Professional Documents
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Vaudreuil
U.S. Attorney, Western District of Wisconsin
222 West Washington Avenue, Suite 700
Madison, WI 53703
On 25 July 2016, 15 signatories wrote to your office seeking a U.S.
Department of Justice investigation into the Madison Police Departments
patterns and practices [of] civil rights infractions.
We write to counter that request. Their letter makes no case for even one
single civil rights infraction, much less a pattern of such.
The letter cites a higher per capita rate of officer-involved shootings than
New York City. It is apparently based on the Mapping Police Violence website
using 2014 statistics. Madison recorded 2 police homicides that year
compared to 15 in NYC. Both of the Madison victims were armed. Because of
the huge disparity in population the statistic is incredibly misleading. A
village of 500, if it had one police-caused homicide, would have the nations
highest rate. For more perspective, 23 persons have been killed at the hands
of Madison police since 1990, an average of less than one per year.
The letter also claims and an arrest disparity between black and white
citizens that is highest in the nation. The signatories do not cite an authority
for their assertion and we can find no corresponding support for it.
The July 25 signatories reference a 2008 study conducted by UW sociologist
Pamela E. Oliver. But the reference provides no Madison-only statistics.
Neither the letter nor the Oliver study addresses the incidence of crime.
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The July 25 letter does cite an 11-1 black-to-white arrest ratio. That happens
MPD arrests Q1 2016
to be the ratio by which the citys white population (79% of the total) outnumbers the 7.3% of the citys population that is African American. In the
First Quarter of 2016, blacks accounted for 42.7% of all those arrested
nearly six times the proportion of the total population. However, when
compared to suspected offenders, black arrests at 42.7% are proportionately
under-represented to the 46.4% of black people identified as committing
crimes.
It is also worth noting that black people are more than twice as likely to be
victims of crime than their percentage of the population would suggest.
The July 25th signatories contention that the disparity in interaction with law
enforcement by race is the product of institutional racism is directly
disavowed by the very February 2008 study, The Wisconsin Racial
Disparities Project, they cite. Professor Oliver expressly dismisses the
charge of racism. In the forward Oliver writes that black incarceration rates
are not a legacy of Jim Crow, but are a result of policies implemented since
the mid-1970s which created exponential growth in incarceration between
1975 and 2000. This growth was not due to growing crime rates, but to
greater use of incarceration for lesser offenses and drug offenses.
In exploring what he calls The Myth of Mass Incarceration, Barry Latzer,
emeritus professor of criminal justice at the City University of New York,
found that violent crime, not drugs, has driven imprisonment. And drug
offenses usually are for dealing, not using. Wall Street Journal, 22
February 2016.
In Madison, drug offenses comprised just under 10% of the First Quarter
2016 crimes well below theft (40%), assault and battery (12%), fraud and
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property damage (each 11%). Drug offenses are more serious than the
commonly peddled urban myth of a man imprisoned for smoking a marijuana
doobie on his porch steps.
Madisons drug epidemic is much more serious than ditch weed. The area is
embroiled in an epidemic of heroin abuse. (As Wisconsins heroin epidemic
took hold of Dane County, and made it one of the most problematic areas in
the state, the number of overdose deaths increased dramatically. Public
Health Madison and Dane County numbers show Dane County heroin deaths
increasing from three in 2000 to 40 in 2013. Channel 3000.com, 16
February 2015.)
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Community-based policing
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The woman at East Towne Mall was not the only one to resist the police that
day (allegedly).
That same day, a 26-year-old Middleton woman crashed her moped while
allegedly driving drunk on Madisons Willy Street. According to the police
report, She tried to leave the scene of the crash leading to a struggle with
officers. The woman yelled and used profanity during the arrest process and
was taken to jail on tentative charges listed above. The officer suffered
bruising and swelling as a result of the kicks. (That police report here.)
Where the critics really lose me is when they start trashing the police for
using lawful force, writes Milwaukee-area journalist Jessica McBride.
Especially non-lethal force designed to prevent out-of-control situations
from escalating to lethal force. The critics lose me completely when they
seem to argue that police should not take actions to protect themselves or
the community from potentially dangerous people.
