This is the police officer discussion and the approximately last 2 hours of the meeting. Fear and perception vs. fact and we need data people can use to decide how many police we need.
Part one is here.
You can watch along here if you’d like – skip ahead about 4 hours:
Amendment 2a – Add 6.0 Police Officers/Offset by multiple reductions including Staff Payraise (3.25 ->3.0%), cut digital equity, reduce BRT funding for studies
Henak, Tierney sponsors
Add 6.0 FTE Police Officers to the Police Department budget and appropriate $335,830 for salaries, benefits, and initial issue for the officers to begin in the Department’s May 2020 Academy.
- Make the following reductions totaling $343,061 in the General Fund:
- Reduce the pay increase for General Municipal Employees from 3.25% to 3.0%: GF Savings=$208,061
- Remove funding for Digital Equity: GF Savings=$20,000
- Reduce the General Fund subsidy to Metro by reducing funding for BRT Studies: GF Savings=$115,000
Analysis:
The proposed amendment creates six new Police Officer positions to begin in the May 2020 academy. The 2020 Executive Budget includes full funding for 310 Police Officer positions; if adopted, the authorized strength will increase to 316 Police Officer positions. The Executive Budget also includes annualized costs for four Police Officer positions that were funded in 2015 by a COPS grant ($362,000).
Nine officer positions were added to the Police Department budget in 2018; one of these was the final position associated with the opening of the Midtown District Station. An additional officer position was added in 2019 to replace an officer position that was upgraded to a Detective Sergeant for the Investigative Services Unit (focusing on human trafficking initiatives).
The total annual cost of the proposed 6 officer positions is $536,400. The cost to fully fund the positions in 2021 is $200,590.
The amendment proposes funding these increases by a variety of reductions to General and Library fund expenditures totaling $343,061. These savings will be ongoing.
One of the proposed reductions is reducing the 2020 pay increase for General Municipal Employees. If adopted, a 5.25% pay increase would be needed if the policy goal is to achieve pay parity in one year. The projected cost (General and Library funds) of achieving pay parity one year is approximately $4.5 million (these costs are not included in the projected annualized cost of the amendment).
Two additional squad cars and related equipment to support these positions will require an amendment to the 2020 Capital Budget; the anticipated cost of the vehicles and equipment is $118,600.
Motion
Alder Zach Henak moves 2a. Seconded by Carter?
Discussion
Henak says that they have gotten a broad outcry from the residents of the city of Madison that additional officers is something that they value. He says this is needed because of the outcry and the morale in the police department.
Michael Tierney thanks Henak. He has heard a lot about crime rates and “all that stuff” and he pretty much throws that out the window. In the East District we have about 55,000 people, he thinks its the largest district in the city. At any one time they have 4-10 officers on patrol. One of his concerns is that when the roving gangs of juveniles were doing the car break ins and that type of things, one of the streets in his neighborhood got hit. When they talked to the police officers the officers weren’t aware the neighborhood was there. I know the officers were trying to convey its a safe neighborhood, but it make them question their confidence in the police and the ability of the ability to keep their staff safe. He says he brought comments on Facebook to the attention of the police about firearms and what they would do if they found a kid in their house or garage. His greatest fear is not about an officer involved shooting regarding a juvenile, his fear is that there will be a juvenile shot by a homeowner. He wants more police to send a signal to that the police are there and to have let them do their jobs. He’s worried about the hotheads that will potentially act on their own. The other reason he wants police that have nothing to do with crime rates or getting tough on crime. A week ago Captain Nelson emailed about what officers were going through due to the drowning death of a 7 year old and a juvenile that had completed suicide and that’s a lot to deal with. He can’t imagine what that is like and you need time to step back and cope with that and be away from the job and not create a situation where other officers would be taxed to the extreme. You need staffing levels so when things like that arise officers can take the time they need to recover. It’s important to send a message that we are watching out for them and we are putting police out there to watch over them and to have enough staff so when horrific tragedies are encountered they have time to cope.
Skidmore supports the amendment, he has been supporting public safety for 20 years and he has a close relationship with many police and firefighters. He was disappointed but not surprised when Damien quit. He’s getting out of policing just like Natalie Diebold did. There are many stories like that. It’s disheartening. The need for more officers, he doesn’t agree with people who pull numbers out of a hat or the internet, he chooses to get his information from the department using credible studies for staffing. He believes we are short. He didn’t agree with taking police out of proactive areas for patrol. On any given day he wonders when the next incident will be in the 9th district. There is a palpable fear, people ask when we will get more cops and why are they always getting pulled downtown? People are changing their behavior. He has friends that are “little old ladies” and when they go walking they are packing. They have interrupted burglaries at their house in his neighborhood and they are afraid. He believes they have a reason to be afraid. He fears a stand your ground incident. Nick Cleary a fine officer, a former neighborhood officer west, was reassigned to patrol. He was a liaison for Tree Lane apartments. They are down to 8 reactive calls for service a week. That is scary if they feel that is good. There is a neighbor that says he has a loaded 12-gauge by his front door and god help the person that crosses his front door. That is what is waiting to happen. That is the result of not adequate staffing. He’s been watching it happen year officer and we’re poised to not have enough money for officers. They hear it year after year that they don’t have money.
