Common Council - Regular Meeting

The hour of 6.30 having arrived, I will call to order the Common Council meeting of Tuesday, May 19th, 2026, and ask the clerk to please call the roll.

Thank you. Alder Harrington McKinney. Alder Harrington McKinney is present. Otto Linckella.

Here.

Otto Linckella is present. Otto Lieberman.

Here.

Otto Lieberman is present. Alder Madison.

Here.

Alder Madison is present. Alder Martinez-Rutherford. Here. Alder Martinez-Rutherford is present. Alder Matthews. Here. Alder Matthews is present. Alder Mayer.

Here.

Alder Mayer is present. Alder O'Brien.

Here.

Alder O'Brien is present. Alder Ohovich. Present. Alder Ohovich is present. Alder Pritchett.

Here.

Alder Pritchett is present. Alder Tischler. Here. Alder Tischler is present. Alder Verveer.

Here.

Alder Verveer is present. Alder Vitterer. Here. Alder Vitterer is present. Alder Zhang. Here. Alder Zhang is present. Alder Duncan. Here. Alder Duncan is present. Alder Evers.

Here.

Alder Evers is present. Alder Field. Here. Field is present. Alder Figueroa-Cole.

Here.

Alder Figueroa-Cole is present. Alder Glenn.

Here.

Alder Glenn is present. Alder Ugair.

Here.

Alder Ugair is present. Madam Mayor, we have a quorum.

Thank you. As usual, I will remind us that we're here to do the business of the people of the City of Madison and ask that we do so with grace and kindness and that all concerned refrain from using profanity in your remarks. I also just want to and remind particularly our newest colleagues that you can ask for a point of clarification if you need one, if something doesn't make sense. But we will try and explain as we move through. um that said our first two items are honoring resolutions so item one is legistar 9 3 1 4 8 recognizing may as mental health awareness month and for this i will turn to alder harrington mckinney

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Whereas Mental Health America founded Mental Health Awareness Month in 1949, and whereas Mental Health Awareness Month takes place every May with the goal of promoting mental wellness nationwide, And whereas this year's theme of Mental Health Awareness Month is More Good Days Together, which encourages people to reflect on what a good day looks like, both for individuals and communities. And whereas this year's theme additionally seeks to connect people to the right support at the right time, and whereas nearly one in five American adults will have a diagnosable mental health condition in any given year, and approximately 46% of Americans will meet the criteria for a diagnosable mental health condition at some point in their life. And whereas common mental health conditions include anxiety, addiction, substance use disorder, bipolar disorder, and depression, among others, And whereas while mental health conditions are widespread, there remains a stigma around discussing mental health and receiving treatment for it. And whereas in 2003, one in four adults with any mental illness reported an unmet need for mental health treatment in the past year. And whereas it is imperative for individuals to have access to effective treatment to help manage symptoms when living with a mental health condition, in addition to having access to healthy relationships and environments. And whereas one can experience positive well-being while living with a mental health condition, and whereas it is important to remember that mental health is not the absence of mental health conditions, but rather about the presence of well-being and the ability to thrive. Now there it be therefore resolved that the Madison Common Council recognize as Mental Health Awareness Month in the City of Madison, recognize May as a Mental Health Awareness Month in the City of Madison. So ends the reading.

Thank you. We'll take that as moved by Alder Harrington-McKinney. Is there a second? moved and seconded and we have two people with us to receive the honoring resolution both from the rainbow project cheryl cato and marie mafigi zamasi if you'd like to come up the alder can give you the proclamation and we'll take a picture and you're welcome to say a few words Cheryl, let's get you the proclamation first and take a picture.

Thank you, Walter Arrington-McKinney. My name is Cheryl Cotto, and I'm the director of the Rainbow Project, but I'm also chair of the Dane County Child Abuse Coordinated Community Response and the Children, Youth, and Families Consortium. Just quickly, the child abuse CCR is a part of several. There are five. There is elder abuse CCR. There is the sexual assault and domestic violence CCR. And also the... child sex trafficking multidisciplinary team and then also the CCR for sensitive crimes against victims who have developmental disabilities. So we are all working on prevention, intervention, all of the different levels of prevention daily. And I just wanted you to know that we're now conducting a survey to really look with consumers as well as providers on what the needs are. And what I think is exciting is that after all these years, the National Child Abuse Prevention Month is going to be changed to the National Family Strengthening Month. So that we're really reframing and focusing on prevention and we're excited that and so we are working on resiliency and that is something and protective factors and I think that that's important I just want to thank you all for your leadership every day we really need that sometimes we get skewed views of the world in the work we do every day because we're exposed to trauma 24-7 in our work. And so I think it's just important to know that you all are working. We're not alone. And I appreciate this resolution. Nationally, 3 in 10 women and 1 in 10 men have been victims of some form of physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime. Nearly 700 children are abused in the United States annually. The youngest children are the most vulnerable in maltreatment and in their first life, first year of life have the highest rate of victimization in the national population. So one in four girls and one in 13 boys experienced child sexual abuse. And in Wisconsin, there were 22 substantiated cases of children dying from maltreatment. Children from homes with violence are much more likely to experience significant psychological problems short and long term, and many will meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. The effects on their brain are similar to those experienced by combat veterans. Children are suspended, expelled, and discharged from early childhood programs, schools, and hospitals due to extreme behavior problems caused by the trauma that they have experienced. So when we all experience trauma, the adrenaline goes. But the kids can't turn it off. So they may be in a classroom and something will trigger them. None of us knows what that trigger might be. For someone I've worked with, it was the cologne that the offender wore. And so whenever she was at a restaurant or a bag boy in the grocery store had that, she had a panic attack. So these are the kinds of things that we are learning about brain development. in neurobiology that really is explaining why they behave the way that they do. And what we're hoping is working as a team with schools and the community not to use punishment to change that behavior because that will only exacerbate and make it worse. So we're doing much more and being asked more for that kind of community education on trauma-informed care. There is a CDC study. that shows that nine-year-olds and under, the reason for death is gun violence. And that doesn't mean that that is happening in big cities. It's happening in towns like ours. And so we see that. We experience it. We're responding. We've been to Mount Horeb. We've been to the... abundant life. There is recently, too, a Dane County youth survey that they put out every two years, and the increase in students of color showed higher rates of anxiety, depression, and interestingly, the very highest population percentage are biracial students. So as chair of the Child Abuse CCR and of the Consortium for Children, Youth, and Families, we are working with many, many different agencies who are working every day on this. And so we appreciate this recognition very, very, very much. This is a beautiful resolution, and we appreciate it very much.

All right, so I will just quickly share a little bit more about what the data that we have on adverse childhood experiences, which are defined as preventable potentially traumatic events that occur among people under the age of 18, which are associated with numerous negative health outcomes. The first is that about 64% of adults in the United States reported experiencing at least one ACE, with 17.3% reporting four or more ACEs. The second is that exposure to ACEs are common but are not evenly distributed across the population. So we know that females, members of racial or different ethnic minority groups and individuals with low socioeconomic statuses are at significantly higher risk of experiencing ACEs and experiencing higher numbers of ACEs. And then exposure to ACEs is associated with the development of several, several types of mental health conditions and chronic physical health conditions. So yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you both very much for being here. So it has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, is there any objection to recording unanimous vote in favor? Seeing no objection, we'll record a unanimous vote in favor. And then item two is Legistar 93160, recognizing May as Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American Heritage Month. And for item two, I will turn to Alder Zhang and Alder Lankella.

First. Whereas the people of Madison join each May to pay tribute to the generations of Asian, Pacific Islanders, and Desi Americans, aka APIDA, who has enriched the history of our community and the United States. And whereas the year 2026, theme for APIDA Heritage Month is power in unity, strengthening communities together, recognizing the key positive roles APIDA people play in America today in community building and civic life. And whereas the month of May was selected for APIDA Heritage Month because of the inextricable role Asian Americans have played in the 250 years of United States history, including the first Japanese immigrants arriving in the United States on May 7th, 1843. And the first transcontinental railroad was completed on May 10th, 1869. with substantial contributions from Chinese immigrants, and whereas APIDA Heritage Month provides the people of Madison with an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the achievements, contributions, and history of diverse communities in all areas of public and private life, as well as understanding the unique historical and current challenges they face And whereas Madison's APEDA population totaled 25,815 in the year 2020 census. And whereas Asian Americans have faced unique exclusionary policies and racial discrimination, including the first federal law to prohibit immigration because of race and nationality, mass incarceration policies based on ethnicity and the wars causing mass displacement and creating generations of refugees and

Whereas Asian Americans continue to face xenophobia and inequitable immigration policies, including hate crimes, cultural erasures, and racial profiling. And whereas there are approximately 24 million United States residents who identify as Asian, and approximately 1.6 United States residents who identify as Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, comprising about 7% of the total population. And whereas the Apeta community is an inherently diverse population composed of more than 50 distinct ethnicities and hundreds of language dialects, And whereas Wisconsin has the third largest Hmong population in the United States, with Madison having over 3,000 Hmong residents. And whereas the Hmong diaspora has enriched our communities immeasurably for over 50 years, beginning with the immigration of Hmong refugees from Laos to Wisconsin in 1975, and lasting through the 1990s. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Madison Common Council recognizes May as Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi American Heritage Month. Be it further resolved that the Madison Common Council recognizes this month as an important time to celebrate the significant contributions of Asians, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Desi Americans to the history of Madison. be it finally resolved that the Madison Common Council recognizes that Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Island, and Desi-American communities strengthen and enhance the rich diversity of Madison.

Thank you, Alders. We'll take that as moved by Alder Langella and seconded by Alder Zhang. And with us online, we have Bonnie Chang to receive the honoring resolution. Bonnie?

Thank you so much to Madison Common Council for this recognition. I want to begin by acknowledging Alder Zhang. We share a family name and an ancient lineage, and being here alongside her today is not something that I take lightly. This resolution is personal. My aunt was one of the first Asian Americans elected to this council. I watched her in these chambers and understood her presence was not given. It was earned and opened a door. Ellen walking through those doors is what progress actually looks like. Not a speech, a person, another first. And then there is my mother. She came to the UW in the midst of a war and was permanently displaced from Vietnam. Wisconsin became home, not by choice, but by circumstances. When this resolution named war is causing mass displacement and creating generations of refugees so they're not abstractions, that is my family. That history drove my work in the clerk's office when we co-created iPad within the Mung Institute. It came from understanding that these civic systems were never built for communities like ours, not for war refugees, not for elders navigating this country without a map or a language. The first time we were there, a dozen Hmong elders who had never registered to vote before in America registered and voted. We had never seen that level of engagement. These were people who have survived unimaginable loss and had every reason to distrust institutions. When we came to them, when the process was built with them, they showed up fully. And that is the work, meeting people where they are, showing up consistently, not just during heritage months. The table was never built for BIPOC communities, and in these times, that reality is not historical. It is present, and it is urgent. Keeping historically marginalized communities at the forefront of public service is not a value this city can afford to treat as aspirational. It is a responsibility. Power in unity is not a motto. It is an instruction, especially now, when NAPIDA communities continue to face mass deportation, xenophobia, hate crimes, and cultural erasure. Unity is not optional. It is how communities protect one another. Thank you so much to this council, to all their for your work, and to all the city staff and community members whose life and work give this resolution power.

Thank you, Bonnie. It has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, is there any objection to recording a unanimous vote in favor? Seeing no objection, we'll record a unanimous vote in favor. And that will take us to disclosures and recusals. Are there any disclosures or recusals on items on tonight's agenda? Alder Verveer.

Thank you, Mayor. As it relates to agenda item number 10, the revocation action for Fusion Smoke and Spirits LLC, as I did so throughout the Alcohol License Review Committee proceedings, I will recuse myself in this matter. I do so because I received ex parte communications from the respondent prior to the city's complaint being filed or the criminal complaint against the I'll say former agent was filed. So I wish to be recorded as abstaining in this matter and will recuse myself for those reasons. Thank you.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Tischler?

Yeah, I just want to disclose that I still work for University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the university still reports to the Board of Regents. So for item number 66, it will not affect my vote.

Thank you, Alder. Are there any other, Alder or Matthews?

Just reporting that I also work for the University of Wisconsin, and that will not affect my vote. Thank you, Alder. Alder Field?

Thank you, Mayor. I also work for UW-Madison. That will not affect my vote on referral.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Mayer.

Is it sufficient to just say ditto?

I think in this case it will be sufficient. Thank you, Alder. All right. Any other disclosures or recusals on tonight's agenda? Seeing none, then we'll move on to the presentation of the consent agenda. President Madison.

Okay, a consent agenda is moved with the recommended action listed for each item on the agenda, including public hearings except one, items which have registrants wishing to speak, and two, items which auditors have separated out for discussion and debate purposes. This document lists supermajority items, agenda items with recommendations different from the agenda, items for exclusion, items introduced from the floor, and agenda items with corrections. Agenda items that are supermajority items. Supermajority items will be recorded as unanimous votes unless a roll call or exclusion is requested. Agenda item 11, and I'm going to be a little bit more brief here. So agenda item 11, approving Park Commission resident appointment to the Parks Long Range Planning Subcommittee of the Board of Commissioners, Report of Park Commissioners, 14 votes required to adopt. Agenda item 37, authorizing the Parks Division to apply for a grant through the Brownfields Grant Program from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation for the Oakbrook Park North Parcel Site Remediation Project. The mayor and city clerk to sign the resulting grant agreement if awarded and amending the 2026 Parks Division capital budget to allow for acceptance of up to $250,000 if awarded the grant. Report of the Finance Committee and 15 votes required. Agenda item 43, approving an intergovernmental agreement between the city of Madison and Dane County related to the operations of the men's homeless shelter located at 1904 Botterlawn Drive and authorizing the mayor and city clerk to sign that agreement. authorizing the Community Development Division to accept up to $1.148 million from the Dane County to help fund the shelter's operations in 2026, and amending CDD's 2026 adopted operating budget to recognize the receipt of those funds and authorize their expenditure. A report of the Finance Committee, 15 votes required. Agenda item 46, approving a certified survey map of property owned by Michael J. and Lisa Koch Schuster, located at 7021 Cottage Grove Road in District 16. Report of the plan commission and 14 votes required. Agenda items with recommendations different from the agenda. Agenda item 10, disciplinary matter revocation action. Fusion Smoke and Spirits, LLC, doing business as Fusion, 36 South Bassett Street. Agent Jacob McRoberts, Class A Beer, Class A Liquor, Police Sector 404, District 4, report of the Alcohol License and Review Committee. ALRC recommendation recommends a counsel with the following recommendations. The recommendation is to accept the report and recommendations of the hearings subcommittee. Agenda item 43, approving an intergovernmental agreement between the city of Madison and Dane County related to the operations of the men's homeless shelter located at 1904 Barter Lawn Drive and authorizing the mayor and city clerk to sign that agreement, authorizing the community development division to accept up to $1.148 million from Dane County to help fund the shelter's operations in 2026 and amending CDD's 2026... adopted operating budget to recognize the receipt of those funds and authorize their expenditure. District 12, a report of the Finance Committee, Alder Martinez-Rutherford recommendation, adopt substitute. Agenda items excluded by one, request of Alders, or two, speakers registered by noon on May 19th. Agenda Item 10, Disciplinary Matter, Revocation Action for Fusion Smoke and Spears, LLC, Doing Business as Fusion, 36 South Bassett Street, Agent Jacob McRoberts, Class A Beer, Class A Liquor, Police Sector 404, District 4, Report of the Alcohol License Review Committee. There are speakers registered. Agenda item 34, authorizing the city's execution of a purchase and sale agreement and lease between the city of Madison and the Salvation Army or their successors and assigns for the purchase of the property located at 3030 Darborough Drive in the city of Madison and lease back period subsequent to closing. District 15, report of finance committee, common council president. Agenda item 39, authorizing the mayor and the city clerk to execute a development agreement to fund a $1.666 million tax incremental finance loan that was authorized authorized in the 2026 EDD capital budget in 1053 to wash Franklin LLC, or it's assigned to construct approximately 222 units of affordable housing and approximately 68 parking stalls located at 501 East Washington Avenue in a proposed boundary amendment to Tax Incremental District 53, District 6, Report of Finance Committee, Common Council President Madison. The following reports have been excluded for presentation. The reports will be presented after public comment and out of sequence in this order. Item 47, item 45, and then item 48. Agenda item 45, Office of the Independent Monitor Annual Report 2025-2026, Report of Office of the Independent Monitor, Common Council President Madison. Agenda item 47, Police Civilian Oversight Board Annual Report 2025-2026, Report of Police Civilian Oversight Board, Council President Madison. Agenda item 48, Chief of Police First Quarter Report and 2025 Annual Report, Chief John Patterson, Madison Police Department, Report of Police Department, Council President Madison. So items introduced from the floor, there are no items listed. Agenda items with correction, none listed.

