Madison Police Chief Vic Wahl reports on their perspective of the protests and riots

Last night at the Police and Fire Commission meeting Acting Police Chief Vic Wahl reported on their role in the protests and riots.I paid attention to this, because I’ve been told that the police are too busy to make the same report to the Public Safety Review Committee that meets on tomorrow.

[Brace yourself for some white fragility and defensiveness.]

Also, a quick reminder, the Police and Fire Commission deal with personnel related issues – hiring, discipline, recruiting classes etc.  They are the personnel committee, and don’t usually deal with policies unless it involves a question of police misconduct.

Acting Chief Vic Wahl’s Update

He says he doesn’t know what detail they want, but he’ll give a broad overview of the impact on MPD.  He says this all started last Saturday with a peaceful protest on the capital square, then an off shoot of that group engaged in property damage on State Street, started looting the store and that is where things went sideways.  Since then, those first three nights, Saturday into Sunday, Sunday into Monday and Monday into Tuesday they saw significant looting, property damage, a lot of fires, dumpster fires, kiosk fires, violence, a lot of unprecedented unrest and disorder here in the city, those first three nights.  Tuesday night they were helped by some rain and that tamped things down and since then things have been largely peaceful and uneventful, tho there continues to be large peaceful protests both during the day and late at night and we’ve been staffing and prepared for those.

In terms of the impact on them, since last Saturday they have had all of their staff working at a minimum 12 hour shifts and many working much longer shifts, particularly their plan staff and Special Events Team have been working 18 hour shifts for 10 days straight.  They have had 18 officers injured during the course of this, mainly the first two nights.  Most of those are a result of being struct by bricks, rocks and other projectiles.  One of their vehicles, an armored vehicle that was being moved from one place to another was occupied and was struck by gunfire the first night of the unrest.  Unprecedented in their 29 years here they not only requested mutual aid from other agencies in Dane County but activated the State’s Emergency Police System, officers from across the state came in to assist and we’ve had folks from the northern edges of the state drive 6 hours down to Madison to provide assistance to us.  And they did activate the National Guard and had their assistance throughout the week.  Fortunately after those first three nights we haven’t needed those resources and are hopeful we are on a positive trend here.  We’ve only seen the last few days and the direction of where things are going.  They are hoping to revert back to normal 8 hour days starting tomorrow and then will continue to monitor what we are seeing with crowds and intelligence to see if they need to modify that, this week or into the weekend.

He says that is the 30,000 foot overview.  He asks if there are questions that he can respond to.

Questions from the Commission

Chair Nia Enemuch-Trammel ask how the officers who sustained injuries are doing?

Wahl says that the preliminary info he has is about 4 or 5 of them sought medical attention, everybody is back to work now.  There were a few concussions amongst officers and at least one of them maybe missed a couple days and he is back now in the staffing model.  Fortunately none of the injuries were serious.  He says of all the 18 all are back to available to us.

Chair also asks about the media coverage of the protests, but are are you aware of any incidents where residents were injured in any altercations with MPD at all.

Wahl says he is aware of one individual, one complaint they have received, who indicated he was injured as a result of our actions.  He thinks it would have been Monday night, but he’s not sure about that.  That’s the only injury he is aware of involving MPD and that’s being handled by Professional Standards.  Certainly there were a number of other injuries that took place just during the violence that was not MPD related and some of the information they are still trying to get a handle on.

Fabiola Hamden says she was also following the media, usually the department of police, the department of fire has business as usual, with what is happening now how are they operating, how are the officers doing, did you have to use lots of overtime.  You are mentioning that some other people can persist, in general.  Also, through media we have learned officers are tired and exhausted and sometimes when you are like that, is that interfering in the performance.  How is the whole department doing, how is the moral and all of that.