Carter says she can’t support this, they can’t reduce the increase for city workers, they live in all our districts, their our neighbors, our children’s friends, we see them walk their dogs etc. Public workers don’t get the annual bonus that some of my friends get at the end of the year, a nice $5,000 check. They might not even get the envelope. She says this is the only way they can guarantee that all the public workers get an increase and to bring people up to $15. We talk about getting the minimum wage to $15 for everyone else, but its time we look at our own house. Insurance co-pays go up, medicine goes up, food goes up, everything goes up and if you’re making less than $15, you still have to pay the bills and move on. She says its a disgrace. She understands where Tierney is coming from, but these are the people that keep this city running. These are the people that get up at 2:00 in the morning and plow streets, pick up garbage, that give us an aerial of Truman Olson for the 5th time and they don’t say that they did it 4 other times. They help us do our jobs, we need to help them do their job. As a public worker this is the only way they can get a raise and she doesn’t want to support anything that reduces their raise even tho it is .25, she wants them to get the 3.25
Questions of Staff
Henak asks the Finance Director, Dave Schmideicke what the revenue increase has been in the past 5 years. Schmiedicke says the general fund and the levy limit it has been at or below 2% per year. Henak asks if personnel is a large share of the budget. Yes. Henak asks if it will be sustainable to give raises twice that of the annual revenue. Schmidicke says sustainable is a broad term and since levy limits have been put into place clearly we have had to turn to other revenue sources or costs haven’t gone up as much as they thought. Each budget has challenges that have to be met to address the priorities of the mayor and council. There is clearly a mismatch between the rate of growth in spending for those priorities vs what is allowed under the levy limits and other limitations imposed by the state. Making up the difference requires a series of decisions to have sustainability in terms of delivery of services to get the results the residents expect. What that means going forward will be another series of decisions for the mayor and this body.
Discussion
Henak says this is important to him because in talking to command staff and the MPPOA, the command staff has worked to put forward an initiative to increase diversity and retention by looking at people coming back from FMLA to come back part-time. We currently don’t allow for part-time. MPPOA was looking at it and it looks like it is going to get voted down because they don’t feel they can weather losing the equivalent of 2 officers by allowing it for half the people that are asking for it. 12 people have asked to participate in the pilot, they looked at using 6 of them. It has come under scrutiny because of the inability to take time off and get training. The police are looking to increase retention and that is being scrutinized heavily because they don’t have enough officers to make that happen.
Furman thanks Carter for talking about pay equity. A speaker earlier said that this budget doesn’t show we believe in MPD, he strongly disagrees. He appreciates Henak’s questions about revenue increases at 2%. The police department is seeing a 6.5% increase going into the 2020 budget. That would be even higher if they had not taken away the Parking Enforcement Officer expense and moved it into the parking utility, that would have been another $900,000. That is the highest increase in the police budget in the past 10 years. The next highest was in 2018 where they got $3.7M. Going into 2020 a 5 million dollar or 6.5% increase when we heard on average our revenue is growing 2% is an incredibly large increase when we don’t have a lot of money to work with. We aren’t neglecting the police department, we are funding them by a large amount. He passed around his blog post that went into detail about staffing. He says they allow the police to over hire above the 479 officer count and in 2016 that over hire number was 17, going into 2020 that number is double at 34 and in 2019 it was 28. There are 6 additional positions that are being added to MPD funding, I understand that doesn’t help with staffing levels for 2020, but it is money that we are paying, $56,000 per position, 6 additional positions for the over hire so there are enough people in the academy class for resignations and retirement. He understands and respects the department would like to see more. He says they need to spend time on retention and he has spoken to them about it. He can’ support taking money from employees raises, digital equity or the BRT studies. MPD’s budget is going up a significant amount in 2020.
Skidmore asks Chief Patterson to address Alder Furman’s blog post and where the $5M went and why there are so many prospective officers going into the academy and the necessity for overhire because they are leaving. I think Wahl is answers (I’m only listening to the audio) and says the $5M is for the wage increase that was negotiated with the MPPOA. There were also a number of positions that were grant funded through federal grants and the grants have a three year term and then the positions come on to the levy. That is the reason for the increase, there is no service increases. The overhire is our mechanism built into the budget to address attraction throughout the year and to address staffing levels. Increases is the overhire catching up with the retention issues they have had over the past three years. Prior to 3 years ago their departures were consistent, in the past 2 years they have seen a spike and he’s hopeful that they have caught up with the current academy class.
Skimore says that if you haven’t been listening, one of the reasons they are having trouble retaining people is because of the poor morale. He’s not the only one who has noticed a spike in the officers that have resigned and left policing rather than say. It’s been the rules that officers sign up to be officers for life and then they retire, that’s been changing and its been attributed to many things but morale is the big one.
