As Alex S. Vitale proclaims, We Need Less Policing. His research into the issue concludes:
Any real agenda for police reform should not look to make the police friendlier and more professional. Instead, it must reduce their role and replace it with empowered communities working to solve their own problems. We don’t need community control of the police. We need community control of services that will create safer, more stable neighborhoods and cities.
In We Don't Just Need Nicer Cops. We Need Fewer Cops Vitale continues:
We have to take steps to dial back our reliance on the police as the primary tool of resolving neighborhood crime and disorder problems.Just as almost everyone else has had to, it's time for the police department to start figuring out how to do more with less.
At the union's request, Ald. Tony Zielinski asked city attorneys in November if Milwaukee could increase the city's property tax levy to help defray the city's pension obligations.
City Attorney Grant Langley said the only way to exceed the levy limits was through a vote of city residents in a referendum. But doing this, Langley wrote, could jeopardize how much money the state gives to Milwaukee each year.
Two days after the city issued its opinion, the Milwaukee police union endorsed Zielinski in his mayoral bid against Barrett in 2020.
But Zielinski said there was no connection between the endorsement and the letter, labeling the notion "preposterous." He said his support for Milwaukee cops is well known.
Zielinski said the city attorney's letter was "off my radar" since November.
"Did I do anything with this?" he asked. "I didn't do anything with this."
Reminded that he twice voted for the backdrop program as a county supervisor — a sore spot with the alderman — Zielinski said the staffer who created the Milwaukee County plan was convicted of misconduct in office. Also, he said, supervisors were misled by the county's pension actuary, which later paid the county $30 million to a settle a lawsuit.
Zielinski criticized the mayor and his people for trying to tar him by making an issue of the deferred retirement plan. He said Barrett should focus on his poor record on crime, not Zielinski's letter to the city attorney.
"I do my due diligence," Zielinski said.Two things we now know for sure: 1) the City of Milwaukee needs to restructure and rein in the salaries, pensions and costs of the Milwaukee Police Department and 2) Tony Zielinski is, by all appearances, sleazy and corrupt, and the last person Milwaukee should elect mayor and allow to guide the City budget.
Milwaukee Police Chief Edward A. Flynn blasted the two-part search process for a new police chief, calling it a “cockamamie approach” that could disrupt the order and stability of the police department, in an exclusive interview with Urban Milwaukee.
Flynn said he had never heard of doing a search for an interim chief “like you’re selecting a permanent chief,” followed by a second search for the more permanent leader.
The Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission (FPC) has been conducting a search for interim chief for which 10 candidates applied and three finalists were chosen today: Inspector Michael Brunson, Assistant Chief James Harpole and Capt. Alfonso Morales.
“They are pitting senior command staff against each other and basically destabilizing the department while everybody in the department is trying to back the person they think will win,” Flynn says. And that process could be repeated when the search for a permanent chief occurs.
From 1966 to 2012, nearly a third of the world's mass shootings took place in the United States. A 2016 study looked at 292 incidents in which four or more people were killed. It found 90 of them occurred in America. Put another way: While the United States has about 5% of the world's population, it had 31% of all public mass shootings.
While there’s been a short-term increase in one very specific, narrowly defined kind of violence, the overall homicide rate in the U.S.(the purple line) is on a long-term downward trend that includes the period covered by the FBI report. Mass shootings account for a tiny, tiny percentage of the total murders in the country — in 2012, the worst recent year for mass shootings, just 0.6 percent of total murders, according to the FBI’s 2012 homicide numbers.
Overall, when it comes to violence the country is safer now than it has been in decades. Obviously there’s still much vital work to be done when it comes to gun control, understanding why violent people snap, and so on. But talk of “sharp increases” in terrible, shocking, but extremely rare crimes promotes an alarmist view of the world that doesn’t quite match the facts.
Any real agenda for police reform should not look to make the police friendlier and more professional. Instead, it must reduce their role and replace it with empowered communities working to solve their own problems. We don’t need community control of the police. We need community control of services that will create safer, more stable neighborhoods and cities.In We Don't Just Need Nicer Cops. We Need Fewer Cops Vitale continues:
We have to take steps to dial back our reliance on the police as the primary tool of resolving neighborhood crime and disorder problems.And, not only do the police and fire departments take up over 87% of the entire City of Milwaukee budget. The cost of police misconduct in Milwaukee is growing.