Indeed, a major collaborative study in Dane County on police use of force in
2016 outlined an almost identical use-of-force continuum as a way to prevent
officers from using deadly force unless absolutely necessary. The continuum
came from the Wisconsin Department of Justice's training. It is called, "The
Control Process: Disturbance Resolution model." And, yes, it also suggests
and allows for "hard techniques" such as punches and kicks to retain
control, as well as tasing. (Special Community/Police Task Force
recommendations regarding police Use of Force, NAACP Dane County
Branch 36AB, United Way of Dane County, and Dane County Police Chiefs
Assn. February 19, 2016.)
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Madisons BLM affiliates routinely threaten the First Amendment free speech
rights of citizens who disagree at public hearings before the Madison
Common Council. (Video of the 19 July 2016 meeting, 23:00 minutes in.)
Not just in word but in deed. Two of the complaint letter signatories Brandi
Grayson and Matthew Braunginn, are principals of a Black Lives Matter
(BLM) affiliate calling itself Young, Gifted and Black. This organization and
the closely affiliated Freedom Inc. Both continue to encourage open
rebellion against lawful police orders, against public safety, and against
constitutional rights.
At the March 17, 2015, Madison City Council meeting, looking squarely at
Police Chief Mike Koval, Brandi Grayson shouted: "We know the facts, and
when they come out this city will erupt. This city will [F-bomb]-ing erupt and
the blood and whatever takes place after that is on your hands and the
mayor's hands.
The BLM affiliates closed down major traffic thoroughfares during workday
rush hours, most recently on Thursday, 21 July 2016 at the intersection of
John Nolen Drive and Rimrock Road blocking traffic. A subset of that group
then sat down in the intersection and placed their arms into PVC pipe with
chains and bolts inside in order to prevent officers from separating them. The
entire protest group was immediately and repeatedly warned that they could
not occupy the roadway or they would be arrested. Traffic volume at this
time was extremely heavy as rush hour was occurring in Madison.
MPD reported that the situation created a safety hazard for motorists and
citizens. Examples of safety hazards created include several near crashes,
delaying persons wishing to seek cancer treatment at a clinic off of John
Nolen Drive, a citizen wishing to take insulin for their health condition who
was staying at the Sheraton, and several ambulances in emergency mode
wishing to take persons to the hospitals downtown.
Several times in 2015 the group shut down busy East Washington Avenue
during rush hour. (Young, Gifted & Black looks to turn Madison into next
Ferguson Wisconsin Reporter 20 March 2015.)
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The black violent crime rate would actually predict that more than 26
percent of police victims would be black. Officer use of force will occur
where the police interact most often with violent criminals, armed
suspects, and those resisting arrest, and that is in black
neighborhoods. In Americas 75 largest counties in 2009, for example,
blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants, 57 percent of
all murder defendants, 45 percent of all assault defendantsbut only
15 percent of the population.
Moreover, 40 percent of all cop killers have been black over the last
decade. And a larger proportion of white and Hispanic homicide
deaths are a result of police killings than black homicide deathsbut
dont expect to hear that from the media or from the political enablers
of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Indeed, what is being labeled the Ferguson Effect is causing a spike in
violence across major cities in America. Since that incident in August 2014,
homicide in the country's 56 biggest cities jumped 17 percent after years of
decline. St. Louis University criminologist Richard Rosenfeld subscribes to
that theory in a report published this June. (Related here by the Washington
Post.)
Fearful of lawsuits, internal disciplinary action, and politicized prosecutions
(like the ones in Baltimore where six police half of them black were
indicted on criminal charges and now exonerated) police are hesitant to do
much more than respond to direct calls.
"Theres a perception that police are less likely to do the marginal additional
policing that suppresses crime the getting out of your car at 2 in the
morning and saying to a group of guys, Hey, what are you doing here? FBI
Director James Comey said last month.
Comeys speech at Georgetown University in February 2016 is worth
quoting:
I worry that this incredibly important and incredibly difficult
conversation about race and policing has become focused entirely on
the nature and character of law enforcement officers, when it should
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