Tag Evers won’t be supporting the amendment and the alder to his left (Carter) gave one of the most powerful speeches that he has heard since he’s been on the council and he thanks her for that. He’s in distress because he doesn’t believe that anyone is pulling numbers out of thin air or off the internet when they are talking about the fact that the rate of crime in our city has been decreasing. People have fears, they have perceptions, but they aren’t necessarily based on fact. He will never, ever vote for something out of the idea that someone is packing a gun and prepared to shoot somebody in a Trayvon Martin kind of incident. Crime is decreasing in the city, we’re not overrun by crime. Those are the facts. But there are perceptions and fears, but they are not based in fact. So what are they based on, sometimes they are based on prejudice. We are in a city that deal a lot with racial disparities and that is a big challenge. He can’t support adding more officers on the basis of fear, he can only do so on the basis of fact. Investments in public health are as important as public safety. The investments we have made in the Focus Interruption Coalition (FIC) had perhaps the highest return on investment in the reductions of violent crime in the city. It’s arguable that the reductions in homicides in the city are directly connected to the FIC. Let’s be careful before we contribute to a narrative that crime is rampant in the city. He attended a fundraiser for the Madison Parks Foundation recently and Terrance Thompson form the Warner Park Community Center introduced a young teenage employee of his who goes to West High. And talking to a well-heeled white audience, she spoke frankly. You’re worried about people breaking into and stealing your cars, then invest in this teen center and teen intervention programs. Our investments in public health, have every bit as much of an impact on our public safety as anything else they do in the city.
Shiva Bidar also thanks Alder Carter and she doesn’t think because we have been given tools from Act 10 that we didn’t agree with, that we should now use those tools. They also heard testimony saying this type of amendment pits city employees against each other and she heard from all the unions that none of them want to see pay equity be affected by any of the amendments that they make. It sends a negative message about pitting a group of employees against another group.
Henak says that if we were serious about it this year it would need to be a 4.5% increase.
Levy Limit Update
Schmidicke says that adoption of the amendment would increase the amount available under the levy to $143,000.
Vote
- Aye – Skidmore, Tierney, Henak
- No – Moreland, Rohrer, Rummel, Verveer, Abbas, Albouras, Baldeh, Bidar, Carter, Evers, Foster, Furman, Harrington-McKinney, Heck, Kemble, Lemmer, Martin
Amendment 2b – Add 3.0 Police Officers / Transfer Expenditures to the Capital Budget
Alders Verveer, Albouras Harrington-McKinney, Lemmer, Carter, Tierney
Add 3.0 FTE Police Officers to the Police Department budget and appropriate $168,000 for salaries, benefits, and initial issue for the officers to begin in the Department’s May 2020 Academy.
Transfer the following expenditures from the operating budget to the capital budget: Planning Division: Funding for Planning Studies added to the budget via FC Amendment #19 ($45,000).
Analysis
The proposed amendment creates three new Police Officer positions to begin in the May 2020 academy. The 2020 Executive Budget includes full funding for 310 Police Officer positions; if adopted, the authorized strength will increase to 313 Police Officer positions. The Executive Budget also includes annualized costs for four Police Officer positions that were funded in 2015 by a COPS grant ($362,000).
Nine officer positions were added to the Police Department budget in 2018; one of these was the final position associated with the opening of the Midtown District Station. An additional officer position was added in 2019 to replace an officer position that was upgraded to a Detective Sergeant for the Investigative Services Unit (focusing on human trafficking initiatives).
The total annual cost of the proposed 3 officer positions is $268,200. The cost to fully fund the positions in 2021 is $100,200.
The amendment also proposes transferring expenditures for planning studies from the operating budget to the capital budget within the Planning Division.
An additional squad car and related equipment to support these positions will require an amendment to the 2020 Capital Budget; the anticipated cost of the vehicle and equipment is $59,300.
Motion
Mike Verveer moves adoption. He says this is the amendment that was brought to the Finance Committee but was not recommended to you by the Fianance Committee. He thanks the colleagues that reached out to sponsor, especially for the recommendations about how to fill the gap based on the recalculation of the levy limit. He says this is 3 officer using the levy limit capacity with the possible addition of $45,000 in funding for planning division studies that was added at the Finance Committee. This doesn’t involve painful cuts unlike the others. He believes in a perfect world this amendment would be fore more than 3 officers. He believes they need more positions and that is demonstrated by data that is calculated by our police department annually and is reflected by expectations placed on the department by the community. They just mentioned the perceptions about safety in our community and they say perception is reality and he does believe that there is widespread belief that at best city hall isn’t providing the level of police service our community expects and deserves. At worst we seem indifferent to crime in the community because of the budget before them tonight. He realizes a lot is perceptions of crime and quality of life concerns. You all talk to your constituents like he does, maybe downtown residents are different but his believe that public safety, because of what they perceive, through media accounts, through experiences in daily lives and so forth, is not being adequately addressed by the council. There is a perception that we are not fully funding the police department. Part of that is because the constituents that reach out to him attend regular neighborhood meetings and hear from the cops themselves about what they are experiencing. Why neighborhood resource officers are being cut and taken off of proactive community based policing to go to patrol for one month at a time. These are realities and all you have to do is talk to the cops. He hopes no one was shocked by the testimony tonight, the morale is rock bottom, these are unprecedented time, the reason they have recruitment and retention issues is because of the unprecedented shortage of officers, particularly in the patrol function. He says the department is nationally known for its community oriented policing going back to the days of Chief Couper. The command staff has made the difficult decision to strip away the ranks of specialty units to fill the shortages in patrol services. We have amendments that will get to traffic safety, do we not believe the police play an important role in traffic safety and enforcement. They did away with their afternoon enforcement safety team in 2017 because of shortages in the department ranks. He doesn’t think more cops needs to mean more arrest and incarceration, but more cops walking