Thank you, President Madison. Are there any other items that others would like to have excluded from the consent agenda at this time? Seeing. None. Let's just go through that quickly to make sure that we're all on the same page. So items 11 and 46 will require 14 votes. Items 37 and 43 require 15 votes. The recommendation on item 43 is to adopt the substitute. We will be excluding items 10, 34, and 39, and then also items 45, 47, and 48 for presentations. We have no introductions from the floor at this time and no corrections. Are we good? Good. Okay. Then on the consent agenda, President Madison, a motion, please.

Motion to adopt. Second.

Moved and seconded to adopt the consent agenda. Is there any objection to recording a unanimous vote in favor of the consent agenda and the recommendations on the items therein? Seeing no objection, we'll record that vote. And we will go on to public comment. And this time, we have public comment starting with agenda item 10, which is a disciplinary matter, revocation action, Fusion Smoke and Spirits, LLC, doing business as Fusion on 36 South Bassett Street. Our first registrant wishing to speak is Vishal Kumar of District 13, representing Crown Hospitality Group, LLC, and Taj Indian Cuisine and Bar, to be followed by Nicholas Bratsos, to be followed by Thomas Keller. Do we have Vishal?

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, please go ahead.

Hi there, you guys. I want to apologize. I wanted to be there in person, but I was actually out of town when I figured out when the meeting was. My name is Vishal Kumar. I'm an entrepreneur in Madison. The reason I'm here today in front of you guys... digitally, is I was actually interested in taking over and opening up my own business at this spot. And then I was made aware of what had happened. I personally, when I registered to speak, there is an option where you can choose if you oppose or if you support. I chose neutral just because of what happened. I'm against that as well. And I believe that getting rid of that tenant was the right move. But I also feel like That business was also owned and operated by a different owner for about, I think, 14 or 13 years for the same business, which was a liquor store. I believe that having a bad tenant, you know, shouldn't. Influence you guys to take away that liquor license from that spot just because of one bad mistake or one bad person. And if I am given the chance to keep that liquor license there, I'd like to take that over and operate it with my family. I currently have a business that has a liquor license. And I've had no issues. And my family previously also owned and operated a restaurant with a liquor license for 16 years on Park Street. And we've had no violations and no issues as well. If there's any questions for me, I know this is a little bit quick. Again, I apologize. I wasn't there in person. I'm more than welcome to answer anything.

Thank you very much. Our next registrant is Nicholas Bratsos of District 4, representing the Keller Real Estate Group. Do we have Nicholas? Please.

Good evening, everyone, members of the council. My name is Nick Bratzos, and I represent the Keller Real Estate Group, who I'll refer to as Keller. I submitted a letter earlier today providing background information about this proceeding as it relates to Keller and Keller's interest in the premises at 36 South Bassett Street. In brief, the respondent in this case was leasing the premises from Keller, and without Keller's knowledge, used the premises to sell drugs. The city filed the summons and complaint seeking to revoke respondents class A liquor license on January 21st of this year. Keller was not named as a respondent and was not served formal notice of the summons and complaint. The subcommittee of the ALRC held multiple pre-evidentiary hearings leading up to an evidentiary hearing on April 9. Keller did not receive notice of these hearings. Keller was unaware that they were occurring and Keller did not participate. In its report, page 140 of the agenda packet, the ALRC is careful to note that, quote, respondent was properly served with the summons and complaint, end quote. Keller was not. The ALRC now seeks to revoke the respondent's liquor license. To be clear, Keller does not object to the revocation of the liquor license as held by Jacob McRoberts, DBA Fusion Smoke and Spirits. However, the apparent effect of the revocation will be to disallow any other entity from operating a liquor store out of the premises of 36 South Bassett Street for 12 months. In effect, the same punishment that faces the respondent will be extended to Keller. Again, Keller does not oppose revocation of the liquor license held by McRoberts, but that revocation should only apply to the individual and not the property. Keller is ready, willing, and eager to comply with whatever reasonable remedial measure the council would order so that the license as to the premises is not revoked. To demonstrate this readiness, Keller has filed a commercial eviction against McRoberts, which is Dane County case number 26SC2933, and Keller negotiated to have McRoberts voluntarily surrender the license. The surrender license can be found on page 305 of the agenda packet. I would ask the council, what benefit does the city receive from the revocation beyond what it already has, which is the respondent's license? Moving forward with the revocation and allowing it to apply to both the respondent and the premises would have a net negative impact. The premises is uniquely adapted to operate as a liquor store, outfitted with chest coolers and other related fixtures. Keller is currently in talks with other reputable and well-known liquor license holders, and we just heard from one here this evening, who are interested in taking over the premises. Revoking the license will freeze talks and force the premises to sit vacant for 12 months. I would urge the council to either modify the report so that the revocation applies only to the respondent, Jacob McRoberts, DBA Fusion Smoking Spirits, and not the premises.

You have about 30 seconds.

Or in the alternative, thank you, or in the alternative to deny the revocation because the license has already been voluntarily surrendered. Thank you.

Thank you. Our last resident wishing to speak on this item is Thomas Keller of District 4 representing RHK Family LLC. Do we have Thomas?

I'm over here hiding in the corner. I was going to give a brief history of that site, and I was going to make a whole bunch of notes, and I'm just going to talk from the heart for about two minutes. That corner has had a liquor store for close to 50 years, going back to, I think it was, Mike, you might have to help me, a corner keg, I think, or something like that. Keg's Corner. Keg's Corner. About 10 years ago, my father bought the site, built a new building with the idea that a tenant that he had in another building would occupy that because they needed more space. There's a long history. It's been a very good history except for the last two years when that tenant sold his business to the person that was now thrown out. We want to comply with the city. I like to think we have a good relationship with the city, and we'd like to see that available to be a liquor store with a reasonable tenant that plays by the rules. And I'm way under my time. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any questions for any of the registrants on item 10? Seeing none, then thank you to all three of you. And we'll move on to item 34, which is authorizing the city's execution of a purchase and sale agreement and lease between the city of Madison and the Salvation Army or their successors and assigns for the purchase of the property located at 3030 Darbo Drive in the City of Madison and leaseback period subsequent to closing in District 15. On item 34, we have one registrant wishing to speak, Jocelyn Campbell of District 17. Do we have Jocelyn? does not look like we have a jocelyn online or i don't see them online thank you very much it doesn't look like we have them in chambers either so we'll move on And we have no other registrants wishing to speak tonight. So we are now going to go to the presentation of three reports. We will start with Agenda Item 47, which is Legistar 93106, the Police Civilian Oversight Board Annual Report for 2025-2026. And I believe we have... I believe we have Chair Pearson presenting, but I don't see her on, oh, you're there, okay, great. Somebody already promoted you. Chair Pearson, please go ahead.

Good evening, everyone, to the public and to council, mayor, and everyone in attendance in person. Sorry, I could not be there with you all tonight in person, but wanted to make sure that we have a presentation for today. I am in a space where I have limited capacity with my internet right now. And so I'm having trouble just pulling up my actual presentation, but I do have slides that I'll read from. So we published our annual report. We approved the draft back in March 31st, or our meeting in March of this year. And it is a 29-page report. I implore the public to read it if they have a chance. And there are just some items that I just wanted to quickly go over. We did request...

Maya, we've lost your audio. Okay, sorry.

I'm back. And so I will just go over some quick highlights of the annual report. We did request President Madison, thank you for just letting folks know if they had any questions for us to send those along. To kind of prepare, and so we did get a few questions, but I will be available for questions for a brief time after this. And so there is an executive summary that focused on the workings of the independent monitor and office of the independent monitor as well as the police of the oversight board. It focused on some of the strengthening of the oversight infrastructure and restoring some of the operational continuity, as well as talking about some of the history. Some of you may be aware, some of you may not be aware. of some of the history of just oversight in general, but also oversight here in Madison and what that looks like over the five-year period that we have been in existence. One highlight that I'm really proud of is that for this iteration of our board, we've maintained Approximately 90% meeting attendance that I'll talk about a little later and then also had some restructuring of our committees to allow us to be a little more effective in terms of the work that is tasked to us. In addition to that, we have been working on a three-year plan and we have a meeting tomorrow night in which we will go over and solidify those plans to get ready for our board meeting in June. In addition to that, we have been successfully managing some of the work around our community engagement work as well. Other accomplishments that I think that are really keynote worthy is that we were able to hire our interim independent monitor, Erin Marie Mika Glass, in December. And we've been working with her in the office for about five or six months. So she's been with us for a very short time, but a very impactful time. We resolved also, the office resolved also the backlog of concerns and improved some of the investigation updates, as well as expanded some of the community listening sessions and outreach efforts, really working with our community partners and finding ways to synthesize information from the community and kind of help drive some of the work that we're doing. Another thing that I am proud of that we have done in 2025 was strengthen internal governance and accountability structures. We have been working on our processes and procedures and putting in some of the foundational pieces that We hadn't necessarily been able to do prior to 2025 as extensively as we would have liked to. So we're definitely focusing on that. We're continuing this year. As well as we continued the work on NPD's strategic planning or plan and the previous one for their five-year plan and oversight priorities. In the report, we do go over community engagement and outreach and some of the work that we have done around that. We've hosted listening sessions. We had some listening sessions in partnership with some of our community organizations like Justine and Moses. And we also did outreach events throughout 2025 informational events. And we're looking to this year in 2026 to expand that more extensively. We also partner with organizations around. ensuring that they understand what oversight is and how oversight can impact the people who are part of their organizations. We prioritize engagement with communities that were most affected by policing and trying to do outreach and working in collaborations with folks that are also working with those communities as well. We started focusing on some of the youth and our hope is that this year in 2026 and moving forward that we have more of engagement with youth and young people. As you know, we've seen numbers for for young people in terms of their education. their impact by policing. Another area in which we really want to focus in on moving forward as well that we started looking at in 2025 was unhoused residents and then also the mental health responses and also transparency concerns. What we heard from the community, and so it's linked in our annual report, some of the previous community work that we had done prior to 2025, and also taking that information and moving it into 2025. What we heard were concerns regarding the timeliness of investigations and us needing to address that with the office, as well as the need for greater transparency around our complaint processes that we've also been working in collaboration with the office as well. The desire for just a stronger youth and unhoused community engagement, and that's something that I mentioned before, And then continued concerns regarding use of force and police community trust. And so that's an area that we've definitely started looking at and are continuing to look at this year and moving forward. Requests for more public education around just oversight functions, what that looks like, how it's impacting communities, how communities can get more involved with our work. The other sections of our annual report also have where we talk about the collaboration with the Office of the Independent Monitor. And so 2025, I think I can sum up more so as a transition year for us. Many, the majority of our board became PCOB members were appointed in the November of 2024. And so moving into 2025, there was a lot of transition. And then we also had the transition of our former independent police monitor, Robin Copley. So it's 2025, in relationship with the collaboration with the Office of the Independent Monitor, definitely focuses on that transition. The PCOB also implemented just stronger supervision and accountability structures in 2025. And we have been working with HR to strengthen those as we are moving forward with our process for hiring the permanent independent monitor. We did do some check-ins and we made sure that with our executive subcommittee that there is monthly collaboration with the office as well through our monthly meetings. We also were in 2025 worked with HR to create a formal performance evaluation framework that we are again looking this year to strengthen with them in collaboration with them to meet the needs of the evaluation process for the permanent independent monitor for coming up. And then also too, we talk about some of the staffing and resource constraints that we have for the office and the supports that are needed for the office. Moving along, we have a portion in our report that talks about the chief police review process. And so 2025, we took on some of the work because that was also a transition year for the police chief as well. And so we took some of the work that had already previously been done by some of the PCOB members prior to 2025, where we really looked at what the what in which ways that we can craft the review process. And so we took some examples from Oakland and other police civilian oversight review of the police chiefs to kind of help start developing the one that we are looking to use. And so that work has been tasked to our external process and procedure. Subcommittee that has been working diligently on that in 2025 and continue working on it this year as well. And so some of the focus is that the developing just a values based evaluation framework with focus areas around transparency, accountability, leadership, community trust, and then also looking at, you know, ensuring that community have input and analysis of that, the review of the police chief. We do have a possible rubric or just like a draft rubric of what that might look like in our annual report. So if folks want to look at that, again, it's modeled off of a few other police chief reviews in other states and other police civilian oversight boards and commissions. So in 2025, the evaluation was not completed, but that's partially due to the leadership transition and then also the transition of police oversight board members. But we will have it ready this year and so that we can hopefully work in collaboration with Chief Patterson and the Office of the Independent Monitor. Let's see. We also go on to talking about our policy reviews and strategic plan work. And so we did review, as I mentioned earlier, about reviewing the NPD's five-year strategic plan. And from our understanding is that there's the processes that are happening with the current police chief and NPD and looking at updating or creating a new strategic plan. So we hope to work in collaboration with the police chief and NPD around what that might look like and how LPCLB members and the community can have a greater involvement in that strategic plan. And we identified at that time in the previous 1, just identified gaps related to community wellness, restorative justice and use of force and transparency. We had questions and it's also linked in the report based off of the strategic plan for each item where more specifically where. there was a goal and some of the outputs and then just questions that we had raised as a board. We also requested additional data regarding racial bias and use of force and mental health responses and recommended stronger alignment with the ad hoc committee in the OIR's recommendations. That long, I think it was 177. Our budget considerations and constraints for for the PCOB and the Office of the Independent Monitor. Our operating budget for 2026 is approximately or was approximately $405,299. And so when we're looking at the annual report and you're looking at the The percentages of our budget compared to the public safety budgets, in addition to the police budget, we do make some comparisons there. I think it is important to review that section, because we know that to have good oversight, there has to be the investment and oversight in the office requires a. deeper investment monetarily. So I know that we've had status quo in this last year, which we were thankful for. But as we are strengthening our our work and working further, we will require a little more investment. And so right now, the Office of the Independent Monitoring and Police Budget or Police Oversight Budget is 0.0009% of the city's adopted budget. And then MPD's budget we also mentioned is 22% of the city's operating budget. And then we're 0.2% of the public safety's budget. budget, where NPD's budget is 52%. So we do make that consideration. And we give some solutions of how there could be greater investments in oversight and the resources that are needed. Some of the challenges and barriers that we've had is that we've had the leadership transition that greatly impacted the continuity and the operational momentum of the office, as well as within the PCOB itself. I think another big challenge and barriers that the work that we do, it's all volunteer board structure, which then limits the members capacity in terms of how much Work that they can in time that they can in effort that they can put in. I think all board members have expressed multiple times that they value this work and it's important for them. And so they do the work. But again, just noting that it's still a challenge that folks are volunteers and there's a lot of time that goes into the work that we do. We also have the budget limitations that restrict some of the trainings and community engagement opportunities that we may have. For instance, Only because of our budget, only the chair, me, and the independent monitor was able to go to the last conference. And we hope that we can get all of our members to go to the national conference for police accountability. I think it's a very important conference to go to because you're bringing together all oversight across the U.S. There's presentations from police departments, from community organizations, and it's a place where there's a wealth of knowledge. I also implore city council members, if you all would like to go, I implore that you go as well because it gives you, again, opportunities of learning of what oversight looks like and opportunities of collaboration as well. We also have... challenges and barriers around just the need for stronger data infrastructure. And I know that the independent monitor, Glass, will speak about this later in terms of what is needed to strengthen our work and strengthen the work of the office. And then also 1 of the barriers and challenges for us to get some of the work done is that we've had frequent or in exchanges that have create have created some uncertainty amongst just operationally, but also amongst some of our board members. So recommendations for our 2026 for us and some of the work that we're looking to do is that we are looking to hire our permanent independent police monitor. And we are going to ensure that that process is community centered. And we have been already started working with HR and creating that process and hopefully look to get some of that information out as soon as possible in the next month or so. We're also increasing, we like to increase our transparency and accountability of our work as well and what that looks like. And so we've already started having meetings with some of the community organizations in terms of what is it that they expect from us, but also ways that they can also get involved and how they also see coming alongside us and working in collaboration with us. And so that has already started and is underway. We also want to make sure that we're expanding any engagement with underserved communities. Again, like as I mentioned earlier, is that we want to expand the work around youth and around unhoused folks and around mental health supports. And so those are some of the areas that board members have expressed their interest in, but also what we're seeing with some of the data and just everyday living here in Madison. We also want to ensure that we're strengthening our data driven investigations and policy analysis. And so our external policy and procedure subcommittees have been working diligently on looking at how we are able to do that work and continue doing that work. And then also some of the recommendations for 2026 is just developing our long term work plan and oversight capacity. As I mentioned before tomorrow, we will add our executive subcommittee meeting, be looking at and solidifying some of the. of our work plan for the next three years. And so we worked with Mosaic. You all have worked with them before for New Alders, and we have worked with them as well. And we had a couple retreats where we started really digging deeper into what oversight work looks like in Madison. So with that, I would say that the PCOP members, we definitely remain committed to our accountability and community-centered oversight. We want to make sure that folks understand that we value transparency as well, and that we have worked really hard in this last year to get to a spot where we can start delivering the things that You know, we're required to do by ordinance, but also that the community community expects us expects of us. The board will also continue strengthening our collaboration with the office of the independent monitor in the community. And I know that there has been conversations around strengthening relationships with the common council as well as the mayor's office to the. Yes, to strengthen that those relationships. And then also too that the importance of like oversight remaining essential to building public trust, but also improving the public safety outcomes within Madison. And that the importance of oversight truly being independent, I think is also very essential to how we kind of move forward in the future years. And so with that, I would say that is all in terms of my presentation. Again, I apologize for not having being able to present the slides. I'm grateful that my Internet has held out for me to actually present the information to you all verbally. And now I'm open for any comments, questions or thoughts if this is the correct time to do that.

