News & Commentary

ACLU of Wisconsin attorney Karyn Rotker responds to CBS 58 video of Whitefish Bay early voting polling station workers asking a voter to show photo ID when registering. The story link has the video.

Attorneys are standing by to answer voters’ questions now through Election Day. The Wisconsin Election Protection voter hotline is available to anyone. Stacy Harbaugh with the ACLU wants voters to know they can call with election-related questions or complaints.

Jail staff are given the exact date of the inspector’s arrival. That’s a practice that doesn’t sit well with an ACLU Wisconsin legal director Larry Dupuis, who told the newspaper many county jails are mismanaged. He said the pre-scheduled inspections allow jails to conceal things that “might otherwise raise concerns” in order to get a clean bill of health from the state. Although the announced inspections are a concern to the ACLU, state lawmakers who chair legislative committees with DOC oversight have nothing to say on the topic.

Chris Ahmuty, executive director of American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, said the proposal is problematic. “Good law enforcement doesn’t have to violate the rights of suspects in order to be effective. Don’t we lose something in terms of privacy and personal autonomy and what we expect to be reasonable police procedures?” Ahmuty said.

Other nonprofit organizations are helping to bolster the humanities for MPS students. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) received a grant of $10,000, down from $30,000 last year. Still, the non-partisan civil-rights organization hopes to serve about the same number of students as last year’s 2,700.

Young people are held in solitary confinement in jails and prisons in across the United States, often for weeks or months at a time, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

One of the first people to speak at the public hearing was Chris Ahmuty, executive director of the ACLU of Wisconsin. He raised an issue that’s been all over the news lately – integrity within the Milwaukee police department. Ahmuty said the proposed city budget wisely allocates $850,000 to improve the police data collection system. Questions have been raised about the accuracy of the department’s crime reporting, and Tuesday, four officers were charged in an investigation of illegal strip searches.

Today, the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office charged four Milwaukee police officers with crimes for conducting illegal body cavity and strip searches.  Allegations against officers in police District 5 caused the Milwaukee Police Department to reassign at least seven officers and a supervisor in March 2012. The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin filed a public records request with the department on March 28, 2012 in an attempt to assess whether the department is following its own strip search and body cavity search procedures. The department has been largely unresponsive to the ACLU of Wisconsin’s repeated requests.

When people are arrested and taken to jail, they don’t expect it to be easy. But a stay at the jail shouldn’t include being denied basic treatment for physical or mental health problems. This is why the ACLU of Wisconsin Foundation and Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee have been working through the courts on behalf of all prisoners in the Milwaukee County Jail and County Correctional Facility-South.