the streets does seem to deter crime and reduce the need to arrest anyone. For active community policing, to have a CORE team and safety education units are being slowly eroded because of the shortages in the ranks. He thinks this is an untenable situation and he never thought he’d see the day that there would be fraternity members here in support of their neighborhood officer. He was surprised but shouldn’t be. Times are tough for our officers and that is why they are resigning at record pace and the least they can do is show support by adding 3 additional positions, he knows it won’t do much at all to do with the shortages and it certainly won’t do anything immediately. They will be in the academy and training for almost a year, so it won’t have an immediate effect but it will send an immediate boost and morale to the officers to all members of the department, commissioned and civilian alike, if they provide the additional position. The official police agency request was for 10 additional officers and this was only 3. The last amendment which he wishes he could support, but he couldn’t find a way to support more than 3 officers, was for 6, the agency says they need 10. We know there is a shortage of 31 in patrol services. The numbers are there, the realities are there. Just talk to the cops and they will tell you what they are going through. He thinks it is wonderful the mayor included $150,000 for annual wellness and mental health checks for every commissioned and civilian employee in her budget. That is wonderful to provide that supplemental funding given the traumatic nature of that work. But he would argue that if they want to contribute to employee wellness that we start providing the strength that they deserve and need. We go to priority only calls for service on a regular basis, over 10% of the time. They see it almost every day. They all expect to be attaching the town of Madison in a couple years and they need to start thinking now about how they will be providing public safety services to the former town residents and their stakeholders. He says there are many sound argument for why they need these positions, but think about the officer’s testimony and the interactions they have with police.
McKinney is supporting this amendment and its only 3. It burns her that it is only 3. She heard tonight this is a safe community and we can’t make funding decisions based on not fact or fear. The reality is that is what is existing in our community. Our population is growing and becoming more diverse and community policing is supportive. The officers named tonight were neighborhood officers that walk the beat and go into their pockets and give time they are not reimbursed for or paid for. Residents, black and brown, run up to the car and greet those officers. The officers know their families, know their names. She has been to a lot of funerals where black males have been killed and shot by police. That narrative is rampant. But she has also been in those funerals where the officers came and cried with families as well. This outcry from our community. It’s easy to say the police have the largest budget, but we also have to look at perception. Perception is the ability to see, hear or become aware of something through the senses. She was in Chicago this week, a bad part of Chicago, when they drove her on to the street and said “there goes a blue light special” and there were police cars lining the street and she wondered where she was going to park. The perception of her being safe was altered because her perception kept her from sleeping at night. When you look at only 3 police being added, and not just in downtown Madison, but also the far west side, the perception is that more police means more safety. It is perception yes, but the reality of it is that this budget has put so much into it, we approved a $40 wheel tax but yet we cannot approve of 3-6 officers. What will happen as we continue to say no more police we are going to get to a point as we grow and add areas, we are going to have to do more than 3 or 6, because they have not consistently kept up. Public safety is public safety. She is supporting the amendment because when she looks over the city of Madison it is the perception that is prevalent by a large section of our communities, regardless of where they live, is that there is no support for the police. That is not a perception we want to move forward on. Police doesn’t mean there will be no crime in Madison, that’s not what it is all about. it’s about saying to our community that we take public safety seriously. We can’t give you all you want, we can’t give you 10 police but at least we can consider this amendment. She urges her colleagues to take a breath and look at the constituents across the city and say at least we can support our constituents and police and do the minimum amount of 3.
Christian Albouras says they have all heard form their constituents that public safety is a priority and they expect them to respond accordingly and at this current juncture they aren’t there. The amendment before them is amicable to some fo the concerns that alders have in terms of not taking pools of money to fund this. They have also heard from the department about why more officers are needed. The fact is we are a growing community and basic services need to grow with that expansion as we grow as a city – its the natural course of doing business of the city. Officers aren’t able to get away and get the perspective and reprieve they need after doing their difficult and honorable work. Our officers are being asked to go to complex situation and its important that they have good perspective and customer services is not diminished in any way shape or form and split second decisions are not compromised. He know retention is a big issue, he agrees, but he also thinks that staffing needs to be addressed, its a fact atet hey are on priority calls on a level that he is uncomfortable with. When you call the police it is for an urgent matter that you want a timely response to, that is a big concern they have heard and he expects personally. Traffic safety is one of the biggest issues he hears about, and he believes officers play a role in improving that. He has constituent requests that require police resources and time. He believes it is more than just perceptions. He validates everyone’s feeling on this council and everyone brings a unique perspective and they do their best to be principled alders and listen to their constituents and he knows that some of his colleagues have skepticism towards police and police culture – while he supports adding more officers to the force for the reasons he articulated, and as they have seen in the emails and public comment. But he also expects that officers do their work in an objective manner in a way that doesn’t profile anybody. He says this is something we can lead on, expanding basic services, but also that we can champion social justice at the same time, they are not mutually exclusive. He hopes they support the amendment and they can provide more officers to be responsive to constituents. Potential life saving resources and programming that would have been taken out of other budget amendments isn’t here. This is nimble enough to accommodate those concerns and other amendments. He hopes people on the fence will vote in support, he thanks everyone for what the do on the council and asks they support the amendment.