Wahl says it is a challenging time, its unlike anything he’s seen in 29 years and its very difficult for the officers on a number of fronts.  He’s been working the same hours as SET, the crowd control folks, so he’s been here for 12 straight days, 18 hour days and they work 18 hours, go home and try to catch some sleep and then get up and some straight back again.  That takes a toll physically on people and he thinks the nature of the issues and the protest makes it more challenging, he says that he put out a statement shortly after what happened in Minneapolis and his rank and file officers completely aligned with that view so he thinks it is very difficult for the officers who feel shared community on the issue and a shared anger about what happened out there, and then to bear the brunt of that anger is really hard on them and obviously there has been a lot of questioning about what our officers have done and how our officers are and painting MPD with a broad brush of other agencies.  It’s been hard, he’s been doing what he can to express his appreciation and gratitude for them working all these long hours and putting themselves in harms way for the public.  We are holding our own, he’s hoping they will be able to get people some days off this week and give them time to rejuvenate and recover.

Chair asks about the disconnect where the officers feel in alignment in terms of what happened in Minneapolis, how are we going about to bridge that gap in communicatation with folks that were out there protesting, how have we been interacting with them, how have we been trying to convey that message to them.

Wahl says in a general sense is their practice, any protest or demonstration that we try to communicate with the organizers and leaders ahead of time, and make sure we have a shared understanding of what their goals are and that we are working cooperatively.  We continue to try to do that.  The challenge that we have seen over the past week is that there isn’t just one group that is organizing, there is a lot of different groups and some we have had success with in terms of communicating and reaching out and planning.  Yesterday was a good example, there was a very large march downtown and we had contact with the organizers leading up to that and we talked about the possibility of officers taking part in the march and we were welcome to that.  I was out there and a number of their officers were as well and that was a good, positive step I think.  Certainly there are other groups that are not interested in working with us and that makes it a challenge.  But we’ve made some good inroads and made some contacts and will continue to do so and try to identify times when emotions are calmer to do some of that connection.  Yesterday was a good step and they will continue to make those efforts.

Jacquelyn Boggess says she understands there are officers who have wanted to participate and express their sorrow and all of those kinds of things about a black man being killed by police in Minneapolis and it was either 1 or 4 police officers, however you look at it, and also we have a problem with, in my opinion we have a problem, and she thinks in the opinion of a lot of the protestors, we have a problem with policing in the United States and she thinks some of the people who are protesting believe we have that same kind of problem here in Madison.  Not that individual police officers, that they might know, are not nice people, but that there is a problem with the way policing is done in the United States and in Madison.  One of the ways to bridge that communication problem (if we’re going to call it that) would be if there was some understanding about that broader problem on the part of the leaders of Madison and the police in particular.  What is the sense of officers in your department, what is the sense of Madison Police Department about understanding racial injustice and why the protests happen.

Wahl says he can’t get in the head of all of his people, but he can tell you what his impressions are.  He thinks we have a pretty progressive, well-educated workforce and we have worked over the years to do trainings and incorporate into our academy and in-service training things that highlight those issues you are describing.  Highlighting the history of African Americans in the United States and how it interacts with policing and the importance of having that context as we go about our every day work.  And I think that people recognize that and he thinks that is part of why it’s been so difficult for them because I think we frankly do so many things well here and we made a lot of progress and continue to improve and we need to continue to improve and that work is never over, but he thinks that as an agency and as individuals he can think of countless instances and examples of where our folks make a huge positive impact on our community and I think that is why it is frustrating for them when they see the good work they at a micro-level and at a macro-level all of that gets lost in the larger discussion.  He understands, and he thinks our people understand that goes with the territory.  He thinks his folks are fairly tuned in to it and certainly there is room to improve but he thinks that it is something they have tried to do a good job at.

Boggess says if that is the case, and I’ve had situations with police officers in traffic stops that were not comfortable for me, if that’s the case that the police department feels like its doing as good of job as human beings can do and being mindful and thoughtful and all of those things and then black people and other marginalized people in Madison think that the Madison Police Department is not doing that, does each side just think the other one is making something up.  Or do police officers think that folks are making this up – where is what you saw for the first time in 29 years – where do you think that is coming from?  Where do you think the police officers think that is coming from.

