Milwaukee FPC wants to talk about talking, but community members instead demand action on vehicle pursuit deaths

Community members fill the room at the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission meeting on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. Photograph by Amanda Merkwae.

By Alexandria Staubach

Almost three dozen members of the public turned up at a Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission meeting last week to discuss an item nowhere on the agenda.
 
The FPC wanted to talk about its procedure for public comment at meetings and had invited representatives from Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and others to publicly comment on FPC file 212211, a communication from the commission regarding public comment at meetings.
 
While some community members highlighted suggestions for improving communication between the FPC and the public, most instead used their time to discuss the volume of high-speed pursuits that have resulted in innocent bystander fatalities this year.
 
A crash the day before Thursday’s meeting killed a mother and her two children at North 35th Street and West Vliet Street.
 
Nine people have lost their lives from high-speed police chases this year—six of them innocent bystanders.
 
What was actually on the agenda: a change in the FPC’s public comment policy. For years, items that were not formally noticed on the commission’s agenda were not up for discussion and could not be commented on by members of the FPC.
 
While the public comment policy is still evolving, members of the public who register in advance will be given five minutes to speak, up from the previous two-minute limit. Also, FPC members will be allowed to address the topics raised, even if they were not on the agenda.
 
FPC Executive Director Leon Todd said the “potential” improvements to the public comment policy came from considering recommendations in the Milwaukee Turners’ 2024 white paper. The Turners issued the white paper after observing the commission’s meetings over the course of a year.
 
Nothing legally prevented the FPC from having such a policy in the past. Todd said “there is no legal prohibition” addressing nonagenda public comments at a meeting, “so long as they take no official action” and keep the discussion to the public comment section of the proceedings.
 
In addition to using the new policy on comment time and topics at Thursday’s meeting, the commission rolled out a new website for community members to register in advance for future meetings.
 
The website encourages people to “be clear and respectful,” advises them to avoid sharing confidential information, and instructs that testimony should relate “to the FPC’s role in oversight, policy, recruitment, discipline, or accountability” of the Milwaukee Police Department, Milwaukee Fire Department, or Department of Emergency Communications.
 
Most attendees seemed receptive of change, but some highlighted that expanded time alone would not fix the communications dynamics at FPC meetings.
 
“I see you all engaging earnestly,” said community advocate and FPC meeting regular Ron Jansen. “The structure undermines the effort,” he continued, because the public comment would still occur at the top of a meeting.
 
“We all give our comment and show all our cards, and then the police come up here and call us liars over and over again,” Jansen said. The format “doesn’t give us a fighting chance to adjust our message,” he said.
 
Following the FPC meeting, WJI spoke with BLOC member J. Robinson by phone about how community members co-opted the meeting time to discuss their priority issue of police pursuits.
 
Robinson said although they had originally intended to speak on the public comment agenda item, the “reckless driving issue was more important,” and MPD’s pursuit policy was “doing more harm than good.” About the changes in communication policy, Robinson told WJI “it was better to be able to speak to the issues.”
 
According to the FPC's 2024 vehicle pursuit report, 71% of Milwaukee police chases in 2024 reached speeds in excess of 75 miles per hour, up from 66% in 2023.
 
A decade ago, the percentage was just 22%. Even during the height of COVID, which is widely regarded as exacerbating reckless driving, the percentage was 58%. Police most frequently engage in high-speed pursuits in response to reckless driving.

The circumstances permitting police pursuits are found in MPD’s Standard Operating Procedure 660. Public outcry about pursuits that resulted in injury resulted in a restricted policy that took effect in 2010. That policy brought pursuit numbers to their all-time low of just 50 pursuits in 2012.

In 2017, though, the MPD expanded officers’ ability to pursue vehicles in response to reckless driving. That policy remains in effect today, with a modification last year that limits when they can initiate a chase over drug activity. 

“As it stands, SOP 660 does not benefit this community,” said Milwaukee Alliance representative Kayla Patterson at Thursday’s meeting.
 
“The last few months highlight gross incompetence” and a “general shameful agenda prioritizing property over lives,” Patterson said. She cautioned that “if the turnout in the room is any indication, the community is getting restless.”
 
Antoher speaker, Tiffany Stark, said her child’s father became paralyzed from the neck down as an innocent bystander to a police pursuit. “We want to blame the criminal, but we have a policy that is harming innocent people," she said.
 
Janaisa Rhodes lost her partner as an innocent bystander to a pursuit earlier this year. She appeared for public comment with her 2-year-old son. “You guys are supposed to be serving and protecting us, but you’re doing a lot of the damage,” she said.
 
Public comment was not just criticism. Some speakers offered suggestions and potential solutions.
 
“Property crimes should not qualify for pursuit,” suggested community member Brian Verdin, who also talked about using darts, meaning tracker technology shot at cars to apprehend suspects without pursuit.
 
Concerned citizen Alex Larson referenced the 2024 vehicle pursuit report to highlight that the apprehension rate from a police chase is only 49%. “It’s a coin flip” that lives are being lost over, he said.
 
Larson asked whether the FPC knew how much tax money had been paid by the city to settle innocent bystander claims over the years. Knowing the taxpayer impact and the lives SOP 660 has cost over the years could have a significant impact, he suggested.
 
The FPC did not know the answer to Larson’s question. However, under the new comment policy Todd was able to say it would be good data, which he intended to look into.
 
Per the 2024 vehicle pursuit report, the actual number of pursuits was down just slightly from 2023 (957 compared to 1,081), but maximum speeds were up, and a slightly greater percentage of pursuits resulted in crashes.

Figure from the 2024 City of Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission Vehicle Pursuit Report.

​In 2024, 26 pursuits resulted in an injury to an officer, 52 pursuits resulted in an injury to an innocent bystander or third party, and 164 pursuits resulted in an injury to the person being pursued—each a slight increase from 2023. 

WJI discussed the FPC's 2023 vehicle pursuit report here.