Foster says this is a good amendment, crafted with a lot of thought and compared to the amendments we went through it does a good job of not making massive cuts to other important investments. He says this is complicated, he’s not going to support it. He thinks the motivation here is to address fear and he thinks that is a bad policy to commit $270,000 of our operating fund on an annual basis to try to send a message that we hear our residents or calm fears that are not based in reality and data. He is open to increasing funding for police, and we have an opportunity to get to the bottom of what are appropriate staffing levels. He says this has been a difficult conversation for years in part because of the former chief and the rhetoric that was put out there in the pubic sphere and that created a division that we are still trying to get over. But he won’t just vote for something to say I know people are concerned and this will help them sleep at night if he doesn’t actually believe that is the best way to invest those $270,000. At this point he does not. During his campaign he heard fears about safety, but that was speeding cars, having garages and cars being broken into and having drug dealing in cars in front of their house. He met early on with now retired Captain Snyder of the East District and he never once suggested the solution would be to hire more police, he told me the solution is to lock their cars. The idea that we hire 3, 6 or 12 more police and somehow those issues of crime will go away or go down doesn’t make sense to him. If we are honest and say that we hear you and we’re going to hire more police, what he heard from Captain Snyder was we can’t fix this, its not a policing problem. What are the root cause analysis. How are we going to deal with teenagers doing the things and the choices they make because of their life situations. Hiring more police won’t solve that problem for us. In terms of speeding cars, he remembers a Tenney Lapham meeting when they were prioritizing traffic safety and an officer and traffic engineering staff were there and the officer said very clearly that they can’t . . . this is wack-a-mole. You can say there is speeding on this corner, we show up, we can be there for a day and write tickets and we’ll go to another spot and do the same thing and they will just keep doing that and there is no amount of police that will solve our traffic safety problems. The solutions that actually work and that are cost effective are not investing in enforcement and that is what they are trying to do with the Vision Zero amendment that is in the capital budget, but this is not the solution to the traffic safety issues. And to do it and say maybe it will help is not being honest with residents. The issues around morale are really significant and he does believe there are real issues there and they could be related to staffing as well, he just doesn’t have enough information there to really understand what all the issues are. Alder Furman raised some good issues. They haven’t gotten enough information or maybe they haven’t done enough analysis, but adding 3, 6 or 12 police won’t fix morale, he’s not convinced of that at this point. In terms of a staffing model, they need to see data outside of what the police department is sharing with us. We do need to have a better understanding of what other communities staffing models look like, how ours compares and not just cities selected by our department, but we do need to have really objective information to decide if we are short or not and why we have so many officers that are not part of patrol. To him it seems like a really good idea to pull officers out of the specialty units and into patrol to be able to staff to our peak demands. In former jobs he had larger numbers of staff he had to deal with and they had peak moments – interpreter staffing – you can’t staff to the peaks, but you also have all these other things you need to accomplish in the department – written translations, trainings, etc. All the resources he had available to him were used to cover peak coverage needs and in down time would be able to work on these other things, he’s not an expert in police staffing but the idea that they have a large number of their force that is not part of the group that can cover the peak needs doesn’t make sense to him. He’s open to learning more about that, but there needs to be a much stronger case made if we are going to continue increasing police officers year after year and he doesn’t believe that case is “residents are afraid” and we need to give them more cops to make them less afraid. He says we need to take this on in the coming year, the call for more police is not going away and if we’re not going to add more police we need to understand why and choose to not do that or do it. But they need more information and then having a budget that doesn’t include them and then dealing with this kind of situation today is not a good way to make decisions.
Syed Abbas says this is a question of efficiency and productivity, when you are under stress you are not motivated, you have too much work to do, workload is 11% increased since 2017 to 2018 and on top of that people have a normal life. The police have families too and have to be away from their families and work extra hours and put in a lot of effort to engage the community and solve critical issues. When he was Co-chair of Eken Park Neighborhood Association he met with Officer Dexheimer, a community police officer, an artist and a police officer and created a relationship with the community, knowing each other and they worked together as a neighborhood association. They tried to engage with disconnected community that need help. Community policing is really important. If a community police officer was removed from his neighborhood, how would he feel? He would like to have community policing and more patrol. He heard a lot from his constituents on E. Washington about drag racing and he hears it at his house further away. His understanding is that state law won’t allow them to put up cameras, if they had those it would help to change people’s behaviors. If we don’t have those we still need an enforcement mechanism and that is where they need to rely on the officers. He still stresses productivity and efficiency – when there is too much workload and I cannot rely on my colleagues and there is no additional support, he tends to make mistakes. Police job is really critical, a mistake can be harmful, have adverse impacts later – and we need to think deeply into that to see how we can help our police think through productivity, efficiency, community policing . . . three officers is a minimum they can do. Northside is facing a lot of trouble, he went to the police station with a constituent about prostitution and drugs – some critical issues and the amount of time they spent with those residents and the communication through community policing was incredible. He encourages them to vote for this amendment because they are not reducing money for community work, this is well written and there is no reason to oppose this, he asks to be added as a co-sponsor.