Thank you, Chair Pearson. We do have, I think, a couple of questions from Alders. Alder Lieberman, questions?

Yes. First off, I just want to say thank you for the work that you and the other volunteers on the board do. This has been a very hectic year for the PCOB, and I appreciate all the work you've done. My questions are largely around the community engagement that you've done. First off, you mentioned one of the major themes in the community engagement being a sense of distrust and discomfort of community members around police officers. I'm curious, based on those conversations, how much of that do you believe is based off of incidents of misconduct that have occurred outside of Madison, these national stories that gather, that gain so much attention, versus incidents that have happened to people at the hands of the MPD?

Yeah, thank you for that question. Alder Lieberman. I think that there is, it's a combination. So I think that in our annual report, we talk about the, in 2022, when we did When a police of any oversight board partner with local voices network to collect some stories from the public and to learn more about, you know, the effects of policing on on Madisonians and i think if you i think it's linked in there where you can actually go in and read the report and i believe it's in a different legistar from that time but it really focused in on some of the challenges that people were individually experiencing directly from mpd or police police departments in dane county or the sheriff's office which we don't have oversight of. And so I think it's a combination of them feeling it directly, but also for folks who may not have experienced any kind of interactions with police that may have caused harm. They definitely talk about the feelings of how the outside factors and how folks that look like them might be, um, similar, um, socioeconomic, um, standing as them, um, that, you know, this might happen to me too. And so I think it's, it's definitely a combination. And so it's hard to kind of parse out, um, exactly, you know, because it's only based off of what people are willing to share. Um, and we definitely try to create a, um, a space of trust where folks felt that they can give us that information directly to us. And so that would be my answer to your question. Hopefully I answered it.

Yeah, thank you. My other question around the community outreach is the plans for the future and specifically around these policy proposals that PCOB is going to be working on this year for the police department. I'm curious, when you are planning to have that community engagement in that process and if you are planning if, for example, that is going to be soliciting potential policy proposals from the community, or if you're going to be more working on those internally and then presenting them to the community for feedback.

No, I appreciate that question. I would say that right now it's more so soliciting feedback from the community in which then we can utilize that to make policy recommendations. But I don't think it's, I think it's fair game to also consider, you know, there might be community members who have expertise in other areas that they may be able to contribute in terms of saying, hey, this might be a better way for this one thing to occur. And so I could see where there might be opportunities to have both.

And then just lastly, is there a general timeline on when you expect that next set of policy proposals to be presented?

Yes. So I would say that right now the we are solidifying our three year plan tomorrow. And part of that is the conversations of where we would like the policy review to kind of live. And so I can't really give you the exact date, but what I can say is that it is something that is on our agenda to work on. this year and our hope is that um in our next annual report that we're able to have more um a direct response to that so right now i would say just it's tba um but it is definitely on our agenda to work on this year great thank you again so much thank you thank you alder alder mayor questions

Yes, thank you. Chair Pearson, so you have besides a PCOB of three subcommittees, correct? And can I assume everyone on the PCOB is on one or more of those subcommittees?

Yes, I would say that majority of board members are on at least one or two.

Can you make a real general estimate of the hours the average board member spends on these things per month? I know that's maybe a tough question, but... just trying to get an idea of the workload that everyone's taking on?

Yeah. So our our full police event oversight board meetings are every quarter. So I would say depending on the topics, those meetings can go sometimes from two to three hours. We've had some that went longer, again, just based off of what was on the agenda. So I would say like two hours, once a quarter. Our executive meetings are every month. And so those sometimes can go, we try to keep them within two hours if possible. But again, it just depends. And so let's say for next month, if you are a board member, that's two hours plus another two hours. If you come to the executive meeting, because we open it up to everyone, you may not be a voting member, but you're able to participate and people do. And then our policy and procedure, two hours, I would say just purely going to meetings. If you went to all the meetings in a month, it's like eight hours um just for the meetings the prep work around those meetings if there are community engagement opportunities if liaisons what we call the liaison is a member who is nominated by an organization if they are having meetings directly with their organization that can be multiple hours so i would say it's almost like a part-time job um in a week, in a month, I would say maybe 80 hours. If you like parse it out in terms of maybe 20 hours a week, depending on what is actually being done.

Sure. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate all your hard work and your board's work and appreciate you submitting this very robust and transparent report.

Thank you. Thank you, Elder. Elder Pritchett, questions? Yes, I took some questions.

Thank you. I took some time to read over your annual report. And at the beginning, I started with the context. One of the things that is of interest to me, in looking at the report, there were several things that kind of stood out. And I understand you providing the historical beginnings of PCOBs But what struck me is given that you will be working with or partnering with the OIM as well as looking at police activities, what I did not find was ethical conduct. There's no ethical code of standards that are listed, which is very, very important given that you're working with a board that consists of people representing different disciplines. So my question is this. Is there a need for ethical standards within the city council before the meeting starts? There are recusals. for this or for that, would it be prudent then for PCOB as well as OIM to have some ethical standards? Thank you.

I guess the way I would answer that question is we do the required city ethics training each year. And so that's conducted by the city attorney's office. In addition to we also in our meetings for all of our meetings, we also have a spot where we ask any board member to give any recusals. to any of the items. And so we also follow Robert's rules and we do have the ethics training and we do have a general level of ethics code. And so that's the way I would answer that question.

But at the same time, it's not written. It's not written, and sometimes we can kind of go off the rail if we don't have documented, you know, a standard that people should follow. That's very, very important.

Question? I appreciate that. It's not something that is listed in the report because it's something that is a general operating procedure, I would say.

Thank you, Elder. Are there any other questions for Chair Pearson? Seeing none. Thank you, Chair Pearson. Appreciate you being here.

Absolutely. Thank you for allowing us to go first. Have a good evening, everyone.

All right, so then we will move to item 45, which is Legistar 93105, the Office of the Independent Police Monitor Annual Report. Monitor Glass.

Good evening, everyone. Good to see you all. So I have created... Are we there? Okay. I have created a pretty short presentation for you all as the Office of the Independent Police Monitor's report was fairly long. And I know that there are several questions in the room, so I want to get to that. But before that, I want to do a brief overview of who we are. We are Madison's independent answer to accountability. outside of the police department, outside of policing culture, outside of political influence, outside of union pressure, this office is the answer for the community. independently investigating complaints against MPD officers. We review MPD's internal investigations and issue independent findings. We audit and analyze policing data to identify systemic patterns. We make formal recommendations to the chief, formal recommendations to city officials, as well as provide administrative and executive support for the PCOB, amongst so many other things that I'll talk about in a moment. The structure and the mandate is comprehensive. The question is, will the city resource it? Will it protect it? We have been doing a lot of work around community engagement. Community and stakeholder engagement is not an add-on to this work. It is the work. We make sure that community voices are centered in this work. Community organizations are engaged. Community events, listening sessions, Neighborhood engagement, partnerships with organizations serving the most impacted by policing. Obviously, there's a lot of engagement with the PCOB and the PCOB members that represent community organizations. Maya chair went over a lot of the community engagement that the PCOB, so I won't go over that as well, but I will say this office, I have been here almost six months. We started on the annual report a month and a half into me being here. I really appreciate Chief for meeting my request to visit each of the districts so that that could be included into the annual report. I felt it was necessary. I recognized I didn't have to do an annual report because I'm interim and I had only been here for a few months, but I felt it necessary because of the history of what had taken place in the office and with the board and wanted everyone to know that the work was moving forward. So I appreciate Chief for accompanying me and introducing me to all of the captains, giving me tours of each of the districts. letting me know the needs and concerns of the communities in which officers are serving in their communities. I also want to shout out Officer Creech and Officer Trey Turner. They did my ride along with me and I would say they are an example of what I believe policing should look like. I also had the opportunity and have the opportunity to check in with Chief monthly. and we are constantly in communication. I was about to say, I'm sure he's probably tired of me, but we are in constant communication and we, I am happy to say, have a really good relationship regardless of my position and his. I also get to meet with Assistant Chief who is over PSIA and we talk, if not weekly, daily around cases and what's going on. I also had the opportunity to meet with a good amount, I think the majority of you all in this space, in this room. So I appreciate you all taking out the time to meet with me as well as the mayor. I have been doing a lot of engagement. So as I've done one-on-ones with you all and folks from the police department, that also happens in the community. So obviously from the time I've come on board, there has been a lot of community engagement and one-on-one meetings. and making myself available, as well as quickly responding to community needs as they arise around policing concerns. I'll walk you through the process, the comprehensive breakdown of our complaint process. pathways are also in the annual report it is some of the first things that I reformed or completely created when I arrived and let me just name the complaint Pathways and processes currently, we are operating manually. So I literally have to do everything manually. Thank you to Greg for jumping in to do some of the case management and intake work that is necessary. He is part-time, so it is a lot falling on myself to get through these complaints and to do it manually. On day one, I identified two things, body worn cameras, and I'll leave that to the questions later, but also a case management system. It's currently going through the city IT process. So we are now I believe it's in the city attorney's office for review and I hope to get that going as soon as possible. So anyone can file a complaint. There is no wrong way to reach our office. There are five severity levels from critical to informational. Every complaint reviewed and classified is by Myself, the independent police monitor, personally, no cases move on without that review. There are three pathways. Pathway one is independent investigation, where the OIPM leads and completely operates the independent investigation outside of MPD. Pathway two is a review of PSIA and their investigations. And pathway three is alternative resolution, which is mediation and or restorative justice. The office's findings go on permanent record regardless of what action the chief takes. You do not need a lawyer to file a complaint. You do not need certainty. You just need to be able to tell your story. I am going to give Greg an opportunity to dive into some data, but I want to give you guys a quick overview before we dive into that a little bit later when we get to questions. So currently, well, not currently, at the time that this report was created, we had eight complaints in the East District, six complaints in Central District, North District had five complaints, South District had four, Midtown had one, and West had one. At the time, 25 complaints were filed during the time of our report I will say when I was appointed I was made aware that there were at the time I believe 17 or 18 cases in the backlog so I had the backlog when I walked into the office and now since I've been a part of the office Since I am in the news almost every week, it has caused a lot of engagement, which is great because we have had an additional amount of complaints come through. So community engagement is how people know that the office exists. one of the things that I think is significant to say is that since I came on board We have had 11 additional complaints filed So it's getting through the backlog as well as addressing the complaints coming in in real time We have been able to close the first eight cases with plenty more at completion. We have independent investigations as well that we are working through that require consultants, that require experts, that require a lot of resources. Complaint patterns. So when we look at what we are seeing in a snapshot, I had Greg pull the numbers on the complaints from what we are getting in our office as well as what Internal Affairs receives. So we have 54 officers with two or more complaint complaints. cases, 18 officers with a sustained allegation and three officers with seven complaints each, which is the highest. The office will continue to track and look at any repeat complaint patterns as well as make sure that we monitor if folks are being targeted or harmed by filing a complaint or being impacted by the system as a whole. In the Annual report, I talk a lot about the criminal justice and public safety ecosystem and how all of these things play a part and impact police oversight as a whole. I use data as a check. That is one of the ways in which I use data. So when I see complaints come across my desk and there are patterns, I, Greg will tell you, I begin to ask a lot of questions and ask to pull the data. When I initially came on and looking through the backlog and reviewing cases, disorderly conduct was a point of concern for me. I asked Greg to do a disorderly conduct audit. And just a quick overview of how Madison is operating with disorderly conduct. It is three times more than the national average and 90 times of Seattle. So that's just to give you a point of view of how MPD is utilizing the most discretionary charge there is, which is disorderly conduct. Traffic stops. Greg, prior to coming on board with the office, provided me what he submitted from the beginning and it was this deep dive analysis into traffic stops and we wanted to make sure that was included in the annual report. One of the key things I think that I urge the city to really look at is the fact that white drivers stopped for the same offense are 45% more likely to receive a warning instead of a citation. I think there needs to be a deeper dive into what is happening there. I have seen since I... got here almost six months ago in the news constantly around traffic enforcement, grants for traffic enforcement. I urge folks when we are pushing and passing policy to also recognize the impacts and make sure there's oversight on how those things are implemented. There's also a key thing, and I'll let Greg dive deeper into that, but between 2 and 4 a.m., 1.4 black drivers are stopped for every one white driver in a city where white residents are outnumbered, outnumber black residents 10 to 1. 10 to 1. I think a lot of what comes across My desk as well as what we are hearing in the community is something to really analyze and take a deeper dive into. Before I hand it over to Greg, I want to just get through the final part of this is in this work centering equity. So I'm on record saying, not just here in the city of Madison, but everywhere I go, equality gives everyone the same thing. Equity gives people what they need. And when you think about police oversight work and you think about police accountability, There have been oversight institutions in existence for a long period of time, but they had to be dismantled and rebuilt because there wasn't racial equity and equity in general being centered in the work. What does that look like? That looks like... The fact that MPD has a budget of $98.5 million and we have a budget of $405,000. We got to have a real conversation about equity. We, I understand that the office had some setbacks. Those setbacks caused money that was allocated for the office not to be utilized, which went back to the $1.62 million went back to the city because the city is a use it or lose it city. And I will just tell you, we are overworked office. with a more demanding need, the more people understand that we exist, the more need is there. But beyond that, there is a national best practice in police oversight and accountability where Most other oversight entities are between 2% and 5% of whatever the police budget is. Obviously, we do not do the exact job of police, but we do have to provide audits and reviews and investigations of the MPD force, and as well as do all of the community engagement trainings pay our consultants, pay our experts, pay our staff, have the adequate staff. In this office, there's supposed to be an investigator. There's supposed to be many things that do not exist, and so that lives with one and a half people. when it comes to cases. We do have an office manager who is amazing. I also, I kind of talked about the staffing. Three staff carrying five functions. I'm concerned that when I leave next year that There is a standard that has been set, and there has been historic things like closing the first cases and more cases to come. But the workload and what is needed and necessary as it stands right now is not sustainable, and I do not want anyone to walk in that situation and be expected to try to do what I did in this limited amount of time. It's not reasonable. Legal services fund is we're having to take money from the legal services fund. That's one of the areas in which have never been touched. This is the first year where it's going to be touched for the purposes that it's intended for, as well as getting us the case management system, as well as paying for consultants and experts also some of the community engagement necessary and needed. And so I'll just close by saying there are multiple recommendations. I urge everybody to look at those recommendations. I am extremely passionate about this work, so I have talked very passionately about how I feel about BWC. It was when I met with chief and assistant chiefs on the first day. One of the things that I really thought I didn't believe it was real because to also do the work of the independent police monitor to investigate and to look at everything, not only doing it manually, but then also doing without BWC is... is an extremely heavy lift. And so I wanted to make sure that while me and MPD will not always agree on everything, I do 100% agree with making sure that BWC is prioritized. With that being said, I looked into the pilot program and many of the recommendations to operate the pilot program were not in full function. When some of the cases that I included or one of the cases I included in the annual report had an incident where officers muted during a critical point in the interaction. And when BWC is in existence in this city, there has to be a strong policy, a strong policy around that implementation. It has to be done right. Because just like this office, there are things about police oversight in itself that... impact people and can harm people when we're trying to help them. So we want to make sure that any of the tools being utilized do not end up harming people and there's ways to ensure that. I also made recommendations around a formal NPD D.A.M.O.U. on post-arrest communication and charging decisions. I'll leave that there. If there's any questions around that, I'm happy to answer that. As well as formal complaint pathways for incarcerated individuals and referral channels with the Public Defender's Office. Early in, I reached out to the Public Defender's Office and more recently engaged around their willingness and collaboration after the annual report and them reading the annual report. Hold on, okay.