Wahl says I don’t think our people think anyone is making it up, by any stretch of . .. I will clarify that I don’t think that our folks are perfect or that we’re a (clean?)? profession in how we do business either at the organizational level or at the individual level.  I don’t’ think that is ever going to happen, frankly, I think we continue to do our best and be as good as we can.  I think if you graded us on a curve with law enforcement agencies across the country he feels pretty good about how we would rate, which is the point he’s trying to make.  We haven’t achieved nirvana, he recognizes we haven’t.   He thinks people recognize the big picture and that there is a lot of – as we have seen here in Dane County with racial dispartities – not just in the criminal justice system, but in terms of education, poverty and at all sorts of levels, and our people get that.  He thinks they recognize that we’re a visible outlet sometimes for that anger and that frustration.  What we do is, we’re not educators, that is something out of our control, so it impacts our work, but certainly our folks recognize all of that impacts how people feel and think and that is as it should be . . .(didn’t understand) I don’t know if that is a satisfactory answer for you, but I think by and large it’s a big picture, we try to reinforce to them not to take this personally, that the anger isn’t directed towards them as an individual, its more the uniform and institution and I think our people get that.  That doesn’t make it any easier in the moment, but he thinks they are trying and he thinks last night when we were thinking about marching with the group and we asked the people – there were a lot more people that wanted to go than we ultimately took, we didn’t want to send the wrong impression by how many cops we sent out.  Our people wanted to be down there and he can’t tell you how many people thanked me today, our people, for me allowing that and for having the opportunity to do that.  And when we were down at the Boys and Girls Club last week we had a lot more people that wanted to do it, they want to show that unity with the community and they want to build that trust.

Kevin Gundlach (Union Rep) asks about the injured officers, were they injured while in protective gear, how did that happen with 17 or 18 officers being injured, did they already have gear on, did they not?

Wahl says he doesn’t have a comprehensive answer for him yet because they are still sorting through some of the details.  His impression is that most of it occurred after the protective gear was on.  A number of officers sustained concussions from strikes to the head even with the helmet.  There was a sprained ankle.  But he doesn’t have a difinitive answer on whether it was pre-gear or post-protective gear.

Gundlach says that there were other departments that came in besides the National Guard, there were State Troopers, he also read about a Wausau cop, many different departments were brought in – he says there is a second question, he doesn’t understand the “unprecedented” comment and what context that is in, he’s not trying to disrespect that and he understands that from his view point there is a difference, but the Halloween destruction with the stores and what he is trying to figure out what context besides the actual issues involved, but in terms of property damage or other things or people throwing things or things being destroyed – have you had other officers come in, is it unprecedented in terms of other departments coming in – whether Halloween or today – if so, how do you check to make sure those departments have the type of philosophy and training that you’re speaking about in relation to racial justice issues and how to treat folks that are marginalized, where they be poor, homeless, people of color.  How do you know that in terms of this and what would be the command structure when you bring in all the different departments (state troopers, national guard and other deputies and departments from all parts of WI)

Wahl says that in terms of “unprecedented” he has worked the Halloween riots (17 years ago now) and and this far eclipses those.  The level of damage downtown far eclipses on Halloween and MIfflin St. and many of those events.  We’ve seen the looting citywide.  The first night both East Towne and West Towne Malls were broken into and looted, numerous businesses not just across the city but in some of our surrounding communities were looted.  Jewelry stores, it was literally three sustained days of that or nights of that.  It far eclipses some of the student riots that we had with Halloween or with Mifflin St. in previous years.  In terms of the outside county assistance, with our partners inside Dane County – UW PD and Dane County Sheriff – we have a long history of working with them and we are very much aligned in terms of how we do crowd management and what our philosophies are and that is something that they are feeling comfortable about, he is not aware of them ever activating the Emergency Police System to bring in officers to bring in officers from out of state.  Capital Police did that during the Act 10 protests quite a bit but that was all coordinated on their end, not through us.  So in terms of MPD making that request, he thinks that is the first time, but you’re right, it much more difficult because not only are you getting agencies from across the state and people will send what they can send and sometimes its a team and sometimes its a single officer and certainly the first couple nights when you were in the midst of the chaos, its very difficult if not impossible to be checking in terms of what their policies are or what their background is or anything like that.  And, unfortunately, there is not enough officers in Madison and Dane County for us to have excess to police this scale of disorder, so there is really no alternative.  In terms of command and control, crowd management and crowd control functions work in teams but at the direction of our command post in terms of where they move and where they went.  And then they used outside agency officers to provide security where there was looting and they were embedded or paired up with MPD officers and in a role to provide assistance to us, but we would be there directing them in both of those contexts.