Marsha Rummel is agnostic, she assumes the votes are there and she appreciates that the sponsors didn’t do the attack mode that riled everybody up, so thank you for that. She is still struggling as she has for many years with what is community policing in Madison. She used to believe in the fairytale, and her name was officer Jean Papalia and everyone on Willy Street knew her name, she know all the kids and business owners. Her neighborhood grew out of having a neighborhood officer. That is a special position but the skill set should be for every officer in Madison so you say that’s Dex or Lester Moore or whomever it is. We need those people but they are here for two years and then not connected to anything that she does. You go to a neighborhood meeting and if you miss a couple meetings the person who comes to report is a brand new person. She doesn’t know what it is any more. She hears the thing about morale, that is meaningful to her and they need to look at that. To look at that we need to look at what is the relationship of proactive to reactive policing. Apparently its 50/50 and that is stressing the patrol officers out because they don’t get tot the more interesting work because they are on the priority calls. She asks the Chief if they look at that. Is that a realistic relationship. She says that it seems that these specialty units have grown over the years because of Federal COP grants, they give us mental health officer, and then we have officers with specialized skills who may or may not be able to do other things – she doesn’t want that any more. They won’t grant us money for patrol officers because that is not trendy and we’re stuck with the federal priorities as they trickle down to our level. When she hears about public safety, she hears the fear thing, but in her district she hears more about traffic or how people are drinking too much in the public realm or getting assaulted on Willy St or the bike path. Her district doesn’t get away from all of this. Her second question is, before she turns it over to the mayor and the chief, the town of Madison is going to come in to our city, when do we start planning, when do we start accounting for those officers. Are we going to use a 1.6 or 1.9 ratio. What model are we going to use. 3 people might help that morale question and maybe that is worth it, but it doesn’t make a significant dent. She asks the chief if he would change the pro-active 50/50?
Questions of Staff
Vic Wahl, the Interim Police Chief says the 50/50 reactive/proactive split is not reality, that is the goal. That is the staffing model and how they project their needs, but they have never been at that number and the 2018 analysis showed that they were the furthest from that they have ever been. Proactive/reactive captures part of it. He says another way to look at it is obligated and non obligated time and the whole premise of having patrol officers is that if you call 911 with an emergency there are officers available and they are not all busy but the higher the obligated or reactive time gets the less likely the officer in your area will be available or any officer is available. That impacts their visibility, their response time, wait times, etc. The relationships between officers and the community are things they strive for and those relationships are expected of not just neighborhood officers but they want patrol officers to have too. Sometimes they are able to do that but its difficult when the reactive or obligated number gets so high that they are going from call to call to call. You don’t have time to build those relationships and to engage with the community. The Town of Madison they have been planning and working on that for many years – there has been discussion about moving the time table up and they are submitting things along with the rest of the City agencies in Nov to the mayor and to the finance department and they have some unique issues in terms of their hiring timeline and the police and fire commission and academies that they will have to deal with and that will all be part of what they submit but there has been a lot of work already done on that.
Rummel asks about the mandatory thing on who is obligated, or do they have authority to change those ratios? Wahl says the ratio is based on actual work load. They take a years worth of data through the CAD through dispatch and they look at how much time their officers spend doing the work, on calls, doing reports, tagging evidence. It’s actual work load and its nothing they can control unless they decide to stop going to certain kinds of calls. The work load is an input to them. That along with staffing levels and leave time is what results in the reactive/proactive time.
Rummel says that under the previous mayor he made a point to reach out to the Town of Madison and one of the sticky issues is whether we would just take all their police officers and we said no because we would want them to go through the academy. Is she remembering that correctly. Alders nod their heads in agreement. Mayor points out the Chief is nodding too. But there would be some we would take too. So at some point we might get some of those officers. Wahl says they will look at workload and estimate what their staffing needs are and that will be an independent determination and they will give an opportunity for Town of Madison officers that are interested to go through an accelerated version of our hiring process. The PFC has adopted rules to do an accelerated hiring process and in the even that we choose some or all of those folks to come join our department they would go through an accelerated academy. Rummel asks if that is 2023? Or sooner. Wahl says October fo 2022, but they will have to be well ahead of that because it will take time to do the selection process and accelerated academy. They will have other needs to have staff on before that end date to deal with other mechanics of the transfer.
Call the Question and Vote
Carter calls the question (moves to end debate). There is a second. That vote fails. Roll call has been requested, it takes a 2/3 vote.