Sorry, y'all. Shows it's on on our side, but I think the mic is a little... No, it's me. I think my hand is hitting it, so sorry.

No worries. So the public defender's office and our office hopes to continue collaboration and moving things forward. I know the district attorney's office is always a little bit... trickier in these situations, but I hope that there is communication around that. There are also recommendations around for NPD that are provided in the annual report. Some key things that I just want to highlight before I close out is the need for procedural justice and further de-escalation training and the fact that CHIEF has begun that implementation. If I'm correct, I think actually not just begun it but deep into it. I think that is extremely important and necessary. I also think that I mentioned officer wellness. There were complaints that came across my desk and officers reported having to respond to multiple high stress calls. And one of the things in my work in over 15 years is While I believe in holding law enforcement accountable, it's also making sure that they have what they need to be able to do the best job they can do. And how are we catching and monitoring and making sure that we're not just doing a debriefing, but we're either redirecting or rerouting them to a lower level call when they've gone on multiple high stress calls. What are we doing not just around peer support, but making sure they have mental health and wellness resources and tools? And so these are conversations that I've had with chief and assistant chiefs. And there's multiple things I think in our collaboration where we can work collaboratively, we do and will continue to do. And those are one of my priorities. Craig, do you want to jump in anything around the day or you want to wait for the questions? We got some questions ahead of time, so. I could. Go ahead. Go for it.

I don't want to recapitulate anything that Mika said, but I can provide a few complimentary pieces of information. We looked at both PSAI complaints numbers and the complaints that we were receiving. The patterns were pretty congruent across districts, with relatively few complaints in West and Midtown, and the bulk complaints in the other four districts. and complaint numbers correlated with arrests across the districts, which is not too surprising. Another interesting tidbit is for the traffic stop analysis. we looked at both the effect of race, but also we wanted to look at the effect of socioeconomic status. And that could be proxied by car value that you can obtain from the VIN number. And interestingly, and sort of contrary to what I might have expected, There was an overwhelming effect of race, like race was a strong predictor, for example, of whether somebody would receive a warning versus a citation, but very little effect of car value. So I think that's an interesting point. Also, there... Very disproportionately, black drivers are being stopped for non-moving violations. That's a very strong pattern. And stops for non-moving violations tend to go way up at night. And also, stops of black drivers go way up at night. And as Mika alluded to, between 2 AM and 4 AM, late at night, early in the morning, you've got 1.4 black drivers being stopped for each white driver. which is fairly extraordinary. Yeah, and I think that's all that I'll say for now.

Thank you. So I'll turn it back for questions.

Thank you both. Alder Lieberman, questions?

Yes. I want to first off thank you for the thoroughness of the report here. Very much appreciated getting to dive into especially all of the data there. And then just a warning for my fellow Alders that I have a lot of questions. So first, looking at the cases and the summaries that you put on here, I want to start by talking about the process for publishing those closed cases, both for the cases that you have already completed and for the ones that are going to be closed in the future. There's a 30-day window that's mentioned in the report as being the goal for being able to turn around a completed report to a published one. I saw that just this week, the first four of those cases were added to your website under the reports section, but not the other closed ones that are mentioned but not fully described in the report. Is there a timeline for when we can expect to see the rest of the currently closed cases added to the website? And then when do you think you'll be able to hit that 30-day goal that you set for yourself for future turnaround?

So, thank you for the question, number one. I wanted to put and make sure that when I leave here that there are certain standards. I also want to make very clear that there was a backlog as well as we are understaffed. So while it is a goal, I am not going to nail down a timeline if i'm just being honest with you because that's just not realistic also the eight cases in total so there are different classifications internally so you may never see certain cases so while we might get to a point where there's a hundred cases closed but you only have seen 90 of those cases, it could be that they fall under a different classification. And what that could be is that it could be administrative close that is still eligible to be reopened. There's different reasons for that administrative close. There's also internal what I call a hummingbird case. That means that I have determined that it is mental health related and there are individuals that would be highly impacted if they knew that their case was closed. I engage with them nearly every day. And so

that would fall under a hummingbird jurisdiction and we will never give a case number we will protect and center our complainants at all costs so thank you for the question though that makes sense um if i might add i think it would be helpful even in that case to have perhaps just a banner at the top of the screen that says case is closed case is currently investigating uh just to give that extra transparency to the public um My next question on the case is, there are four that are listed in the report, but I didn't see any cases where the PSIA exonerated an officer from a claim or a complaint, but then the OIPM sustained the charge. without disclosing things that maybe, as you just talked about, you're not at liberty to disclose, were there any cases where this was the case or where your findings significantly disagreed with the finding of the PSIA? And then can you just describe what the path for resolution would be in that sort of scenario?

Yeah, so these are great questions, by the way, so when I read them, I appreciated them. So there's a couple of things here. This is why the timeline on a case being reviewed or investigated is so important, because the backlog, if Chief has already implemented, or in some of my cases, there was a different chief in place so if there's already disciplinary action that was implemented or a case was sustained not sustained or an officer was exonerated and I find something different I then issue whatever my finding is to the chief with all of my notes and it kind of stops there because most of our cases have been getting through the backlog. Now, when we're talking about independent investigations, we go beyond just what Internal Affairs does and we're going beyond just NPD policy. So when I'm reviewing, I'm almost aligning everything based on their policy and if it's a policy violation. I may disagree with officers muting at the time of the BWC pilot program. That was not in policy, so I could not sustain it, but I made a note of that. Does that make sense? And so then when there's an independent investigation, it goes far beyond what just policing policy is. There's integrity measures, all of these things in place. What I will say is that we have a working meeting I think June 9th. There are many internal policies that we have created in our office. And as they impact MPD, I like notify them, but we haven't done like a flush out of everything. So they'll call me, ask questions. I'll call them, ask questions. But as far as, I don't want to speak to what, because we might get in that room and something might shift, but we do have internal policies on what that would look like. Moving forward also, because I do not have the ability or the office or the new permanent independent police monitor will not have the ability to do disciplinary action, but we do have the ability to make those recommendations. The timeframe, wanting to make sure that the chief reviews our reports, our investigative reports, our reviews before they make any disciplinary action or take any disciplinary action. If a case is going to end up going to the PFC, there's a completely different pathway and process for that. And so some things may be shared with NPD and some things may not, depending on what type of case it is. Yeah.

And then just on the cases, I think you were covering this a little bit, but in case three in your report, you determined that no violation occurred, but you initiated a formal policy review. I understand the timeline for that will be different now with the backlog and all of the limitations you were talking about, but, you know... a year or two years from now, what would the timeline for that sort of review be? And what would the end product of that review look like?

So one of the practices currently is anytime it's a policy situation that I can include the PCOB because they are not included in any investigations or reviews, right? But policy and what impacts the community is where they live. So I make sure that I engage particularly the community external policy and procedure chair and the full PCO be around policy implementations and recommendations and so that will be the practice and and I don't want to speak for how long it will take we meet the subcommittees meet monthly all three of them and so once I introduce the a policy that needs to be reviewed. They'll make recommendations they already do on certain things that they bring to us and then I'll hand it to Greg and Greg will do his deep dive. But again, you already named it. We're on overload right now.

My next few questions I think might be more directed at Greg having to do with the data here. On pages 31 to 34, you analyze both OIPM and PSIA complaints by district. You give the total number of OIM complaints in that reporting period, but not the total number of PSIA complaints. You just note that it's a larger sample size. Do you have the total number of PSIA complaints that you analyzed in that reporting period?

Yes. Yes. There were 196 PSIA cases, 149 of which were associated with a specific district.

Great. And then this might be for either of you here, but what do you attribute the discrepancy between the number of OIM cases and the number of PSIA cases, and how can we make sure that residents feel comfortable in reporting cases to the OIM?

Thank you. I don't think it's a matter of comfort. Like I said in my overview, there have been, once folks have known, I've gotten emails like, how do we never know about this? Or obviously when people are looking to file a complaint, they go right to NPD and they have a complaint form and system. I think when we're talking about We've had conversations around getting our case management system and having potential integration. The reason being is because we need to see those complaints that go to them in real time and be able to also monitor and create a pathway. Also, if there is more resources and community engagement happening, as I said, there has been significant community engagement. And therefore, there's been a parallel. in significant increases in folks filing complaints. Another thing is, just to remind folks that prior to me coming on board, that is when, in 2025, is when the office opened up its complaint process for the first time. And even during that time, no complaints were actually ever closed or anything like that, and that's how we ended up with the backlog. So I think also it's a multi-layer situation happening. The fact that the office had some roadblocks as well as the fact that community engagement needs to be comprehensive and robust and that's what we're seeing now i think to your question as well about what can you all do i think having that community engagement i think i i have a lunch and learn coming up with someone one of the alders and we are doing engagement those who are willing we're also engaging with the community organizations and they now know kind of what the charge is, and they're engaged. Now that things are working effectively and efficiently, you're seeing that move forward.

Great. Actually, I'm going to skip past this next one. When you talk about disorderly conduct arrests, you say, quote, sole DC arrests are the most discretionary and carry the sharpest racial disparities. I saw analysis for the juvenile disorderly conduct cases, but not the adult cases. Greg, was there any analysis that was performed on the racial disparity rate for adults? And what did that analysis look like?

Yes, the racial disparity analysis for adults was performed. It wasn't included just to avoid information overload. You did see a large racial disparity just as with the juveniles, but with the juveniles it was actually a stronger racial disparity. It's a more exaggerated racial disparity. The bulk of sole disorderly conduct arrests were of adults.

And then on disorderly conduct, you mentioned that other cities have undertaken policy reform to address those racial disparities in disorderly conduct, arrest rates by race. Can you give some examples of either the cities that have done that or the policies they have done that have been successful in addressing that disparity?

So Mika gave that to me. Okay, for example, Milwaukee decided, recognized that it had a very high rate of disorderly conduct arrests, and now it's particularly targeted disorderly conduct arrests for the ordinance violation, and it's drastically reduced those numbers. So that's like one example. You have... a number of different measures that can be taken. Like one example, in last year's OIPM report, one of the recommendations was to consider implementing something called situational decision-making analysis. And there was a very large randomized controlled trial performed in Chicago, very rigorous. And it found a large reduction in in disorderly conduct arrests due to that training. Some of the tools used in that training are similar to tools that MPD uses, for example, simulator training, et cetera, but the the exact nature of the training differs, and I think there may be potential here. You know, you have, you can have things, for example, in targeting disorderly conduct, where officers, patrol officers, are required to write up, you know, more detailed justifications for a disorderly conduct arrest. You know, so a lot of different measures can be taken.

add to that is one of the reasons why procedural justice is so important because if you have to hear yourself explain what you are doing and why you are doing it and walk somebody through the process and you have a department and leadership which I believe is here that wants officers to assess and reevaluate and correct in real time if they need to. I think that's completely important. I think another thing that council and I hope NPD really looks at is throughout history, And I always say this, just because it's policy doesn't make it right. And just because it's law doesn't make it just right. And so there are in cities where I've worked in and done this work where police took it upon themselves to create policy because the law was so broad. Right. And to say this is the standard, this is the integrity we're going to operate at. And so I think I would encourage MPD to really analyze how it wants to be seen in its community and how they want the public to feel and be treated and Consider changing its policy to say regardless of what the law says.

This is how we're going to operate the one minor thing I'll add there is actually an extremely strong evidence base for the efficacy of procedural justice training

I assume that a lot of that would also apply to addressing the racial disparities in traffic stops that your report documents and not not just in the stops, but in the actual citations there. Are there any other specific. solutions, policy solutions to address the racial disparity in traffic citations, especially since you say in the report that a lot of that is due to officer discretion.

I'll let Greg talk about the dynamic speed bumps that he loves. So go ahead, Greg.