Police misconduct has cost Milwaukee taxpayers at least $17.5 million in legal settlements since 2015, forcing the city to borrow money to make the payouts amid an ever-tightening budget.Milwaukee Adlerman Zielinski's willingness to keep increasing the police force (and departmental budget) will do nothing for the safety of Milwaukee, but will surely crush the City budget with ever-increasing police costs. And, as the police costs continue to increase, less and less money with be available for any other programs or projects. This is ill-informed, misguided and suicidal public policy from a public servant seemingly more concerned with personal attention than with City efficiency and a responsible budget.
That amount jumps to at least $21.4 million when interest paid on the borrowing and fees paid to outside attorneys are factored in.
For decades, all city employees, with few exceptions, had to live within Milwaukee boundaries. In 2013, the state Legislature passed a law that undid all such strict residency requirements but did allow for cities to require certain employees, including police and firefighters, to live within 15 miles of city limits. Milwaukee did not adopt a new rule but instead continued to enforce its longtime rule of residency within city boundaries.
The police union sued. One judge agreed the city requirement had been eliminated by the state law, but the Court of Appeals reversed and sided with the city's right to make employees live in the city.
But ultimately, in June, the state Supreme Court sided with the Legislature and the police that the state law blocked the city's historic residency requirements.
Only in July, in light of that court ruling, did the city adopt a new rule under the state law setting the 15-mile limit for police and firefighters.We can trace some of the problems which recently came to a head in Milwaukee to this entitled, unaccountable attitude of the Milwaukee Police Department. Law enforcement used to be part of the community and know their neighbors. Now they just want a paycheck from the community but to live in some exurb.
In the 5-2 ruling, the court found a 2013 law prevented the city from enforcing a long-standing rule requiring workers to live within its boundaries. The city had argued it could continue to enforce the 75-year-old residency requirement because the state constitution grants local governments broad powers...
The dissenters wrote that the decision would make it easier for lawmakers to meddle with the policies of a targeted city by writing laws that, at least cosmetically, appeared to apply to all local governments.
"Instead of freeing municipalities from interference by the Legislature when dealing with local affairs, the majority limits the power and restrains the ability of municipalities to self-govern," Ann Walsh Bradley wrote.
The majority stated lawmakers could set policies affecting local governments if they were for matters of statewide concern or if they affected all cities and villages uniformly, at least on their face.
On this point, Rebecca Bradley wrote separately to say she believed the Legislature could get involved in local matters only if they were both of statewide concern and affected all cities and villages uniformly. That put her in line with the liberals on that point.
Republicans who control the Legislature included a provision in the 2013 state budget prohibiting local governments from maintaining residency rules other than those requiring police and firefighters to live within 15 miles of their borders. That conflicted with Milwaukee's policy, enacted in 1938, requiring employees to live within the city.
"I remember back in the day when Democrats had control of the Legislature, the clarion call for the Republican Party was 'Local control, local control,'" Dane County executive and former Democratic state Rep. Joe Parisi said. "It used to be virtually part of their platform. But as soon as they got into power, they began moving very quickly on a number of fronts to take local control away."GOP lawmakers passed 128 measures limiting local control since 2011
Republican lawmakers have passed more than 125 measures since 2011 restricting the authority of local government, according to the state’s nonpartisan budget agency.
Over the past three legislative sessions, since the GOP gained control of the Legislature, lawmakers have enacted 128 provisions that represent unfunded mandates or restrict the decision-making power of local governments, according to a May 16 memo released by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau at the request of Assistant Assembly Minority Leader Katrina Shankland, D-Stevens Point.
Shankland said in a statement that of the 128 provisions, 80 were passed without Democratic lawmakers’ support.
“From restricting county shoreland zoning ordinances passed by county boards, to banning municipal governments from passing container ordinances that make sense for the well-being of their community, legislative Republicans repeatedly used their majority in a blatant government overreach,” said Shankland.On the GOP's own website they laud the power of local control regarding education:
Today’s education reform movement calls for accountability at every stage of schooling. It affirms higher expectations for all students and rejects the crippling bigotry of low expectations. It recognizes the wisdom of State and local control of our schools, and it wisely sees consumer rights in education – choice – as the most important driving force for renewing our schools.Wis. Republicans hand over local control to corporate America
A memo issued earlier this year by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau detailed more than 100 ways in which the Republican Legislature and the governor have eliminated local control while also increasing the number of unfunded mandates — i.e., costs — passed on to local communities. The Republicans’ actions have made it impossible for many local elected officials to balance their budgets while providing services for their constituents. That’s one of the reasons your potholes don’t get filled.At this point, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the blatantly partisan and hypocritical policies of Republicans. I'm just wondering, at some point, doesn't the public notice this barefaced cronyism? How much can we allow them to just shit all over the rule of law, common decency, accountability and democracy? This is yet another travesty of the Walker administration and another farce in the long line of Republican absurdities.
