Madison Police Status Report on 177 Ad Hoc Committee Recommendations

Today the Madison Police Department report on the 177 Ad Hoc Committee Recommendations was supposed to be on the agenda for acceptance by the council, but its not.

MY INQUIRY

I sent this to all council members, Chief Wahl and staff of the PSRC:

CHIEF’S RESPONSE

Less than an hour later the chief responded

Not sure why it wasn’t on the agenda but Lisa Veldran is looking into it

COMMON COUNCIL STAFF RESPONSE

A little after 4:00, this explanaiton appeared from the council stafff:

On  4/21/20  the Common Council adopted Resolution, Legislative File No. 59848  Requesting that the Madison Police Department create a summary document of MPD Policy and Procedure Review Ad Hoc Committee Recommendations (see attached PDF).

Within the resolution language a report was requested:

NOW BE FINALLY RESOLVED that the Madison Police Department will create a summary document that will consist of a matrix of information on the implementation status, responsible agencies, whether there is a fiscal impact, and relative priority level (high, medium, low) of each of the 177 Madison Police Department Policy and Procedure Review Ad Hoc Committee recommendations and this summary document will be submitted to the Common Council for acceptance on July 14, 2020.

The report is in Legistar and will be on the JULY 21, 2020 Common Council meeting agenda (see attached PDF, Legislative File No. 61151).

REPORT

I reviewed the report with an eye towards information needed for the Public Safety Review Committee subcommittees on budget and protest policies that are meeting tomorrow.  I haven’t quite figured out what would be useful to blog about it.  It’s 48 pages.

Of the 177 recommendations, the police department has opined that:

• 86 recommendations have been addressed or are on-going
• 9 are high priority
• 25 are medium priorty
• 30 are low priority
• 27 are N/A, 9 of which are about police in the schools and no longer relevant, the others are assigned to mayor, common council, Police and Fire Commission, Police Auditor, City Attorney, MPPOA (police union), Civil Rights, Risk Management, IT department or some combination of these entities

I think I’ll leave the 86 items they claimed are already addressed for another day, the 64 items they claim are left to be addressed are categorized as follows:

9 High Priority Recommendations

• #28 MPD should devise additional ways to solicit and encourage feedback from all of its communities regarding the performance of the Department.
• #103 MPD should utilize ICAT as part of its training curriculum
• #109 MPD should incorporate the following precautionary principles into its Use of Force SOPs and MPD officers should be trained accordingly:
  •  Necessity: Deadly force shouldonly be used as a last resort. The necessity to use deadly force arises when all other available means of preventing immediate and grave danger to officers or other persons have failed or would be likely to fail.
  • Proportionality: When force is needed, the force used shall be in proportion to the threat posed. Department members will use only the force that is proportional to the threat, actions, and level of resistance offered by a subject. Proportionality involves officers: (1) using only the level of force necessary to mitigate the threat and safely achieve lawful objectives; (2) considering, if appropriate, alternate force options that are less likely to result in injury but will allow officers to achieve lawful objectives; and (3) considering the appropriateness of officers’ actions. Proportional force does not require officers to use the same type or amount of force as the subject. The concept of proportionality does not mean that officers, at the moment they have determined that a particular use of force is necessary and appropriate to mitigate a threat, should stop and consider how their actions will be viewed by others. Rather, officers should begin considering what might be appropriate and proportional as they approach an incident, and they should keep this consideration in their minds as they are assessing the situation and deciding how to respond. Proportionality also considers the nature and severity of the underlying events.
  • Reassessment: Officers shall reassess the situation after each discharge of their firearm.
  • Totality of officer conduct: The reasonableness of an officer’s use of force includes consideration of the officer’s tactical conduct and decisions leading up to the use of force. Police officers shall ensure their actions do not precipitate the use of deadly force by placing themselves or others in jeopardy by taking unnecessary, overly aggressive, or improper actions. It is often a tactically superior police procedure to withdraw, take cover or reposition, rather than the immediate use of force.
  • Immediate threat: Deadly force is only authorized if the threat is immediate. A threshold of “immediate threat” reflects language in the United States Supreme Court decisions. The latest model use of force policy published by the International Association of Chiefs of Police eliminates the term “imminent.”
• #134 MPD should reinstitute an officer performance evaluation system that collects and incentivizes progressive policing activity
• #135 MPD should regularly audit performance evaluations to ensure that supervisors are uniformly documenting officer activity objectively and fairly.
• #152 MPD should seek, encourage, and provide additional training opportunities outside the Department, particularly leadership training for first-level supervisors.
• #153 MPD should comprehensively follow a victim-centered, trauma- informed approach for sexual assault response. MPD should review the Police Executive Research Forum “Executive Guidebook: Practical Approaches for Strengthening Law Enforcement’s Response to Sexual Assault,” and modify its sexual assault response policies, procedures and training where necessary to concord with the Guidebook recommendations. We also offer the following specific recommendations:

• • • 1) MPD’s sexual assault response policies should explicitly communicate leadershi messages and priorities about maintaining a victim-centered, trauma-informed approach (so that they are analogous to model policies in the Executive Guidebook). When developing sexual assault policies, MPD should enlist the help of experts or victim advocates.
    • 2)  All MPD officers should be well trained on trauma response and the neurobiology of trauma to ensure they are familiar with the range of potential reactions to sexual assault and to provide victims with the best possible services. It is important that responding officers and investigators understand that a victim’s self-protective measures in the wake of a sexual assault might not comport with other people’s expectations or the objectives of the justice system.
    • 3)  MPD should do more department-wide scenario- based training for sexual assault response. Scenario based training should be provided on a regular basis to all department members.
    • 4)  MPD should partner with local advocacy organizations to use experienced victim advocates as actors for scenario- based sexual assault response training.5)  Sexual assault cases that MPD has mishandled (or handled suboptimally) in the past should be included in the training scenarios. Such cases should be dissected, looking for where mistakes were made. It is crucial that MPD own its mistakes, maintaining an open-minded, non-defensive perspective, if it is to improve.
    • 6)  Officers should be educated about common biases, stereotypes, and myths surrounding sexual assault (for example, common misunderstandings about rates of false allegations), and how to counteract these myths to ensure accurate and unbiased investigations. Training and policy should explicitly emphasize that sexual assault cases be investigated in an unbiased manner, free of assumptions and stereotypes about victims. Cases in which this may be important include, among others, same sex couples, male victims, victims with disabilities, and victims with mental illness (mentally ill individuals may often be more vulnerable to sexual assault than the unaffected population, but may be discriminated against in the criminal justice system).
    • 7)  When interviewing a sexual assault victim, officers should work to build rapport with the victim, use trauma- informed and victim-centered practices, avoid harsh or neutral tones,and accept and document the victim’s statement without hesitation. The victim should be treated respectfully and with dignity. Officers should remember that an interview of a sexual assault victim is not an interrogation and should be careful about asking questions that may come across as judgmental or victim-blaming. Detectives should ask the victim for a full account of what happened using open-ended questions, allowing them to speak uninterrupted.
    • 8)  Supervisors and department leaders should recognize officers for displaying competencies in the area of victim sensitivity in investigations and interactions with victims.
    • 9)  Policies and procedures should adequately incorporate considerations for specific underserved/marginalized populations or communities. Cultural competency and cultural awareness within the department are crucial to providing the best care to victims. Officers should receive training to assist them in their response to non-English speaking victims, victims from diverse racial, religious or ethnic groups or cultures, victims with disabilities, elderly victims, immigrant victims, victims who identify as lesbian, gay,
      bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ), and victims who are involved in trafficking and commercial sex exploitation. Detectives should be trained to understand how cultural issues may impact victim response, to avoid misinterpreting culturally- based behavior. Practices should be improved with regards to use of interpreter services. That a victim knows some minimal English should not result in interviews being conducted in English when that is not the victim’s primary language. Children or other family members should not be used to interpret.
    • 10)  MPDshouldmaintainopenlines of communication with victim advocates and solicit feedback on its performance, utilizing this feedback to improve performance. In responding to sexual assaults, officers should adequately take into account the experience of victim advocates present and have an understanding of victim advocates’ privilege.
    • 11)  Whenever possible, reports should include transcripts of key interviews and, when summarizing key interviews, investigators should use the victim’s own words (in quotation marks).
    • 12)  A case should be classified as “unfounded” only after a thorough investigation demonstrates that the report was false or baseless, and this classification should be avoided except for rare circumstances.
    • 13)  When cases are charged, MPD should fully inform victims, both orally and in writing, about available services, including the District Attorney’s Victim Witness Unit program, with sufficient follow up procedures/assistance.
    • 14)  MPD should partner with local organizations working in this field to do more public education on sexual assault, including on how common sexual assault is, the prevalence of drug/alcohol facilitated sexual assault (particularly on campus), human trafficking, and the hurdles victims face.
    • 15)  MPD should take additional steps to maintain the wellbeing of officers who work on sexual assault crimes, given the potential for vicarious trauma and other negative impacts. This should include Mindfulness Based Resiliency Training and implementing a Special Victims Unit wellness program.
    • 16)  Note that many of these recommendations are also applicable, and should be followed, in cases of domestic violence, human trafficking, or commercial sexual exploitation. This includes the importance of a victim-centered, trauma informed approach. Moreover, note that domestic violence and sexual assault can intersect.

25 Medium Priority Recommendations

• #10 MPD, in conjunction with the Independent Monitor, is encouraged to evaluate its current training, SOPs, and code of conduct to determine if they can be enhanced to guide discretion and provide additional guidance to officers regarding how they respond when they encounter people driving without a valid license or committing other minor traffic infractions or when to ticket and/or arrest homeless people (for trespassing or obstructing the sidewalk, etc.), or ticket and arrest people for engaging in other low- level offenses that tend to disparately affect low-income people.
• #12 Through resources and other forms of messaging, MPD management should enhance its structural and philosophical commitment to the Judgment Under the Radar program as a means of reinforcing its important work.
• #17 MPD should work to effectively support and incorporate officer- driven outreach efforts within specific communities, such as Amigos en Azul, into its larger community policing strategies.
• #18 MPD and the City should discuss the 9 most efficacious way to analyze the

  demographic data regularly being collected on arrests, summons, and use of force.