Okay, one thing that may be worth considering, in last year's OIPM report, one recommendation was to look at the potential of using what are called dynamic speed bumps. These are speed bumps that can be used, for example, on East Washington, where you have a lot of speeding, where a conventional speed bump would just not be appropriate. The speed bump actually moves in response to the speed of the vehicle. So if a vehicle is under the speed limit, experiences no speed bump. If a vehicle is an emergency responder vehicle with a transponder, experiences no speed bump. If the vehicle is speeding, then it experiences a speed bump. And that would potentially be something aligned with the concept of problem-oriented policing, where you use design measures to try to reduce offending as opposed to a sanctions-based approach. Other things that that I'll bring up that are maybe worth considering Some cities have stopped Ticketing for non-moving violations or for certain categories of non-moving violations Given that those violations tend to have especially strong racial disparities And that's the reason why cities have moved away from that or at least some cities have another thing is We have collaborators that, you know, I don't know when this will actually happen because our collaborators are overcommitted and they haven't begun work on this yet. But it's worth looking at whether potentially there's over-policing in heavily BIPOC neighborhoods. And specifically, you can look at where officers are spending their time and whether there is... whether there's a level of policing that's exceptionally high and that doesn't correlate with socioeconomic demographics or crime demand for police services. In a study of 23 major cities across the US, this was found to be a strong pattern, that this was typically happening. And it potentially might be a contributor to the racial disparities in traffic stops. It's an area where there could be efficiency gains with reallocation.

My last question here I fear would take a very long time. So I will just ask for sort of the broad summary and then maybe to follow up on the specific details later. You say the policy framework required to make body-worn cameras a genuine accountability tool rather than simply a recording device is not in place. You mentioned this also in your comments before us earlier. That is my chief worry about implementing body-worn cameras citywide, given that research from the National Institute of Justice shows they have little to no effect on reducing use of force and can increase arrest rates in certain cities. So can you just broadly tell us what that policy framework looks like or give an example of a city where it's been successful. And then is there somewhere where you have published sort of the more detailed policy recommendations for implementing BWCs?

Yeah, so if I'm just being honest, I haven't had a conversation about BWC in 15 years. So I can't. to say where it's working on a national level, pretty much every other city has BWC other than like rural areas and situations like that. With that being said, I think there's a couple of things. When I said that we want to ensure that it is not harming folks, right? So when we're looking at a policy to ensure that officers aren't using it to write their reports, we find that there are a lot of discrepancies and or just blatant lies when we are looking at the report versus what happens in the video right and so I think that when we're talking about so if if officers know that we have this and it will work in our favor if we are submitting evidence to the district attorney but it won't work in our favor if we are the ones being investigated and reviewed and they have the ability to mute cameras, or they have the ability to stop recording and to start recording, or they have the ability to look and review certain things, like those are the things that I'm talking about. So it would need to be with the PCOB, with the community, to really create policies that do not further harm. Now, I will say this, I heard in doing my community engagement, some of the folks with privilege have said, well, we'll just keep using our phones. When there are people that are the most vulnerable and they don't have a phone, they don't have a camera, when they are the most vulnerable and there is no record that the police took their phone away from them and there is actual evidence, we have to be thinking about the most vulnerable. So while I do know district attorneys and others use these cameras to harm folks, we can put those policies in place, but that cannot be the reason that there is not evidence and there's not an accountability mechanism with the BWC. I'll let Greg, just like two things, Greg, don't...

I'll just add a little bit more. The body worn camera feasibility review committee really generated some excellent recommended policies. There are 10 recommended preconditions and a full set of recommended policies. You can find the preconditions on pages 8 through 11 of that report. The policies are on pages 48 through 57 of that report. Like it provides really an excellent framework. I'll also add that, you know, well people here largely know that I've had different positions over time on BWCs, but there's some really interesting evidence that's been coming out in the last few years. I'll point out, for example, that In New York City, there's very strong evidence now that BWCs have increased the rate at which use of force complaints are sustained, and in particular, they've increased the rate at which use of force complaints that have been filed by people of color have been sustained. I'll also add that there is some evidence that when BWCs are used in conjunction with oversight agencies, when they occur together, as would be the case here, that it produces a reduction in racial disparities in disorderly conduct arrests and also a reduction in police homicides.

Thank you. I would appreciate if you would send those studies to me. I'd love to review them. Thank you both for your answers, for the thoroughness of your reports, and thank you to my fellow Alders for giving me the time to go through all of that. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Alder Lieberman. Alder Mayer, questions?

Yes, thank you. Monitor Glass, on your summary here under key findings, you have legal services fund doing four jobs it was never designed for. Could you expand on that?

Yes. So I talked about, sorry I have my fan going, so I think you're talking about the legal services fund. portion yeah doing four jobs it was never designed oh okay yeah so I talked about that earlier of needing the case management system and we're in the process of getting that and our budget does not already have that built in and so we're using some of those funds also independent counsel and independent general counsel as well as experts and key consultants around certain things. Currently how we are saving money is I'm doing all of the reviews and investigations instead of having a consultant and an investigator as well to work with both of those. And also there is some tapping into for some community engagement. It hasn't happened just yet, but just by what the plan is from the PCLB and the office, it may need to be tapped into. I also already Can't go into detail on certain things, but this will be obviously the first year that we will also utilize it for what it was created to do, which is to appoint a lawyer to represent complainants.

Thank you. And then just a second question. You mentioned that cases reported has gone up, and I think you attributed that to the community outreach so that people know where to go. Do you get the sense, and this is just kind of vibes maybe, but do you get the sense that most people in the community do know now where to make complaints?

Or it's still... No, I think, like I said, a lot of people between community engagement, also the news, and folks just learning about it when they're trying to navigate through the complaint process. But I believe that the track that we're on, as community engagement increases, as you all continue to let folks know that we do exist and we're functioning now, I suspect that it's going to increase the way it's increased since the short time I've been here. Thank you.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Matthews?

Don't touch that button, Alder. Thank you, Mayor. I just had one question kind of related to this community outreach and getting people to know that you exist. And some of the previous questions already touched on this. And you mentioned that you don't think it's necessarily a question of folks feeling comfortable, but more just knowing that you exist at all. And I think this is kind of also maybe a question for the chief and definitely a conversation to continue in the future. But do you think it could be effective if it were possible to have citations, like the physical citations, include information about the office just like automatically so that it isn't up to discretion and everyone who has gotten a citation will also get the information that they could report misconduct if they feel that it existed.

Alder, you are ahead of the game. So this is something that I introduced in San Diego, and the police unions gave the chief hell. Am I allowed to say hell? Gave them havoc, and... And captains, because of the relationship, like a lot of this work is relational and building trust. And so because of the relationship and the work that had been done in the particular districts, some captains decided to take that on. So if it was a city policy or a policy where it had to happen, not only be something historic, but it would be so impactful and so necessary and so needed. So that question alone, thank you. That's all I will say.

Thank you. Thank you, Alder. I have no other Alders in the queue with Alder Pritchett. Questions? Alder, you have to speak into the mic. We have colleagues online. One quick question.

It's been six months. Name two things that you would like to change and two things that went wrong.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you for that question. Two things I would like to change. Oh, this is loaded, only two. So I think, I'll say for our office and the board, I would like for us to truly be independent and have the resources necessary to do what we need to do. I would also like for, and this might be just, you know, but I would also like for the many things that CHIEF wants to put in place to change or to enhance NPD can happen in an expedited manner. If two things that I wish didn't happen, is that right? I wish that I never told AI to put the capital on the water. And I wish I didn't have to see some of the cases that come across my desk.

So yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Elder. Now I believe I have no other alders in the queue with questions. So thank you both. And we will go on to the third report of the night, which is Legislature 93117, the Chief of Police First Quarter Report and 2025 Annual Report. Chief Patterson, you're going to come up here? Okay.

All right, good evening, everyone. Thanks for your time and attention. I brought a couple colleagues with me tonight. If you remember the last quarterly report, you asked about detox runs, and I think Alder Figaro-Cole asked about some sensitive victim crimes. So I brought co-presenters tonight. So if it works for all of you, we each have a very short presentation, and then we'll open it up to questions for any of us. So I'll start with the quarterly report data, and I'll move somewhat swiftly through it. Obviously... The full summary is in the full report that went to all of you and is attached to the registrar. For the two new members, I typically just go through a quick summary of each crime category or incident category and then we move on. So far, 22 shots fired incidents that they were tracking is a 26.7% decrease compared to the three-year average. Opioids and, if you can, thank you, Eric. Opioid overdoses and deaths, we did see just a small increase when you compare Q1 of this year to Q1 of last year, but overall trending lower than the three-year average. Now it's five compared to probably four, but still something that we should keep an eye on moving forward throughout the year. Robberies are 38.5% down from the three-year average of 26. Burglaries are also down fairly significantly, 50% decrease from the three-year average of 132. Stolen autos did see a slight increase, and I think we had some conversations with some of our north and east alders where we were seeing the increases and appreciate you getting information out to your constituencies to hopefully increase education and awareness of what we were seeing. Still a decrease to the three-year average, but something we need to keep a close eye on. And some of those were, again, in the Kia and Hyundai category that we historically saw and just kind of went through a process with. So theft from autos are about identical to the three-year average of 128. So I can't, unfortunately, report any decrease there. And as a reminder, the use of force data, restorative referrals, traffic complaints, crashes, all these things listed here are included in the full summary. And I know I had gotten some questions in advance, I think from you, Alder Lieberman. As a reminder to everyone, we post the 21st century policing data also on our website, and that has a demographic breakdown of use of force and traffic stops as well. And so if We can answer questions about the traffic stop and traffic citation data that was included. For transparency, I was at some memorial services last week, so I did not fully vet it. I took a hot look at it, but I wanted to make sure that you at least had what we had so we can generate some questions. And then my last plug, this is your report, and it's been a work in progress, I think, since 2017, and I am happy to change it. add to it, alter it in any way possible. We're in the process of onboarding to really what I think are critical data positions, the data manager and the data supervisor, which will hopefully dramatically increase our capacity to not only provide additional information and clarity to all of you, collaborate with the OIM and their staff and hopefully take a far more deeper dive into some of these numbers that we were all just hearing about. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Assistant Chief Todd.

Okay, I was asked, I think it was Alder Verveer, as you are all aware, we no longer have a Dane County detox facility, and so we were very concerned about what the impacts would be, not primarily for our agency and or the fire department, but hospital emergency rooms as well as vulnerable impacted populations. So I took a first look at a three-year, this is just a quarter one, comparison, so I don't know if you can see the font, but 24 is orange, 25 is blue, and then 26 is green. And what we're looking at is protective custody conveniences. So this is when police place someone under a Chapter 51 protective custody for up to 72 hours. This means that someone is incapacitated by alcohol, unable to care for themselves. And so it's sort of an interesting thing that you'll see. And again, I think we need to be cautious because we're just looking at one quarter's worth of data. I was really anticipating that we would see trending up to the hospitals, but we're seeing trending down even as we do not have detox. And so if you go, you can go to the next slide as well. And so this would be, so in 26, obviously, we did not have a detox. So these were the protective custodies that previously would have gone to detox, but that data does not appear to be transferring and these people are going to hospitals. You can go to the next slide. And so then we're looking here, this is just the grand total of numbers including Tellurian. And so again, I would have anticipated an increase. You'll notice that Meritor is the primary one that we've been taking people to. That's just, you know, Meritor tends to be, I guess I would say, a little bit easier to work with for this type of patient and how they interact. So that's why you'll see an uptick with more patients going to Meritor as opposed to some of the other hospitals. But again, we're not seeing that transfer. You can go ahead to the next slide. And again, so this is time on call. This is just an hour, so this is the total amount of time that officers are spending per quarter on these protective custodies. And you can see the different categories for Tellurian, which is Detox, obviously, then Meritor, St. Mary's, a few at the UW hospitals, and there were some at the VA back in 24, but none currently. And so, again... I think this is curious and it requires a deeper dive into exactly what's going on here. I have some suspicions. I do not believe that people are going to the jail, which would be a concern. The reason for that is the jail has pretty robust processes in place for taking people and they won't accept someone that's incapacitated by alcohol. They would make them go to the hospital. I was trying to see if I've got, let me see if I've got one more. Yeah, there's one more slide to go to. Yeah, we're on it. Okay, so I guess trying to figure out exactly what is going on here, I did reach out to a counterpart with the fire department to see if they are transporting more people to the hospital than they had in previous years, and they are for the first quarter, so it may just be they're up about 100 transports to the hospital compared to the previous two. So in 24 and 25, they were doing about 300, for the entire first quarter, they were doing 300 transports to the hospitals. Fire couldn't transport to detox, they would only transport to fire, but this was where alcohol was the primary consideration, so incapacitation by alcohol. For context, the long historical way in which the police department and the fire department interact in these incapacitations. If someone is incapacitated by alcohol, but they're ambulatory, meaning they can walk, the police would transport them. If they're so intoxicated that they're unable to stand, the fire department would transport them. In talking to the fire department, those policies haven't changed, but it does appear that we're seeing the fire department transport people more. One of the reasons for that could be that When the ambulance transports someone to the hospital, they don't go through triage. And so if they're taking someone incapacitated, they go right in, as opposed to when the officers are transporting someone who's incapacitated by alcohol, they are triaged like everyone else. And so again, we need to do a little bit deeper dive. We're looking at one quarter worth of data. I still have concerns about these very vulnerable people and where they're going. I think it's a positive sign that they're not showing up at jail. There's also the possibility, frankly, that officers are looking for alternative resolutions on the street, trying to find safe places for people to go. safe places for people to look after very complex to pull that data out because it's just not a record that's kept and so if you look at how incapacitated or intoxicated people come in they come into all of our i can't just easily pull the data and see like what where are we having incapacitated people where officers found an alternative resolution i can track when they fill out the paperwork and say they're incapacitated. But if they find another resolution, very hard to track. But I think the positives are, you know, we're not seeing them as an uptick in jail. It does appear that we have more people that are going to the, when you combine both the fire and the police transports, that those people are going to the hospitals. But again, one quarter's worth of data. We're just going to have to keep an eye on it.

Next up is Lieutenant Justine Harris. She's over our Special Victims Unit. I know, Alder, you've had some questions about human trafficking and other things. She's our resident expert. Great.

Thank you. All right. As he said, my name is Justine Harris. I currently am the Detective Lieutenant for the South District, and I oversee the Special Victims Unit. So the mission of the Special Victims Unit is to respond to and investigate crimes against children. And we do that as sort of a two-pronged approach. We advocate for victims and offer supportive resources to them and their families. And we work to hold offenders accountable for their actions by contributing to successful criminal prosecutions. The cases that our unit investigates are child abuse, child neglect, sexual assaults of children, internet crimes against children, which include what is known within the professional world as CSAM, which is child sexual assault material, but statutorily in Wisconsin that's called child pornography. Excuse me. sextortion, enticement, and then we also investigate missing children. The only crimes that we deal with that have adult victims are human trafficking, and there we look at both child and adult victims. We're housed out of the South District, and we're overseen by Captain Harrison Zanders. And then we also have investigational oversight from Captain Diane Nautical. I have a fantastic detective sergeant who assists me in leading the unit. And then we have eight phenomenal detectives who work as part of our team. Five of them deal with the general crimes against children. So those would be like the child neglect, the child abuse, the sexual assaults of children, the grooming, which was a recently passed law in Wisconsin, drug endangered children, those types of crimes. Two of them do the internet crimes against children. They take the majority, almost all of those cases. And I would say that for every one case that we assign those detectives, we could easily assign another 10 cases. There are so many of those cases out there right now. I could take five more detectives and we wouldn't exhaust it all. And then we have one detective who focuses on human trafficking right now. And then he does also most of our missing children cases. So last year, we investigated 424 cases. We made arrests in about 87 of those cases. And then we also did outreach to 50 victims who were referred to us through Child Protective Services. So what happens when someone makes a, like if they're a mandated reporter and they make a report to Child Protective Services, if CPS screens them out, they let us know about it, but they still may be a victim of a crime. So we want to reach out to them and let them know that that report has been made and that if they want us to do something about that crime, we are certainly there for them. It doesn't mean that they have to be a victim in the criminal justice system, but we want to give them that option. It's in their court. They can choose to do it or not do it. but we make that available to them. We investigated 152 internet crimes against children cyber tips that were referred to MPD. We conducted 27 residential search warrants from our cases, and we received the Wisconsin ICAC Task Force Case of the Year Award, which was a very big honor for us.