- Aye: Skidmore, Tierney, Baldeh, Bidar, Carter, Harrington-McKinney, Henak, Lemmer, Martin
- No: Moreland, Rohrer, Rummel, Verveer, Abbas, Albouras, Evers, Foster, Furman, Heck, Kemble
Discussion
Rebecca Kemble asks what the impact on the levy would be
Levy Limit Update
Schmidicke says if the amendment were adopted there would be $13,000 left before reaching the maximum allowable levy.
Discussion
Kemble says it was a rough weekend for her family – on Friday you may have read Joel Despains incident report about footsteps in the snow. That was her mom and her sister were burglarized while they slept in their beds and their deaf dog did not wake up and did not bark. And they had a number of items stolen from them and that is because they left door unlocked. And she left her back door unlocked. They live next door to each other and they leave their doors unlocked. They are not doing that any more. They called the police, the police in the north district responded immediately, found the footsteps in the snow, the detective was right on it, very responsive, the suspect was taken into custody within 45 minutes. But it was really scary for her sister and her mom. This young man was wearing an ankle monitoring bracelet because he was out on bail for burglarizing other people’s home. Though the tracking of that, the detective told her mom and sister that he was in the house for a half an hour. So, you can imagine how they felt. Scared. They spent all morning dealing with their credit cards and passwords and all the things you have to do when you’ve been robbed and getting updates from the detective which were really appreciated. They were talking about what could have prevented this – locking the door – like Alder Foster heard from Captain Snyder. Locking the door. Locking their house. And then they started thinking about the young man who did this and what was going to happen to him and the more they learned about him, he’s been charged with 6 counts of bail jumping and one misdemeanor bail jumping. This is someone who has done this criminal activity time and time again. What her 87 year old mom was thinking about was she wished that program that Brandi is doing around Urban Triage to support families in the community to talk to people who are going the wrong way and get them more integrated in the community – I wish there was something like that in this kids neighborhood. She wasn’t saying I wish there were more cops. She knows more police would not have prevented what happened to them. What she wanted, and her sister to, they were talking about FIC for more than just homicides. What if there was FIC (Focused Interruption Coalition) for these kinds of crimes. What if the community capacity was so robust that people couldn’t get away with that because the grandma’s would be on them. My family members were victims of scary crimes, unknown dude with a criminal record in their bedrooms. And that is what they were talking about. That was Friday morning, the next night her husband and her were on their cab shift and I hear over the dispatch radio – Cab 27 do you need assistance, how many injuries, what’s the nature of the injuries. He was in a head on collision while stopped at a traffic light at Atwood and Fair Oaks when a car came speeding around the corner at him and hit him head on. He had a red light but the oncoming had a green light. The police and the ambulance responded pretty immediately, he appreciated the help he got, but extra police aren’t going to prevent that. We have an amendment in the capital budget that will fund engineering and design solutions to prevent that kind of thing. This one thing my family is really traumatized by serious public safety issues, the ones we are all talking about. This is really personal to her today, in a way that it wasn’t last week and as she ponders she is even more committed to using whatever funds we have left in our discretionary budget to invest in community building and community based public safety initiatives as well as on the traffic safety issue, engineering solutions. She thinks their discussion round more police officer has been really confused. She is appreciative of how Alder Foster broke it down, on the one hadn’t there is public safety and perception of public safety arguments that are used and on the other hand there is the internal morale issues. Those get confused. She says they are at a point in time where the former chief who was extremely divisive and inflammatory, who openly disparaged and threatened this body, who opening disparages residents who raise valid concerns about policing, he is gone now. We will have an opportunity to hire a new manager of that department who she hopes will have a different philosophy and attitude towards elected officials while dealing with the OIR recommendations that we and residents have invested so much time in to and we need to work those processes out and get real data and an independent analysis on staffing models before we make any decisions about staffing. The answer we just got from Dave Schmidicke – the opportunity costs, to her pandering to peoples perceptions of un-safety with three more officers is not worth the opportunity costs to being able to invest in community based solutions to actually create real public safety. Whether people are driven by fear perceive that or not. Their responsibility is to the realities in their communities and to making decisions based on reality and data and she’s not going to just throw it out the window and she doesn’t think any of them should. She will not be voting for this for those reasons. The morale issue is a real one, but an addition of 3 officers isn’t going to solve that, she thinks a change in management will solve that or begin to address that and she thinks that new management can come back to them with proposals that are not just filled with inflammatory rhetoric, but on real data to make better deacons on for the next budget cycle.
