or roughly $30 million. Police Chief Alfonso Morales, in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel op-ed, said that would mean about 375 lost officer jobs.

Activists are seeking a $75 million cut and want the money to go to other services. The Police Department has asked for an $18.5 million budget increase, according to budget documents.

A $75 million cut, Murphy said, would mean about half the force would go.

"It's the way it is," he said. 

Markasa Tucker, director of the African American Round Table, a driving force behind the request for cuts, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Common Council President Cavalier Johnson.

​Officers of color would likely be hit disproportionately, and that would not be good for the city. Its police, Murphy said, "should reflect the community."

The city does not have many options, he said. "I don't know how to do it otherwise with the current (contract) restrictions in place," he said.​

By Margo Kirchner

​Criminal law rarely provides justice in cases of police brutality and violence because convictions are so difficult to obtain even with video evidence, according to a Villanova University law school associate dean.

 “It’s hard to win cases against police officers, and because plaintiffs usually lose, police are not deterred from their bad behavior,” said Teressa Ravenell, who also is a professor at Villanova’s Charles Widger School of Law.

Ravenell made her comments during the American Constitution Society’s recent briefing call on police violence and systematic racism in the U.S. legal system. ACS held the call in response to the killing of George Floyd and waves of protest across the country.

Ravenell said that federal law allows individuals to sue when their civil rights are violated by government actors, but that law has not prevented police violence either.

The law, Section 1983, has become “another example of systematic failure,” she remarked. The statute is “not inherently flawed,” but the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the statute has caused it to fail, she said. Problematic interpretation of Section 1983 includes the judge-made doctrine of qualified immunity, Ravenell said.

The qualified immunity doctrine protects public officials from civil liability unless their conduct violates a clearly established constitutional right about which a reasonable person would have known. The Supreme Court has written that the doctrine protects "all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law” and balances the need to hold public officials accountable when they act irresponsibly with the need to shield them from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably. 

In a 2018 dissent, however, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the doctrine “tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished.”

The doctrine has recently shielded officers from liability for stealing $225,000 while executing a search warrant, shooting a 10-year-old boy in his backyard while pursuing a suspect, and slamming to the ground a woman who turned to walk away from an officer toward her daughter, rendering the woman unconscious.

Ravenell set forth five large hurdles plaintiffs face under current law, which in her view result in continued racist law enforcement.

First, the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment cases give police officers too much power to stop, investigate, and arrest Black people. Police may legally stop someone if an officer has reasonable suspicion to think that criminal activity is afoot, and that standard can be met when a person acts evasively in a high-crime area. Ravenell called “high-crime area” a “fancy way” of saying poor, Black neighborhoods. As a result, Blacks are more likely to be stopped by police. Further,  Blacks are pulled over for traffic violations more than any other group, she said.

Second, the Court’s Fourth Amendment cases give police officers too much license to use force. The court has allowed officers to use deadly force when they reasonably believe a person poses an immediate threat of harm to the officer or others, and too often officers view unarmed Black men as threats, Ravenell said. Ravenell proposed that the qualified immunity standard should at the least be transformed from considering what a reasonable or average officer would do to what a well-trained officer would do in the situation.

Third, Ravenell said, under current law plaintiffs face too many causation problems because they must establish which specific officers harmed them. For instance, a protester shot by a rubber bullet must show which officer fired the shot. But that is impossible if officers will not testify against each other, she remarked.

Fourth, the qualified immunity defense protects officers in too many situations when the law was not clearly established at the time the officers acted. “Many people are writing about this right now,” she said, adding that “we need to eliminate the qualified immunity defense.”

Fifth, even when plaintiffs succeed, verdicts against officers fail to alter conduct because officers do not pay the verdicts against them; taxpayers do.

Ravenell closed by noting that the failure to fire violent officers also played a role in creating the current crisis. The officer who killed George Floyd had 18 prior complaints against him, she noted. Ravenell compared the vastly greater money spent on monitoring parolees with that spent on monitoring police.

“We need to ensure that police departments have the incentive and the means to terminate the recidivist officers,” plus a database to track them so they are not hired by other communities, she said.

Another call participant, Taja-Nia Henderson, a professor at Rutgers Law School and dean of the Rutgers Graduate School, discussed the historical predicates for police abuses today.

Henderson described how policing in the United States has always been linked to property interests and the control of black and brown bodies.

sBy Gretchen Schuldt

​The Milwaukee Police Department's use-of-force policy does not prohibit the chokeholds or the kind of restraint that Minneapolis police used when they killed George Floyd, records show.

​Milwaukee has adopted just three of eight restriction on use of force recommended by Campaign Zero, an effort to reduce killings by police, according to the campaign.

Fire and Police Commission Executive Director Griselda Aldrete, responding to recent protests in Milwaukee, told the Common Council's Public Safety and Health Committee last week that the commission will review the policy.

Milwaukee's use-of-force policy also keeps secret the some of the weapons that the Police Department can use against protesters and others. The policy does not disclose why the public should not know what can of weapons can be turned against it.

The policy says the secret weapons are not lethal, but that cannot be verified without knowing what they are. Tear gas and rubber bullets also have been described as nonlethal, but they can kill or maim.

Campaign Zero has identified eight restrictions associated with fewer killings by police. Of those, eight, Milwaukee has adopted three – establishing a continuum of force, requiring a warning before shooting, and imposing on officers a duty to intervene if they see an excessive use of force by a colleague.

The campaign also says the city does not require that all other alternatives be exhausted before officers are authorized to shoot, but the Fire and Police Commission last year approved language that says that use of force that may result in serious injury or death "may only be used as a last resort."