So the types of cases that we had last year that, oh, can you go back one?

Thanks. So last year, if you want to just look at that pie graph, so about 27% of our cases were those ICAC TIP cases. 29% were sexual assaults against children. 17% were child abuse cases. And then the other sort of major one were child neglect cases. And we had a little bit of drug abuse or drug endangered child cases and then death investigations. Those would be like those infant death child, those infant death cases that Very often are more tragic accidents that are ones that, to be honest, we would love to partner with public health around because I think a lot of that is education that we would love to work on, some community education on. Okay, now I'm ready for the next one. So the last thing I would just like to say is that we could not do our work without our partnerships in the community. We have sort of the investigation side of it, but the protecting of children and the prosecution side and the holding the criminals accountable It could not be done without all these other organizations, both nonprofit organizations, governmental organizations, and other private organizations that are listed up there. I tried to capture everybody that we work with. I'm sure I missed somebody, and I apologize for that. These are part of our team as much as the detectives that I work with are part of our team. And we could not do it without them. So I appreciate them. And I know that as you all look at city funding and things, some of them are organizations that you fund as well. So I just want to make sure you know how much we value their work as well. All right.

Thank you. Yeah. All right.

Thank you, Chief. We do have a number of questions, starting with Alderjean.

Oh, that's me. My question for Assistant Chief Tai, I noticed that UW East was the only facility with a increase. Were there specific reasons for this, or was that just circumstantial?

I think it's just circumstantial. Again, it's one quarter's worth of data. We don't take a lot of people to UW East, so yeah, I don't have a reason for that.

Thank you. And then my question for Detective Lieutenant Harris, are there, I don't know if this is within your scope, but are there any implications of the Wisconsin AI virtual child pornography case on your practices?

Oh, the virtual child pornography? Yes. So that is, we did have one case actually recently where we did forward charges for virtual child pornography. Yes, so it's an unusual one, and you have to, I mean, there's more steps that go into being able to charge that. The AI-generated CSAM material, yeah, but we are seeing more of that, and it is a significant, it is becoming a more significant issue.

Um, as far as the Android case, would you be able to just give context on to how that's developing or like what stage of the case it's in?

The case that we referred?

No, it was in La Crosse County.

Oh, I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the specifics of that one. No, but the law itself is an interesting law and how it's chargeable when AI-generated images, how those can be chargeable is sort of a fascinating topic in our world especially.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Alder Figueroa-Cole. Thank you.

Well, since we dragged you here because of my questions, thank you. I feel like I have to ask a question. So thank you for coming, but I still don't understand how we said that every quarterly report for sex trafficking is always zero or... you know, maybe one. So seeing that you're working with Project Respect, is that, I mean, I know that that's something that Dina and I have been trying to understand. So is that because they are not reporting it to you guys and just stays with the organizations? Because, like, there's a problem here that we don't talk about. Like, people, this is happening under our noses all the time, and nobody really talks about that. So this is why I keep on bringing it up every quarter, because the number is zero or one. I think it's one was one time in my entire six years. So why? Why?

So there were two things I was going to answer when I came, and I did forget to mention it. So there's one statistic in there that is the kidnapping, I think it's kidnapping and something else, and that number was 22 for this quarter. And I did actually, I asked about that because We did not see 22 kidnappings. That's my unit, and I guarantee we didn't see that. So I asked our data person, you know, what is that number? And that, because of the way we have to do data and statistics, it's consistent with the feds. And so what that number actually represents is false imprisonment, and it's really more part of a domestic charge. And it's usually when someone is a victim and they're being prevented from leaving wherever they're being held, usually prevented from leaving a residence. So that's what that number, that 22 under kidnapping, and I can't remember the second part of that statistic is in our first quarter. Now, on to the human trafficking and why you're never, almost never seeing any charges, any arrests in there. It is incredibly, incredibly difficult to charge. A, it's a difficult statute to charge in general. And what I can tell you from having worked those cases and worked with the detective is that we encounter the victims. We will make outreach to the victims. I mean, the victims will come to us. They will tell us what happened. We will start the process. And then what we are finding, or what we find over and over again, is that it is in many ways a relationship that is similar to domestic abuse situations in that we have a difficult time not having the victim return back to that situation before we can complete the prosecution. And even more so because very often the victim is... in the situation that they are in because of drug addiction and many other factors that have gotten them there. So when I talked about Manny Gadula, who's the detective that works human trafficking, part of the reason that he works so much with juvenile runaways is because those juvenile runaways are so vulnerable. to becoming human trafficking victims. So he works with chronic juvenile runaways long before they're ever trafficking victims because he knows they are so likely to become trafficking victims if he does not intervene in them before they become drug addicted or under the wings of people who want to get them into that lifestyle.

I mean, so one more question, I mean, and again, is there like, do we know of spaces in the city, specific locations, I'm not gonna name them, but some of us know, that where this is more likely to happen, and if we had that inventory of spaces, does this detective makes time to do, you know, to show up once in a while, like randomly, or do we have anything in place to do that?

So what I have seen here in Madison is different from what I see portrayed maybe in larger cities. It is much more relational. So it is much more a relationship between maybe the person who is trafficking one or two people, and he has a significant relationship with those people, or they believe, they have a significant relationship with him, which is, I guess, why I likened it almost more to a domestic abuse relationship than the typical trafficking stable of trafficked.

So we have no evidence that Madison is used as a point to transfer people to other areas?

We don't see that as much, other than perhaps in the massage parlors, and that is another area And those are very hard to work because every time that we have ever – and we work those as part of a task force that Detective Gatula works with, like the county and the FBI and some of our other partners. But the problem with that is every time we have ever done any sort of a warrant or raid on any of the – the massage parlors, as soon as we make contact with any of the women who work there, they are immediately gone and out of our community and we never see them again. So.

Thank you. Thank you, Alder. Alder Laberman, questions?

Yes. Thank you. Keith Patterson, my first question has to do The annual report that you submitted along with the quarterly one, you highlight the summer traffic initiative in that report. I'm curious what the outcomes in the long run of that were. Specifically, did the increase in citations over the summer lead to a decline in traffic incidents throughout the rest of the year at those intersections?

Thank you for that question, Eric. So the author of that strategic plan was also Assistant Chief Tai, who oversees operations, so I teed him up before the meeting.

I think that one of the... So to answer the question very directly, that's not something that we've studied. One of the... One of the real challenges that we have is sustaining proactive traffic enforcement. It's a number one concern from the community. We hear it. We were talking about it at the mayor's management team today. We're working on Vision Zero. We know it's important to the community. We have an AM traffic team that solely has functioned for that. We have patrol. It's part of everybody's mission to be involved in traffic enforcement. We're retooling how we do our stratified policing to have this be a priority and kind of renaming it as a data-informed crime reduction and traffic enforcement because we think it's that important. And so that's not something we studied for last year's from last year's summer traffic initiative. However, we are launching again this summer a similar traffic enforcement with the intention of sustaining that through the year and continuing to study it. We feel strongly that it's not sufficient to just do it as a one-off, but try to really, much as we've done with some of our other crime reduction strategies, to really try to enforce and model this as a year-round initiative. One of the things, frankly, that we do see, though, and we saw it on South Park Street, we had the horrific fatality accident on South Park Street, and we saturated that stuff with additional, I mean, but frankly, that was overtime so that we could put people on a mission-centric, what all you're gonna do is traffic enforcement. We think that that has impact. That's not sustainable across the board, But we are going to continue to try to prioritize it and study some of the things you suggest as we roll into this summer and then going through the year. Again, I think it's really important. It speaks to some of the stuff that the IM's office is looking at. We are emphasizing and continue to emphasize hazardous moving violations with an emphasis on speed. specific that we're not interested in registration or equipment violations and you saw that from the data from last summer but we're gonna reinforce that and we still did have some of those type of violations but I think on a monthly basis we were seeing you know 900 citations for moving violations and 200 for hazardous moving violation and 200 for others so we'll continue that emphasis and again we're trying to focus people towards the areas where we see crashes. And I think that, you know, traffic enforcement isn't the only part of this. And we're, you know, Ian and his team at Traffic Engineering have done a lot to do this. And I think it involves a lot of other city agencies. I do think that there's a lot of evidence out there to suggest that, you know, targeted traffic enforcement in certain areas for those moving violations, you know, the studies would suggest that that is impactful to improving road safety, but it's just one part of it.

Thank you. I guess going for Chief Patterson, the data that's in the appendices of the quarterly and the annual report back up the racial disparity in disorderly conduct charges that the OIM report called out. What steps are you currently taking to address that disparity within MPD?

No, I appreciate that question. And DCs have been, frankly, a leader in the number of charges for years. And I think it's absolutely something we need to take a much closer and deeper look at. I think... I think we have soon the ability to be very surgical with this data and intentional with the data. I think we should look for outside assistance, and Matt is also a part of a research council through the IACP, International Association of Chiefs of Police, and has already started having conversations about this particular topic as being something that hopefully we could create some collaboration here locally to include the OIM to sit down and really take a deeper dive both by individual officer, by geography, by time of day. I think all those things need to be looked at. I think it's important to compare ourselves to other communities. I think we have to be a little careful at times because You do a quick look to other cities, the statutes are very different. And I think the charges are used very differently. So it's not always apples to apples. And I admit, disorderly conduct in Wisconsin is very broad. It encaptures just a slew of different types of behaviors. But it's also something that I think we want to make sure is used equitably across our jurisdiction and is not overused. I think we should absolutely start pushing frankly for increases in scope when it comes to diversion and deflection. DC has been an included charge through the Dane County CRC since its inception. And I think we should start talking about more cases headed that direction. I know that the CRC has talked this year. I don't know if it's official yet. I don't know if you know this, but for years, and this goes back to when Matt and I were in the South District, and it was a pilot program. It was 17 to 25 years of age only. And we were able to increase the geographic scope, but the age scope has remained consistent for years. You know, there's been some talk about now expanding it to 35, which would be fantastic, I think, to start including others. But, you know, I think everything should be on the table, frankly, especially when we have a community court that's going to be opening soon and maybe would create some opportunity there for us to make, you know, more intentional referrals, similar to what we do with the juvenile courts. CITATIONS, MUNICIPAL CITATIONS, AND I APPRECIATE THE OIM ADDING KIND OF THE CHIEF'S PERSPECTIVE IN THERE FROM THE INITIAL VERSION, BUT INCLUDING DISORDERLY CONDUCT FOR ALL JUVENILE OFFENSES THAT ARE MUNICIPAL, NOT STATE OFFENSES, THEY ALL GO TO RESTORATIVE JUSTICE. ANOTHER PROJECT THAT I THINK WE NEED TO LOOK AT IS you know, what youth are dropping out of the RGA opportunity and perhaps, you know, being issued a citation at a later time by our records services. That's something that I've wanted to look at for a while that I think we need to do. I think we need to start having arrests and citation reviews with community members at the table to talk about individual officer bias and literally analyze what the call was, what the decision process was, and compare it to other officers, to other decisions, to other uses of discretion, and really have meaningful discussions, and then actually have it guide you know, how we, you know, intervene if we need to, frankly. So I don't know if you have more to add on that.

Yeah, I would just quickly add to sort of frame what the chief was talking about, about the research advisory committee. So I was appointed, it's a three-year appointment, and it basically, it's supported by my The funding for it is supported by the National Institute of Justice. It's part of IACP, but it's basically 15 criminologists from level one, R1 research universities, and 15 police commanders that are looking at research and best practices throughout the country, and actually, I mean, throughout North America. And so one of the things we've already had conversations, as the chief has said, where I've reached out to people on both the DC issue and the traffic issue. You know, some of our ideas would be to really have a collaborative process where once we have our data folks fully on board and the Office of the Independent Monitor bringing in outside researchers, there's a lot of ways to analyze traffic data population census population is one there's there's there's deeper dives that you can do to really get to the root of the problem that would be important additionally you know I was talking to a professor that worked on specifically this DC issue in Omaha they did some different stuff in Omaha Nebraska when she was a professor over there so again there are some real opportunities in to partner with additional outside researchers and then our own folks here in the city. And as the chief said, to bring in community perspective as well. So I think we definitely have work to do, but I don't want to portray this where we're going like this with the Office of the Independent Monitor. We want to collaborate. We want to improve policing. But I think we need to make sure that we're looking at the data, that we sort of level set how we look at the data and we all understand what we're looking at so that we can make the right sort of improvements.

No, I appreciate that. And also bringing in, just to mention, the Community Justice Council, too, that Alder Madison and I attend, they have a data analyst that is also looking at and has looked at disorderly conduct across the county. I think it's really important that we start pushing for meaningful collaboration around data so that if there's disagreements or arguments, we're having those behind closed doors and not through work products.

Thank you for taking this issue seriously. That is one area I would appreciate updates in future quarterly updates that you give us if possible. Um, my last thing, thank you for pointing me to, uh, where that historical data on, uh, the use of force cases lives. Do, does that include data on the outcome of the use of force? Uh, for example, whether or not the use of force resulted in injuries sustained by either the suspect or the officer, um, whether or not force was escalated after the initial use by either party. Is that data that we're keeping right now?

Good question. I would have to look at it just to make sure I'm not misspeaking, but I think it's just by officer compared to the gender or the sex, excuse me, and the race of the individual. I don't believe it's broken down by age. I think it's just those more simple demographics. And I don't think it includes injury information, but I can talk to our use of force coordinator and see how much more detail we can provide, frankly, because if it's something we have, I have no concerns about sharing it.

I appreciate that. Thank you guys so much. Yep.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Okovitz?

Thank you, Marion. Thank you for the presentations. First, for AC Tai on the conveyances, who makes the decision which hospital to go to? Is that each officer? Are they calling ahead?

So, officer decision, we had years ago, we used to do like a hospital of the month that we used to do, but we've gone away from that. So, it's just... You know, at certain times, honestly, I think over Mifflin Street, Meritor did shut down. They weren't taking any more patients. But if, you know, absent that, it's up to the officer's discretion to choose which hospital.

Okay. I was just curious. And then for the lieutenant, for the, I'll just preface, as you mentioned, working with community partners on a lot of these, you were talking specifically about the deaths investigations, but for things like abuses or other things, when you're doing an investigation, are you following up with families if there's not a sustained allegation with any community resources to help them? I can imagine overstressed parents or people who just are having issues, that sort of thing.