Tag Evers appreciates the level of dialog and debate on this, it seems really healthy. He agrees with the discussion about staffing, we need a staffing analysis and he’s wondering if we are not asking our men and women in blue to do too much. He said this at the finance meeting. His sense is that they are sending the officers out on calls that could be handled otherwise. He says the city and county are starting to look at this. He is not convinced that an officer needs to handle every mental health calls, many of those calls are being handled by police officers. If someone is feeling suicidal or lonely. When he did a ride along the office checked up on someone feeling lonely. He says that we are asking officers to be the first resort to folks in need, and he’s wondering if there aren’t other community based resources that should be applied to the challenges they are facing. He saw the emails too. If he was a cop he would not have to drive to Oshkosh with another person to do a mental health transport. That doesn’t seem fair, reasonable or a good allocation of resources, but that’s the way things are right now. Whether we add three officers or not, they need to do a staffing analysis with the new police chief, with the independent monitor, with the deputy mayor and answer these questions and become more informed. One isn’t anti-police to ask these questions. It’s also possible that the morale issues are the result of a narrative where it was suggested that if you ask these questions you are against the police and this was stirred up by a certain faction of the community that the previous chief seemed to play off of that really wasn’t true. He has friends who are officers on the force and they don’t support this narrative that these questions we are asking are unreasonable. It’s almost as if when we ask about efficiency and allocation of resources that we are being unreasonable or unfair. He doesn’t think they are. He says he hopes that whether they add three officers or not, that they will go through with the staffing analysis and the hard work that we need to do to be more informed and effective in our decision making. He is still undecided about his vote but he is thankful the discussion.
Question of Staff
Donna Moreland says she stepped out. She asks Chief Wahl what the effect the three officers will have on morale or other concerns. Wahl says that the tangible impact is that they have been doing a staffing analysis every year for over a decade – it was originally an outside independent entity funded by the council to come up with the model and that shows some real deficiencies in the patrol staffing model and its imporant to continue to make forward process on staffing. Clearly the numbers show a significant shortage in patrol to deliver the service we want and three is a pretty small step towards that but its something. If they add 3 staff positions this year they won’t realize that operationally until 2021. His fear is that if they don’t add positions they are that much further away from realizing those goals. As the city and workload continues to grow, they will be further and further behind. In terms of morale this has been a challenging year for our work force and they tried to do things internally to put band aids on to address patrol staffing shortages, but he does think even a small increase would resonate with the staff to show we are making progress and they have been heard and you are responding to them. He thinks that will have a positive impact on morale, it won’t solve the all the retention issues.
Moreland asks if the community police officers try to galvanize the community to police themselves, not vigilantes, but they get to know one another and if they see something they say something and not just call the police. Wahl says they have a 5-phase process when they put police in a geographic neighborhood and permanently assign them there – the goal is to work themselves out of a job – to have quality of life and safety improved. That is the first part of their mission.
Baldeh asks about low morale and what the chief hears from staff. Wahl says there is no one single answer – the consistent theme the last few years has been workload and staffing in the patrol function. That is where most of their people are. When staffing is short they can’t get time off, take vacations or they have to work when they would rather be doing other things. They struggled this year with holding people over to meet their staffing goals. They might have to work a 12 hour shifts a couple times a week, and that has a cumulative affect on people. There’s less downtime, less time to do proactive things that are more interesting to officers and give more job satisfaction to them.
Baldeh asks if it is 3 or 6 officers it won’t change significantly in regard to morale. Wahl says adding 3 officers will not have a huge tangible affect on the staffing levels, in terms of morale it is probably more symbolic. So they feel a sense of relief and that people are hearing them. It keeps them moving in a positive direction and they won’t have to take a huge step like they did 10 or 12 years ago where they found themselves behind and had to add 30 officers in one budget year.
Discussion
Baldeh says that every time this time of year when they are dealing with the budget police has always been a big issue. Either we support police or don’t support police. If you say no you don’t support the police. He thinks we have a good opportunity now to address the issue, he thinks that the council will have to decide where to spend money but we have to review our police needs and have a package or process that the council will have so we don’t fight every year over 2 or 10 police officer. If they ask for 15 and we give them 2 it doesn’t make any difference, those symbols don’t matter. Now that we have the opportunity to hire a new police chief, an independent monitor. He thinks the mayor’s office should spearhead and effort to put something in place so we know for the next 25 years that we know what we need. Lets have a clear policy and processes so we are not hear every year during this time. He hopes her office will take the lead on this so they have comprehensive stuff that they can deal with instead of this individual amendments.
Mayor asks if there is a question. He says yes. Mayor says that it is her intention to over the course of the next year work to staff to identify a long range facilities process to figure out where we need police and fire stations and streets facilities and others and that means they need staff and she says that will be a high level long range plan. The other intention is to work with the finance department to create a 5 year operating plan that would parallel the 5 year capital improvement plan so they aren’t here once a year fighting over the operating budget but starting to do some longer range planning, given state restrictions and the needs of the community and she thinks that will allow them to have a more balanced discussion about the needs of the departments and the how it relates to the needs of the city.
Moreland says that as they sit here at 11:25 she would hate to be at home and have an emergency and call the police who have worked overtime and he has a gun. Overworking folks like this is ridiculous, we have to come up with something better than this. She came in not intending to support the 3, but she will if it will give a little bit of a morale boost to folks that are working overtime under very difficult situations.
Levy Update
Schnmidicke says that adoption of this amendment would leave $13,000 on the levy.
Vote
Aye: Moreland, Rohrer, Skidmore, Tierney, Verveer, Abbas, Albouras, Baldeh, Carter, McKinney, Lemmer, Martin
No: Rummel, Bidar, Evers, Foster, Furman, Heck, Henak, Kemble
RECESS
Bidar moves a recess to 5:30 on November 13th, tomorrow night.
Passes with no discussion.
MORE
All 5 posts in this series are here:
