Madison Grapples With Policing Issues

Across the country, communities are grappling with the relationship between police and people of color. People are angry and people are hurting.

This summer in Madison, there’s been debate about whether the police department needs to change. City residents agree that the community needs to move forward, even if all the answers aren’t clear.

At the beginning of June, Madison Police Chief Mike Koval wrote a blog post about an upcoming city council vote to add $350,000 from the city’s reserve fund to a study of police policies and procedures, bringing the total of the study to $400,000.

Koval said he didn’t have a problem with the department being reviewed, but didn’t think it was a wise use of that amount of money at the time.

Some council members took issue with the blog’s language, saying it was violent and divisive. The blog post said, “To the Common Council, you are being watched. And be on notice: this is a preemptive first strike from me to you.”

The next day at a city council meeting, tensions came to a boil.

“The behavior of the chief tonight is unimaginable,” Alder Samba Baldeh said. “I was totally afraid for him to be behind me with a gun.”

The council approved the extra money. Now, a committee is looking for the right candidate to do the review.

But for Brandi Grayson, one of the founders of the activist group Young, Gifted and Black, that’s not enough. She stood on the steps of city hall and asked for community control of the police.

“We are not making progress unless we acknowledge the wounds,” she said. “Because we cannot heal the wounds until we acknowledge the wounds. So let’s stop playing, Madison.”

People of color are brutalized by the police, she said, specifically mentioning Genele Laird, a black teenager who was arrested at the East Towne Mall. A viral video of the encounter shows a struggle, with Laird being subdued with a Taser by officers.

“Don’t you drop the race card,” Grayson said. “Don’t you pretend like this is about anything else but racism.”

On the other side of the issue there are people like David Glomp, of west Madison, who thinks the debate needs to move beyond race.

“I welcome every ethnicity in this city to come together and say ‘enough with this,’” he said. “We’ve got to stop this trust issue that’s out there, and we need to come together and figure out a way that we can work through this.”

Glomp said he supports police officers, so much so that he put a sign in his yard. It’s bright yellow, with white lettering that reads, “We Support Our Madison Police Department.” He’s distributed hundreds just like it.

But then, right in the middle of this debate, there was a spate of violence that shook the nation. The killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by police Minnesota and Louisiana and the killing of several police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge again ignited racial tensions. For many, it was incredibly disheartening.

Veronica Lazo is a member of Madison’s police review committee. It’s time for tangible changes in the way policing is done, she said.

“People are tired of coming together to talk about little pieces here and there,” she said. “People are tired, too, of marching every time some catastrophe happens. How many marches is it going to take for us to really get to the bottom of this?”

This week, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin and a coalition of grassroots organizers proposed a $3 million plan to address racial disparities and violence.

Tim Maymon was involved with that group. Even with the plan, he doesn’t have all the answers, he said.

“This is a devastating effect that is happening in this community and around the world,” he said. “Do we have the answers to how the police should treat a human being? Probably not. But do we need everybody to sit down and come up with these answers, yes.”