Gundlach asks about the training, with some of the guidelines and trianing with use of force and descalation, with those pages, we don’t know if that is shared by some of the outside agencies that come in for this, and if not, are they following their own training or lack there of or their own rules and guidelines in terms of use of force.  For example this police department doesn’t allow certain use of force and other use of force only in certain situations but other police departments may not, so if you are bringing in other police departments (he won’t name any) but they might not have similar training or how to respect people of color and other marginalized groups and if they don’t have that kind of training and they are coming in to Madison – is that the case that we don’t know.

Wahl says the short answer is yes, we don’t know.  All of our officers in WI are going to be trained at the base level consistent with the state curriculum and the pre-service academy, just like our folks are trained, so they will have that same core and we will add some in terms of MPD.  So our policies see some different clarifications and expectations and restrictions, but there is no way for us to know beyond consistency with the core curriculum when people come in from out of county what their level of training is or hiring standards are.  There is simply no way to know that, especially when we are making these requests in an emergency in some pretty dire circumstances.

Gundlach says he main concern mainly is the use of force training, from what he understands the sheriff and police chiefs of this county came out and said that certain use of force is not allowed, specifically the kind that the officer in Minneapolis used to kill the citizen there.  So my concern is that if we are bringing in officers from other counties and cities and we don’t know if they are also trained not to use that type of force, and then they do in Madison during a protest about that use of force, among other issues, I have a concern for the safety of protestors in general that we don’t really know what is coming in to our city, and I think that is founded and we have to have something to figure this out possibly.  He asks how the priorities are worked on when you have a lot of police resources in certain areas, how are other priorities dealt with and how do you prioritize – who is in charge of prioritizing in terms of what laws are high priority to enforce and what might not be.  For example jay walking vs. shoplifting (?) vs a violent crime, vs something else.  Who decides that?  Is that the police department?  How do you do that when resources are going in one direction?  Is it police department, or someone else in the city that is involved in that.  How does that work?

Wahl asks if he is asking in the midst of the disorder of the past week or more generally?

Gundlach says more generally and second how did you manage that?  First how do you generally prioritize and then how do we know what is prioritized generally speaking.  Second, how were you able to handle that during the last two weeks.

Whal says during normal day to day operation when there is a call that comes in to the 911 center they have a mechanism and matrix process set up to prioritize the urgency of the call, its categorized by call type and its a pretty elaborate process that they have set up to determine what the priority is and how quickly it is going to be dispatched and how many officers will be dispatched.  It’s something they put together and we’ve been able provide input to them on, certainly in terms of how our people are dispatched.  Our Officer in Charge (OIC) can deviate from that, and does sometimes where we’ll go to a position where we only deal with emergency and priority calls – where routine calls aren’t handled.  Typically that is just a function of staffing shortages during normal days, where we’re just too busy going to priority calls, so we need to have our staffing available for that.  He say that a portion of the last 10 days we’ve been at priority calls only.  In terms of last week, the unrest protest downtown, we’ve had a command post running with strong command presence and one of our assistant chiefs has been in there as the incident commander at all times, so any decision about arrests during these incidents have been approved by the Assistant Chief and we’ve been very mindful about when we should and shouldn’t take any action.  We tried to keep good reigns on that decision making process and that’s literally one of our assistant chiefs.

Gundlach asks in terms of Use of Force, he knows choke-holds and ? holds are banned, is what he is read, is that correct?

Wahl says that their policy is clear that they do not allow that unless they are justified, its not part of the curriculum, he thinks that is consistent statewide as well.

Gundlach says after deescalation, if it does not work and some sort of detainment has to occur, how are officers trained in terms of use of force to detain whether they do a strike, a kick a punch, vs a hold that is not a choke hold like more of a wrestling type hold, how are they trained for that and how do they make those decisions when utilizing use of force to detain.  He says his background is more wrestling so and he has worked similar jobs where he had to detain but not as a law enforcement officer.  He doesn’t understand that part and I do know that sometimes people resort to what they are used to, so people who are trained as a boxer or as a martial art with striking, or that type of defense, that is what they resort to under pressure unless, of course – – – –  static in recording – – – – – non-lethal holds to detain that wouldn’t hurt.  How is there training there to get rid of certain habits even if use of force is allowed, if I’m not sure in what context they are, if there is some procedure of strike vs holds that are not  . . . again  background noise /cross talk . . . he asks if there is training there that kind of gets people habitually in a certain direction or how does that work with use of forces training.

