The Milwaukee Police Department has conducted nearly 1 million officer-initiated traffic and pedestrian stops mostly in poor neighborhoods since 2008 when Chief Edward Flynn started a patrol-oriented police strategy. His strategy is based on numerous stops for minor traffic offenses. These stops are called pretextual, because the department isn't interested so much in traffic safety — the admitted purpose of the stops is to disrupt potential criminal activity or at least get in the heads of the bad guys. The 1 million stops do not include responses to calls for service.
There are other sources of tension between residents and police. In 2012, an ongoing scandal in police District 5 was revealed to the public. Officers had been conducting unauthorized strip searches and illegal body cavity searches for at least two years. Officers were convicted despite apparent efforts to cover up. Also, since 2008 there have been a number of deaths in custody, such as that of Derek Williams, and fatal officer-involved shootings, such as that of Dontre Hamilton. These sorts of deaths have been endemic for decades.
Milwaukeeans should not have to accept second-class police service. We need to dig deeper into the practices of the department — deeper than the department has been willing to do.
The Police Department insists that the public is satisfied with the quality of service it provides. The number of formal complaints to the department or the Fire and Police Commission is down, in part because many people consider complaining useless. Angry citizens and family members of those killed by police are treated sometimes as a nuisance — the leaders of protests are described by the department as opportunistic.
When members of the Milwaukee Common Council made suggestions recently regarding body-mounted cameras, Flynn said the aldermen didn't know what they were talking about. When civil rights groups such as the ACLU of Wisconsin request documents and data under the state open records law, the department stonewalls.
The Police Department is in a state of denial. To deny that tension exists between the police and many residents is not credible.
It is true that in a few neighborhoods the department and community groups and foundations are working together. The outcomes of some of these efforts presumably will be evaluated, as there are federal grants involved.
The Milwaukee Police Department's 2015 budget request is for $254 million or nearly 40% of the city of Milwaukee's entire operating budget. Presumably, the mayor and Common Council will be evaluating what we get for $254 million.
How should we evaluate the department's current police practices? As I have written before in the opinion section of the Journal Sentinel, residents in every neighborhood deserve high-quality unbiased professional police service. No one should be treated as a suspect because of his or her race or the racial characteristics of his or her neighborhood. The police should have a reasonable suspicion that residents have broken or are about to break the law — and not just minor traffic laws — before searching them. There are other factors, but the law requires that police service not be discriminatory on the basis of race or ethnicity.
Evaluating police practices is a legitimate oversight activity for the Fire and Police Commission and the Common Council. They both have the authority to work with the department to look into ways to improve police practices in order to improve police-community relations. As long as the department is in denial, the residents of Milwaukee depend in large measure on the commission and council. The bodies should listen to the public, especially young people.
They should insist that the department is transparent in its dealings so that council members and the public have the information they need to evaluate police practices for bias and other impediments to the kind of police service residents in all neighborhoods deserve.
Chris Ahmuty is executive director of the ACLU of Wisconsin.