• #21 As part of its ongoing and constructive support of an innovative program, MPD should dialogue with its criminal justice partners to consider whether restorative justice programs available for controversial high media profile incidents can be made available for similar incidents that do not rise to the same level of media attention.
• #29 MPD should devise a feedback loop for its criminal justice partners regarding the performance of its officers and the Department as a whole, including the District Attorney, Sheriff, Judges, Public Defenders, Juvenile Justice Administrators, Probation Officers, and Social Workers.
• #38 MPD should implement the Special Community/Police Task Force Recommendation to explore Scotland’s de-escalation methods and the United Kingdom’s national decision-making model for police, and adapt these concepts productively to its own policing challenges.
• #39 MPD should continue to consider and review the Special  Community/Police Task Force Recommendations to further integrate them into MPD culture, and to embrace the spirit and underlying rationale with which they were made.
• #50 MPD should dialogue with the City and with the University of Wisconsin Law School to identify ways that law students can be reintegrated into the Department’s learning and problem-solving functions.
• # 53 MPD should collect and document information pertaining to the work of neighborhood officers and other specialized officers either through daily logs or through such other data collection methods that the department deems appropriate that generate comparable data.
• #54 In order to be able to gain an evidence-based understanding of patrol officers’ problem-oriented policing activity, MPD should develop a system to track and report the specific efforts including results, ongoing efforts, and collaboration with community groups.
• #61 MPD should track and evaluate the substantive work of its Community Policing Teams to ensure consistent application of community policing principles based upon best practices of community policing apart from traditional law enforcement methods.
• #62 MPD should collect and document information pertaining to the work of the CPT either through daily logs or through such other data collection methods that the department deems appropriate that generate comparable data.
• #82 The MPD Mental Health Team should develop a set of clearly defined performance measures that can be consistently tracked and monitored to provide benchmarks for how the Department and community define success for the mental health program.
• #83 The MPD Mental Health Team should work to integrate its volunteer assistants with Department resources in a way that provides consistency in data gathering and analysis tasks.
• #89 MPD should develop procedural justice guidelines within its officer- involved critical incident SOP to ensure that officers respond with sensitivity to the emotional and safety needs of witnesses and family members, and that, when legally permissible, witnesses and family members are kept advised of the process and procedure related to the incident.
• #91 If the criminal investigation has not obtained a full account of the observations of the on-scene emergency medical providers, MPD should interview them as part of the administrative investigation.
• #123 MPD should develop specific policies, training, and code of conduct standards intended to limit strikes to the body to circumstances where they are truly necessary and provide specific guidance as to what those circumstances might be and in all circumstances ban strikes to the head and strikes to individuals who are non-resisting or in restraints.
•  #124  All of Fyfe’s Principles should be incorporated into MPD’s “Response to Persons with Altered State of Mind” SOP
• #145 MPD should provide mentors for promising officers from underrepresented groups to help them prepare for and be motivated to apply for promotions.
• #154 In the interest of preventing false confessions and enhancing community trust, MPD should adopt a policy, and provide corresponding training to all investigating officers, providing that, apart from the deceit inherent in appropriate undercover operations, interrogating officers should not, except in extraordinary circumstances, and when feasible with the prior approval of supervisory staff, utilize deceit about the material facts of the case during interrogations.
• #156 For purposes of assessing staffing levels and needs, and making requests for personnel expenditures to the Common Council, the MPD should find ways to capture and convey data on both patrol and non- patrol officer staffing levels, and to ensure that staffing levels of all categories are not underreported to the Common Council.
• #174 MPD should develop an SOP that provides direction to officers instructing them to manually engage dash cams and audio microphones whenever they can reasonably anticipate an encounter with an individual or group they may temporarily detain or take into custody.
• #175 During events that by policy require or recommend the use of recording devices, officers should be required to make a complete uninterrupted audio recording unless a victim or witness refuses to speak while the encounter is being recorded. Records must not be edited and must be real time and continuous. Officers may mute their microphones in situations involving personal conversations or training or mentoring discussions that have no relationship to the events that triggered the activation of the dash cam system.
• #176 In any circumstances in which an officer is otherwise required to write a report of the incident, that report must include a statement explaining any decision to mute any portion of the recording or to terminate the recording prior to the conclusion of the incident pursuant to the in-car video SOP.

Low Priority

I’ll have to leave these for another day too . . . there’s a lot to digest here.  The items above are the only ones I expect to see the police working on from this report.

I’m more concerned about reviewing the 86 recommendations that are addressed/ongoing to see if there is more work to be done there.

I’m sure there will be more discussion and more blogs in the future!