Wahl says that is a huge component of the pre-service academy, there is a very elaborate curriculum set forth by the state defensive and arrest tactics and its a combination of decision making and evaluation with actual physical techniques, practicing physically.  So the officers do a lot of time in the training working on making decisions, evaluating situations, making decisions at every point they encounter and incorporating de-escalation, professional communications into all of that and also they get a lot of reps just on physical techniques for certain things that are trained in the system.  As they point out they don’t want people using the skills they might have brought with them from prior experience and so we give them other techniques and tools to use and that is what they are trained on pretty extensively throughout the pre-service academy and to a lesser extent on an on-going basis.  In the last year we’ve done two in-services with all personnel where we introduced some additional techniques beyond what the state techniques are to try to give officers some additional options, some additional tools that would allow them to control people without resorting to strikes or more intrusive techniques like that, so the initial feedback we have had on that has been pretty positive, there are a lot of things they try to do in the training ciriculum to emphasize good techniques and put things in place to avoid bad techniques that create unreasonable risk of injury for that outcome.

Gundlach asks for de-escalation is there anything if protesters react differently to different people, is there training there for an officer to back down to have another officer come in that may relate a little bit more?

Wahl says de-escalation concepts are not a stand alone training (here’s your 2 hours of de-escalation), it incorporate into all of the defensive tactics and decision making training that new officers get.  Certainly that is one thing that we would talk about considering particularly when it comes to professional communications, that if its not working with one person, try another officer and see if they have more luck.  Again, de-escalation, of course presumes a somewhat static situation and reasonable opportunities for officers to do so and sometimes that just isn’t present.  And its not an option for them.  But they do emphasis just that point of switching people, if that seems like its the hold up for making progress.

Gundlach has one last question piggybacking off the issue with our communities of color and groups that may be perceived as  marginalized, whether it be homeless people or people in poverty.  How often is there training, and the same with the other two issues that he brought up with the use of force as well as de-escalation.  You said use of force is about 2 times a year and de-escalation is how many times and with anything to do with how to communicate effectively with folx who have had bad experiences with police officers, whether it is with a recent arrival, an immigrant that comes from another country that has had bad situations there because sometimes police forces are used differently in other countries as we all know and in come countries they are used – well we won’t go there – or whether it be someone who is homeless or poor and that kind of relates into prioritizing as well in terms of how do we prioritize in terms of using resources and how are they used later.  He is really interested in the training that is involved with all of those issues as well.  How much training is there for use of force but also deescalation per year, and also for understanding out community that is more diverse, especially those that have had experiences that have been negative with law enforcement in other countries, other states, other cities or here in Wisconsin.

Wahl says to clarify he says we’ve done defensive tactics training twice in the last year, but it is not twice a year training or as de-escalation.  The state mandates that officers do 24 hours of in service, continuing education every year to retain their certification, so they have a lot of things to try to cover in 24 hours every year, a number of which is a number of things mandated by the state that they don’t have any option over and that takes up some of the 24 hours and its something he would like them to do more annual training, some agencies are doing 40 hours a year, and I think that 24 hours is a little behind, the problem is that if we take everyone in the police department and send them to another 2 days of training, that has a significant impact on staffing levels and the services we are able to provide.  There is no free lunch in any of this, not to mention the time needed for our training staff to prepare that training.  So they started to have some preliminary discussions since he’s been in this spot to look at increasing that 24 to 32 in a year to give us more time to start to hit on some of these things because they are important and critical for what we do.  Of course we’ve been in a pandemic for the last 3.5 – 4 months so they are not able to do any in person training, our spring in-service was cancelled and we’ve had to push that back, so I agree that training is a critical component to all of this and something that he thinks that once we get past COVID-19 and are able to resume a little more business as usual in terms of training, we need to explore that 24, starting to make that a little bit higher on an annual basis, but that has a cost to that, unfortunately there are going to be lean budget years this year and next year, so there are no easy answers for it.

They move on to other items.