(Image by Wes Tank of TankThink)
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R.L. McNeely is the chair of the Felmers O. Chaney Advocacy Board; Jenny Tasse is the director of the Milwaukee Jewish Community Relations Council; Holly Ryan is the president of the Ozaukee County Jail Literacy Program; and Fred Royal is the president of the Milwaukee chapter of the NAACP.
The Felmers O. Chaney Advocacy Board supports the peaceful protests occurring after the murder of George Floyd. We all need to work together for change to our laws and institutional policies.
These changes need to include, at a minimum, legislatively mandated community monitoring and oversight of the police in conjunction with the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission. By “community” representation, we mean civilian representation based on legal and other expertise such as that possessed by local law professors, criminal justice professors, social welfare professionals and seasoned representatives of grassroots organizations.
We do not believe these representatives should be appointed by local or other political figures. Law enforcement’s qualified immunity should be abolished, and police officers need to be trained to deal with ambiguity. Among other requisites, we recommend the licensing of police, just like other professions, wherein a police officer’s license to practice can be revoked, that early warning systems to identify potentially troubled officers be made more effective, and we recommend that tenets of community policing be legislatively adopted.
We also recommend that all shooting and/or excessive force incidents be investigated by the Wisconsin Department of Justice and, to minimize the occurrence of potentially inflammatory events in the first place, that officers be required to issue Citizen Interaction Receipts whenever citizens are subjected to field interviews. The receipts should include the following information: (a) the name of the officer or squad who stopped the person or persons; (b) the name of the person or persons who were stopped; (c) the time the interaction occurred; (d) a brief description as to why the stop was made; if a pat-down search was done; (e) why it was done; (f) when it was done; and (g) who conducted it.
There are many recommendations FCAB could make. These are but a few. But they are a start.
Here is another suggestion: an additional rung on the police career ladder. Currently, new police recruits undergo 27 weeks of training followed by field training. Thereafter, they are considered fully-sworn officers and carry a gun, although they are on probation for 16 months . Because shifts are awarded by seniority, their first assignments are usually the late shift or the night shift.
The consequences of this are that new officers rarely get substantial community experience in their most formative years. This could be remediated by creating an entry-level, unarmed community policing position with the sole responsibility of responding to non-violent dispatches. A 24 month probation at this position would give both the public and commanding officers a good idea about whether a recruit is ready to carry a weapon.
Dividing the police force into unarmed community officers responding to non-violent situations and armed backup officers responding to violent situations makes a lot of sense, and I am certain it is possible for dispatchers to separate non-violent calls from violent calls. Furthermore, this is an incremental change with many options for training unarmed community officers for response to mental health, addiction and juvenile crises. It would also go a long way toward improving police-community relations
Steve Baldwin is right on target.Police Reform is a must . Ex The Camden Police Dept is a Excellent Example.
Good ideas. I would add a requirement that all settlements/judgments for police misconduct over a small nuisance amount are garnished from all police officers paychecks the following year. Nothing like seeing money being taken out of your paycheck to pay for a fellow officer’s misconduct to make officers stop others from behaving badly.