Let me make sure I understand your question. So if a report comes in of injuries to a child or something and we do the investigation and we don't find any evidence of abuse or neglect or something, then do we help the family try and, but it just seems like the family is overwhelmed. Yeah. Do we help them to try and connect with resources? Yep. Yes, absolutely. Usually we're doing that investigation in conjunction with Child Protective Services or some other entity. And Safe Harbor is often involved as well. And the child is usually interviewed at Safe Harbor if they're of an appropriate age. And so in between Safe Harbor, which does a great job of doing referrals for resources, Child Protective Services, and ourselves, we really try and connect the families with different resources in the community. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you.

We consider that our role.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Evers, questions?

Yeah, real quick for Chief Patterson. I appreciate the parent policy change to In response to the tragedy a couple months ago on South Park that you referenced in terms of the allocation using overtime hours to increase enforcement on South Park Street, I wonder if it wouldn't be helpful in your next quarterly report or to start moving forward if we could see year to year, as you do in some of the earlier things like fast-for-mottos, homicides, drug overdoses, so that we can see the impact of this increased level of enforcement, particularly on hazardous moving violations.

So a year-to-year comparison of hazardous?

Yeah, yeah. You've got the data here on traffic citations and warnings. If we could see it, if we could see it over time and see if, and somehow or another be able to connect, we know that enforcement actions have kind of a limited time horizon. They work for a while and then they wear off. But we'd like to be able to track to see, combined with the other elements of Vision Zero, the education and structural design of our streets, what's working and what's not. And we alders, probably the most emails that we get on any topic has to do with traffic in our neighborhoods. particularly speeding and going through stop signs and things like that. So if we could see some year-to-year data and be able to tie it to enforcement actions, Maybe that would tell us something.

I think I'm understanding. So you're wanting to have the traffic enforcement citation data along with crash data for injury crashes?

Yeah. Just similarly, like you give us a bird's eye view of some of these other crime categories. If we're going to look at hazardous moving violations almost as a serious crime that risks people's lives, we ought to try to get more of an idea year to year how we're moving forward. We know that there was problems associated with the pandemic, that people speeding and things like that just went, and we never quite recovered from that. But I feel like what you did on South Park Street for that four week period, allocating those overtime hours has a significant impact. And I have noticed and sensed that people are slowing down a bit. So I'd like to track this over time if we could please.

No, we can absolutely do that. And actually, they were out there tonight on my way in. So we're still trying to sporadically.

Yeah, I understand. I know that this is a work in progress.

No, absolutely. But I think to Assistant Chief Tai's earlier points, we're really going to be intentional this year to direct. officers towards hazardous violations. We really would like to see a dramatic increase, frankly, because even if you look at Q1 compared to, you know, the previous year, just of speeding violations, I think that reflects South Park, frankly. It was a pretty big increase. I would like to see that throughout the whole year. And, you know, to his point as well, we're hearing from the community as well that they want hazardous citation enforcement or hazardous violation enforcement. We're not hearing that they want, you know, a taillight enforced. So it's the speeding, it's the red light running, it's, you know, failing to yield to pedestrians, that type of thing.

And we can track some of that, and we have to direct our activities. And so we've come up with, and we can talk further about what might be helpful, but we've done some heat mapping where we, you know, more serious injuries get a certain class, less serious injury crashes to kind of show those higher injury networks and where we want to direct activity. So we can come up with something, absolutely.

And then maybe in the next year we can get you another test team. That would be great as well.

You said next year? Yeah.

as soon as possible thank you other other martinez rutherford thank you uh lieutenant detective harris um first of all i might get a little choked up thank you so much for the work that you do I'm queasy just thinking about what you have to see. So thank you so much. I would like to have a conversation with you at some point about what you are seeing when it comes to trafficking, but I think what I want to kind of get my grasp around is what you're seeing year after year, kind of the patterns of CSAM prosecutions I from my kind of perspective I've been seeing it a lot more and I just is that an accurate assessment yes yes so it

What we are seeing has grown exponentially, absolutely. The volume of CSAM has increased dramatically. And so not just in terms of the amount of images, the amount of videos that we're seeing as, you know, computers and downloads and everything, you know, the capability of all of that increases, so does the amount. But what we're seeing that actually worries us even more so is how much more we're seeing children being targeted and victimized on a regular basis in their own homes, really every day. very systematically. So they're being recruited online in really all sorts of different platforms, games, chat rooms, really very innocuous spaces where they're being sort of they think it's a safe space, their parents think it's a safe space and they're being met online by someone who's pretending to be a child and then moved into sort of a different space and then tricked or coerced into at some point sending images or videos of themselves that then end up being put, you know, it goes down a long rabbit hole that I won't go into here, but at some point that image and then images and videos and such wind up being part of what then becomes CSAM that gets shared and sold across the web all over. And it's very damaging, and really damaging to that child.

Thank you for giving me that through line because that was my next question. And I guess are you also seeing an increase in sextortion because of the material that has been solicited by

Yes. So that's part of how that happens is that initial image might be, you know, two peers. The one child who thinks they're conversing with a peer and they think they're sending an image to another 13 or 14-year-old. And once that image is sent, now all of a sudden it's, hey, you need to send me more or I'm going to post your image for everybody to see. And then it becomes something else. And now, yeah, so now they're being forced into doing something and coerced into doing something and it becomes much more manipulative. And that's part of how this extortion is occurring. Yeah.

Yeah. And final question, do you possibly have demographic data on the people that are on the perpetrators that you would be able to share with me or us so that I can kind of get an idea of where we're seeing it most?

So part of our problem is that since it is all occurring online, tracking down the perpetrators is very challenging. And so whereas we often find our victims locally, our victims are the ones who come to us locally. Finding the perpetrators, the perpetrators are almost always out of our jurisdiction. What we find is that a perpetrator, what's most common is that a perpetrator who is asking for more images is usually either in the United States or in the United Kingdom, possibly, yeah, United Kingdom, Ireland, you know, that area. A perpetrator who is asking for money is often in other countries outside of those areas.

I have one more question, but I can't formulate it well enough. So I will reach out to you after.

Absolutely. Anytime.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Pritchett? Just one quick question. Since MMSD was voted down, the whole notion of SROs, have you noticed an increase in schools, especially since there's an uptick in violence prevention for the K through 12 population, and are you getting calls for incidents that occur in and around the campus area? When I say campus area, I'm talking about the high schools. Only the high schools? Yeah, high schools primarily, yes.

We have just, I can't say enough about the relationship that we do have with MMSD. It's very strong. We work very closely. I mean, I could tell you, especially our midtown captain who has three high schools in that district, I mean, they're talking to the Office of School Safety probably every day. And it's a very close, collaborative relationship. We do get calls, but it's very much a collaborative approach to what's going on in our high schools. I meet in the mayor's bi-legally meeting around violence prevention, and the school district is at that table. They're part of our meetings with the violence, uh or violent crime units uh when they meet with you know the community members that we talked about last time I was here so um it's a it's a very functional and positive work uh relationship with the school district thank you thank you other elders on um this is for the detective again

I would like to say that the case I was referring to previously was a court case, so it's United States v. Anderig, but I realized that was confusing just because of the terminology. And so I have done kind of broader academic work regarding sex law, and something that I have... Like, something that I've encountered is that there are more children than ever on the sex offender registry. In the area, is that also reflected? Is that also true?

I don't believe that would be true in... I'm not familiar with that in Wisconsin. That's... Higher than historically, I mean. And here in Wisconsin? Yeah. Or, like, nationally. I guess I would not... I couldn't speak to national statistics, but... So we do have juvenile offenders. It's not our most common. I mean, we certainly have dealt with juvenile offenders. We don't... I'm trying to think of kind of how to talk about it. It isn't... We try and look at... what the best possible resolution is. So when we are looking at a juvenile offender, we work very closely with the DA's office on that, and we really try and look at how what is in the best interest of the community and the best interest of this child, the offender, as well as the victims in this case, as we look to proceed on this case. So we do an absolutely full investigation, but we are not necessarily looking to lock the child up in that way. And then it goes to the DA's office.

Thank you. Thank you, Alder. I have no other Alders. Alder Glenn.

Yes, I really enjoyed Alder Pritchett's question to the Office of Independent Monitor at the end. And it was something along the lines of, what are two things that are working for you and two things that you wish you could change? Or regret, maybe.

Two things that I wish I could change. Oh boy, that's hard. I should have written some things down when I heard Mika get this question. I mean, I think things that I would change is, you know, I think I said this to Mika on the phone actually yesterday. Sometimes it feels like you're moving a glacier. And I think it takes time and it takes a lot of patience and I find myself at times wishing that I could just get things moving a little bit quicker. The data component for me has been frustrating because we've had a gap In our capacity now for over. I don't almost a year since one of the positions left six months probably for the other and it's really exposed frankly our Our lack of savvy skills when it comes to interpreting some of our very own data, and it has felt that we have been a little I Think a little deficient in our ability to respond effectively to some of your requests, to some of the IM's requests, and that's been a little frustrating. And so I think, as Patterson always does, he's drifting and rambling, but one thing I wish I could do is change that, is change just the speed of change, but also change how we are collaborating around data, being responsible around data, and really being able to meaningfully drill deeper into our own data. I think I'm very eager to get these two individuals hired, get them onboarded, but I also realize that it's gonna take a little bit of time and I need to give them some space to prepare themselves, but both these individuals and then the full team are really gonna be put to task because I think there's been some things, frankly, that have been ripe for some surgical work for far too long. And I've said it repeatedly. I mean, I think our disparities have been around for too long, far too long. you know, while they're super concerning, our overall numbers are frankly low enough where we should be able to really make meaningful impacts. And we really should be able to bring community to the table and drill deeply and hopefully make some real positive gains for the whole community and not just in numbers, if that makes sense. What's the other part of things that are going well? I mean, I think I have a tremendous team as evidenced by these two. I mean, I've brought a few people here. I feel very blessed to be your chief and I feel very blessed to have a very good team to work with. And I'm hoping, I feel like, that our community engagement is starting to go well as well. I appreciate a lot of you coming to the early Q&As that we've hosted in your districts. We have another one on the west side tomorrow night. I know North is coming up, the Northport Apartments. I mean... I've gotten some tough questions, but it has been filling my bucket. I've been missing that. And it's just nice to really get my hands, I guess, you know, dirty again with, you know, being in and really trying to pull some feedback out of our community. But I think, you know, to what my uh our chair pearson was talking about earlier and and um i am glass was talking about our strategic plan i'm really looking forward to that i feel like we're on a good path there um to really have some meaningful engagement with the community and and make sure that uh your police department's on the right path for the next several years hopefully so hopefully that answers that somewhat it does the last question i have is uh

From my previous work with Public Health and Violence, we were frontline with a lot of your officers at ALCS. And if you had the budget to do some trauma work or support, how are the officers doing and what would you want to do?

That's a good question. I'm coming off a tough week. I was in Washington, DC last week for a former coworker who committed suicide and was suffering through some severe PTSD. And I think we have to do more, frankly. You know, I'm really grateful that IM Glass brought it up. Our officer wellness has got to be a meaningful investment. And, you know, Justine's team, fortunately, gets one additional wellness check every year because of the nature of the work they do. But I don't even think that's enough. Yeah. Because to Alderman Martinez-Rutherford's point, I mean, the stuff that they have to view is just horrendous. It's positively unimaginable. And I think that's just one aspect of this profession that I think can really shape an individual and their wellness overall. So in short, I'll give you what most cops would probably say. I think we're doing okay, but I think we can do far better. Now, Challenger Day is coming up next week. They're gonna have some of us who were a part of that response come and really have a positive interaction with the youth at the school. I'm looking forward to that. I think those types of resets on a consistent basis is something that we really need to look for and make more routine. But, you know, I appreciate our mayor and this body, frankly, for funding the annual wellness checks that started, I think, five years ago now. But we've already started to wonder, is that enough? And as you know, I started a wellness and peer support. It's a single position, but at least it's hopefully going to help us start catching some of the more routine, the more, I think, probably missed in the past incidents that officers respond to that can accumulate and can really... really bring an individual into a place of being unwell, frankly, and really challenge their mental wellness. Anyway, thank you for that question. Thank you. Sorry, it took me a minute.

Thank you, Elder. It appears we have more elders with questions. Elder Matthews.

Thank you, Mayor. This question is for Lieutenant Justice Harris and is kind of a follow-up on what Alder Martinez Rutherford was asking about. And I... I don't, maybe this needs to be a future conversation because I'm, I've still, I'm not sure fully how I'm asking this question, but when you said that, that you've seen, sorry, I just have to scroll back down to my notes, but when you've been seeing it a lot more and that it's kind of been exponential with CSAM prosecutions and things like that, but that it's not necessarily just due to the increase of capacity and the amount of things out there. I guess what I'm asking for is maybe a little bit of context on what you mean by seeing it a lot more recently. And just with like myself, like I feel like I have to ask this as someone who did kind of grow up with the internet, but before we had phones or cameras or things like that, that there, seem to have always, but maybe there just are a lot more now, there always were a lot of spaces where people who were way too young were talking to adults, whether they knew they were adults or not. And obviously it's different now with like Fortnite and it's like everywhere and it's ubiquitous, but like if, I don't know, I guess like if it does seem like it's the ease of getting Into that situation where you are sending pictures or able to take them versus like before where that wasn't really that was a much bigger hurdle to have to do.

So two things. One, when I was talking about how much we're seeing, it is the pure volume. So I think when I mentioned before about how many cases we could be working if I had the capacity in terms of detectives and computers and all of that, we triage the cases that we get. So, for example, we will pretty much not work a case If it's, you know, only five images or fewer, unless they are really egregious images or we feel that those images are of a live victim that that suspect is taking him or herself. We're really only working cases where that suspect has lots and lots of images in their, we believe are in their possession. So that's one thing that has changed over the years, whereas you used to be taking cases where they might only have a few images of CSAM. And that's changed because there's just so many cases out there now. So we really have to triage and take the worst of the worst. And then in regards to the sort of ubiquitousness of it, yes, the... When I have, we don't do many undercover cases. We just simply don't have the time. But when I've talked with other departments who do have detectives who do undercover cases, they've said that they can go into chat, into games like Minecraft or Roblox or things like that and within fifteen minutes they can find they will be approached by someone who will start chatting with them and try and move them into other rooms and that i mean it it is happening very frequently. And we get those tips very often. There's not always something that we can do with it, but we'll get tips from parents whose children have come to them and said, you know, I was on Roblox and this guy, he said this to me, you know, we started talking and then we went to this chat room and then he said these creepy things to me and they send us the chat out print, you know, the printout to us and it is really creepy and wrong. So.

Thank you.

Does that answer, did that answer it? Close enough? Yeah. So, yeah, it's just in all these different places. And then also, I guess, to answer the last thing, yes, you're right. If I could take cell phones away, I just, yeah, cell phones to me, like, I would take them away from every teenager. I really would. It would just, I mean, it would probably get, it would eliminate the majority of the work of my unit, but, like, Oh my gosh, it would save us so much headache. Because yes, that's where so much of the trouble comes is the ease of taking and sending that photo.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Harrington-McKinney, questions?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I stepped out of the room, and so, Chief, you might have answered this question. In the presentation by the independent monitor, she talked about the relationship between the police and her office. And so I want to hear, can you clarify the working relationship between your department and the independent monitor? monitor? What is that relationship and how do you see the monitor's role in building that relationship that will work for the citizens of Madison?

No, I appreciate that question, and I would echo a lot of what IM Glass said, that I think we have a very positive working relationship. I think we both realize that we're talking about really challenging topics, and we're going to agree on things, and we're going to disagree on things, and that's happened. We were disagreeing on things yesterday, agreeing on some things yesterday, but we're still working very positively with one another. And I don't perceive there to be any road bumps or inabilities to work with one another. Even if we disagree and even if we find ourselves at odds on certain topics, I think it's been nothing but professional and nothing beyond that, I guess. So I would echo exactly what she said. And I think, what was, I'm sorry, what was the second part of your question?

Specifically, how do you see the role of the independent monitor in terms of working with police? I think you've approached that, but I just want to see what, on your side, how do you see that role incorporating into our community?

No, I think it's something that we're continuing to find together and to find ways to complement both our work. I would love for us to do some of the collaborative work that we've been talking about around data once we finally get our positions in place. I think I'm eager for us to... really come together on some of these important topics and and find commonalities and common ground and hopefully agreed upon paths forward to to make some real positive and lasting impacts and i think um you know i think the areas identified are areas we absolutely need to dig deeper into and we need to be more intentional with uh and that that's what i'm hoping to to focus on and work on thank you

Thank you, Alder.

Alder Madison, questions? Thank you, Mayor. More so an ask for... future reports. So on the south side, Alder Evers and I worked to create a position, you know, to deal with some of the challenges over at Goodman Pool. So I would love to see this time next year, you know, after the summer has passed, what does it look like for calls for service to that area, you know, versus what it looked like before that position was created. Sort of same thing for the officers that were hired to or moved around or hired to work with folks who are dealing with homelessness. What does it look like, you know, maybe six months into them with those roles versus before they were in those roles? And then, for whomever would like to answer the question, but in your professional opinion, what are some of the unmet needs for the young people that you find you're arresting, or not arresting, but catching disorderly conducts?

Well, that's a good question. I mean, I think we've been talking a lot about it, obviously. In brief, sorry. Yeah, I don't know that I can be brief, but more supportive services, more opportunities for alternative activities, some of the activities that they might be partaking in because they don't have established connections to community providers, that type of thing. Thank you. So I might cringe when I say this, but I often think police officers can be great referral mechanisms as well. But we have to also put in the effort to educate our staff and make sure that they're aware of everything that might exist on the north side or the east side or the south side, whatever side of town that might be available for a young person. Thank you.

And then just just as a follow up to that, I've seen some glowing reviews about your breaking bread. See, I'm not sure if it's called breaking bread, but it's dinner in a house with the officer or something like that. I am not going. I live in a one bedroom apartment.

No, you said glowing.

Oh, glowing, yes. I've heard a couple glowing reviews. My mother is probably going to invite you to her house, though. I would love to see her.

Now that I think about it. She's a very pleasant person.

But thinking about young people, though, you know, because I know you're doing the town halls or, you know, like. Coffee with a Cop, all the sort of community engagement we've seen over the last couple months. But just thinking about young people, are you taking that same method to sort of either work with some community groups to hear from young people? So, for example, there are the challenges happening on State Street with young people. I guess I'm looking for is that same sort of, I don't know, engagement going to happen with young people over this next year?

Absolutely, and one of the things that I've talked with Assistant Chief Tai about and that Captain Nordquist is in charge of our outreach section now, one of his drives is to bring back the Youth Advisory Board that existed years ago that kind of fizzled, but it exists still with Commonwealth. Justice Castaneda coordinates it. Matt and I were there two months ago, maybe. MEETING WITH THOSE KIDS WITH CAPTAIN NORDQUIST AS WELL, AND WE'RE PUSHING FOR MORE REGULARITY SO WE GET DIRECT INTERACTION WITH WHAT I THINK IS A VERY ENGAGED AND NOT SHY GROUP ABOUT PROVIDING input and feedback, but that is something I'd like to see across our districts as well. As you know, I've been really a strong proponent of the advisory board concept. I think that is something I want certainly to have continue, but we need to look for more arenas, frankly, to engage with our youth positively.

Thank you. Thank you, Alder. Now, I have no other alders in the queue with questions. So thank you to the three of you for your report. Thank you all. Appreciate it. Alder Bitterberg.

May we have a five-minute break, please?

Moved and seconded to take a five-minute recess. Can we have unanimous consent on going into recess and coming back at 10.10? Is there any objection? Seeing no objection, we're recessed. We are one minute out from returning. The hour of 1010 having arrived, I will call us back from recess and ask that the Alders on the Zoom come back to us and that the Alders in the room take their seats, please. And thank you. And the clerk will please call the roll.

Thank you. Alder Harrington-McKinney. Alder Harrington-McKinney is present. Alder Lankella?

Here.

Alder Lankella is present. Alder Lieberman?

Here.

Alder Lieberman is present. Alder Madison?

Here.

Alder Madison is present. Alder Martinez-Rutherford?

Here.

Alder Martinez-Rutherford is here. Alder Matthews?

Here.

Alder Matthews is present. Alder Mayer? Here. Alder Mayer is present. Alder O'Brien? Here. Aldo O'Brien is present, Aldo Ohovich. Aldo Ohovich is present, Aldo Pritchett. Aldo Pritchett is present, Aldo Tischler. Aldo Tischler is present, Aldo Revere. Aldo Revere is present, Aldo Vidver. Vidver is present, Aldo Zhang. Aldo Zhang is present, Aldo Duncan. Aldo Duncan is present, Aldo Evers. Aldo Evers is present, Aldo Field. I can see him. Alder Field is definitely here. Alder Figueroa-Cole? I'm here. Alder Figueroa-Cole is present. Alder Glenn?

Here.

Alder Glenn is present. Alder Ugar? Here. Ugar is present. Mayor, we have a quorum.

Thank you. President Madison, can I have a motion to accept the reports in items 45, 47, and 48, please?

Yes. A motion to accept the reports for agenda items 45, 47, and 48.

Moved and seconded to accept those reports. Is there any objection to recording a unanimous vote in favor of accepting the reports? Seeing no objection, we will record that vote. And then we will come back to item 10, which is legislature 92400, disciplinary matter revocation action for fusion smoke and spirits LLC doing business as fusion at 36 South Bassett Street. On item 10, President Madison, a motion, please. Yep, yep, there you go. Motion to adopt. I believe the correct motion is to accept the report and recommendations of the hearing subcommittee.

Thank you. Motion to accept the report from the Alcohol License and Review Committee.

Moved and seconded. So I think maybe we will start with, I think we have at least two assistant city attorneys here. If we could get an overview of this item and the choices before the council that would help facilitate the discussion. Assistant city attorney, McReynolds.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Good evening, council members. I'm the assistant city attorney who advises the Alcohol License Review Committee. And since alcohol license revocations are rare for both the committee and you as the council, I'd like to give you some background on this case and clarify the council's task this evening. The case follows the revocation procedures in Madison General Ordinance 38.10. So up until this point, the steps taken per the ordinance, the city prosecutor filed a summons and complaint against fusion smoke and spirits, alleging violations of law and requesting revocation of the alcohol license. Then the agent for fusion was represented by legal counsel and appeared to deny the allegations. At that point, the ALRC created a hearing subcommittee that held a full fact-finding hearing for both parties to present evidence. The subcommittee voted to recommend revoking the license and submitted a report and recommendation to the full membership of the ALRC. In that process, the parties were given a chance to object to that report and present arguments at the ALRC meeting and neither party objected. At the ALRC hearing, the ALRC voted to accept the hearing subcommittee report and recommendation. And so the ALRC has recommended that council revoke this license. Again, before tonight's meeting, both parties were given a chance to object and present arguments that council and neither party objected. The report and all of the information from the evidentiary hearing is in Legistar, but to sum it up, the final conclusion and recommendation of the ALRC is to revoke based on the findings that the one, the respondent operated the license premise in a manner which constitutes a public or private nuisance due to the illegal drug activity at the premises. And two, that the respondent violated alcohol laws by failing to have a licensed operator or bartender on site during business hours. So the council's task tonight is to vote on whether to accept the ALRC's report and recommendation to revoke the respondent's Class A combination alcohol beverage license. The key ordinance here is MGO 38.10 sub one, sub B2D. And I'll summarize it like this. If the common council, after considering the committee's report finds the complaint to be true, or if there is no objection to the report recommending revocation, the license shall be revoked. So tonight, the Common Council solely determines whether or not the license should be revoked. The Council does not need to determine any other features of a revocation, such as the length or any details about what the revocation entails, because the definition of revocation is already defined by MGO 38.10 , as the effect of revocation. So the effect of revocation is already defined in our ordinances and it's something that you do not need and you should not decide. The While you heard some public comment earlier about the effect of revocation on corporations who are not parties in this matter, that is essentially irrelevant to your decision about whether this license should be revoked. Those issues were properly not considered by the hearing subcommittee of the ALRC and the full ALRC because they are not part of a revocation decision. Your decision on whether to revoke should be based on the evidentiary hearing in the ALRC's report and recommendation. So that is the summary of what you are here to do tonight with this item. And I'll stay on for any other questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

Questions for staff.

Alder Mayer.

Thank you. If the agent was fighting this replication, I would perfectly understand this process. But what is the purpose of it since they have surrendered their license already?

Attorneys, all of you, would that be a better question for you?

Do I need to? Oh, there we go. So good question. This process started, I mean, really it started back in November. The complaint was filed in January. I had had contact with the owner of the property in November, December, and January, informing them of the city's intent to move forward with an action against this license. I explained to them. that if the committee decided to revoke the license, the penalty was revocation of the liquor license and a penalty that no new license can go into the same address for a period of 12 months. I shared that with the property owner hoping that they would move to evict the Tenant so that we wouldn't have to go through the full evidentiary hearing Obviously they did not choose to evict the tenant we had a hearing date scheduled initially for I think it was March 27th, and the city appeared, had five witnesses, some who were on overtime. The city was prepared to move forward. The license holder's attorney didn't show up for the hearing. We spent about maybe a little over an hour trying to decide what to do regarding the attorney's failure to show. It was set over for another hearing date on August 9th. I mean, April 9th. And... During this entire time period up until the quasi-judicial hearing, which obviously is a lot of time, a lot of witnesses, a lot of city resources, the committee spent four hours hearing evidence. They deliberated for an hour. And to allow somebody to avoid the penalty of revocation after all of that happens, and after they were given an opportunity to surrender the license prior to all of this process, completely undermines the entire revocation process. It would be the equivalent of if somebody pleads not guilty and they have a jury trial and the jury finds them guilty and then they say, oh, wait, wait, I guess I don't want to plead guilty. not guilty, I wanna take the plea that the DA offered me before we had the jury trial. It undermines the process and it's not appropriate. And in fact, in this case, the license holder surrendered his license a good 30-plus days after the revocation hearing, after the submission of the findings of fact and conclusions of law. And it's my understanding that he only did so because the property owner told him he would tear up the lease and he wouldn't face any further financial consequences if he surrendered the license. So I think it would... sends a very bad message to other license holders if somebody can go through all of this process and then turn in the license for the simple fact of trying to avoid additional penalty.

So this is more meant to penalize the property owner than the agents, right?

Well, no. I mean, the license was revoked for the business owner. And our ordinance makes it an additional penalty that if a license is revoked, then no other license can go in at that address for a period of 12 months.

Right. Sorry, maybe I'm not understanding. So that impacts the property owner, but the agent was convicted, I believe, right, of a crime?

Right. He was convicted of two felonies.

Right. So, okay. I think that's all I have right now.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Harington-McKinney.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to be clear on what I heard. I heard that on March the 27th and also on April the 19th, the opportunity for the owner to present was denied or they did not show up? Is that what I heard? I just want to make sure that I'm hearing all the facts before I withdraw.

The first hearing that was scheduled, the licensee did appear. However, his attorney failed to appear. So then the hearing was rescheduled for another date where the attorney did appear.

And there was opportunity for the owner to, you use the term, surrender the license, object. There was an opportunity for them to show up, and they did not.

Are you talking about the licensee?

No, I'm talking about the owner.

No, the property owner is never part of a revocation process. The statute and the ordinance do not require any kind of notice to the property owner because the license is the property of the licensee. And there's no right of any property owner to have a liquor license at an address. So... Even if that were not the penalty of the ordinance, there could be somebody who applies for a liquor license at that address and it's denied. So there's no right for the owner to have a license at that address, which is why they are not made a part of the proceeding. And that's per the statute.

OK, thank you for the clarification. So what I'm hearing is clear, is that the 12 months, according to the statute, also, and I'm using the term penalizes, but the statute also includes the property manager, whether that property manager knew that that establishment was being used inappropriately?

The property owner. But in this case, the property owner was aware of what was going on in that space from November 2025 up until the time that the license was surrendered.

Okay, thank you. I'm clear on what I...

Thank you, elder. Elder Glenn.

So you had just stated that the property owner was aware, who did you speak to? And in what regards?

When I first became aware of this issue in November and was aware that the police department was going to issue a drug nuisance notice, I contacted, well, first I emailed the licensee and asked him if he wanted to surrender his license given the circumstances. And he said he would have to talk to an attorney and he'd get back to me. But then I never heard from him again. And then I called Dave Keller and talked to him about the situation and asked if they would be willing to file an eviction. And at that time, and I explained to him that if we ended up revoking the license, that There was a provision in the ordinance that stated that no new license could go into the property for a 12-month period. He and I had a discussion at that point, and this was before I had read the police reports, and he said that it was possible the previous tenant would be willing to come back to the property and open another liquor store. And at that time, I was willing to consider complaint asking for suspension rather than revocation so that they could have an opportunity to do that but after I read the hundreds of pages of police reports I did not feel that I could in good conscience do that I felt like revocation was the most appropriate action to ask for in the complaint and I called Dave Keller back after I had made that determination and told him that after reading the police reports I had to go forward with revocation and again told him of the consequences of revocation for the property and at that time he said that he had talked to an attorney and the attorney told him he couldn't evict them because there'd been no conviction and then I told him the drug nuisance letter is basically a a way to fast track an eviction and it does not require a conviction in circuit court. And he said, well, I don't know. That's what my attorney told me. And then that was on January 23rd. And then three days after that, I sent him a copy of the complaint so that he would know exactly what the charges were that the city was moving forward on. And then I contacted him again after the subcommittee voted to revoke and informed him of that. And at that point, there was no discussion on my part about surrender or anything. It was mostly to confirm to him that, well, they did vote to revoke it. So now the penalties apply. Thank you.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Figueroa-Cole.

Thank you, Mayor. I hope I get a little bit of latitude because I know we're not supposed to talk about the penalty or whatever it's called. But can you, maybe to follow up with Alder Meyer's question, can you explain what happens when a location is declared a nuisance, what have we seen of that location? What is the reasoning of adding the location as a nuisance and removing the license? Is there any reasoning behind that?

Yes, and this happens often in the general public nuisances and drug nuisances that end up in circuit court. One of the remedies is to ask the court to vacate the premises and board it up and keep... anybody from accessing the property so that, because when you have a nuisance particularly related to drugs, the property itself develops a reputation as a place where people can go to get those things. And in order to really abate that nuisance, you need a period of time where those who want the drugs or want to go to the property to engage in the nuisance behavior can't do it because there isn't anything at the property. So although I did not draft that section of our ordinance, I would imagine that that is a big part of why it's in our ordinance. Thank you.

And then just to circle back to the initial summary. So what the subcommittee, the ARC subcommittee was tasked with was to look at the evidence and make a determination of revoking. We were not there to decide The specific of the ordinance 3810, whatever the number is.

Right. Your charge was taking into account the evidence that you heard, the exhibits that you saw. Did you find the complaint to be true? And if so, is it grounds to revoke the license? And there were three counts in the complaint. The committee found two to have been proven. And then based on those two... Recommended revocation. And so that same charge, they move to this body?

Correct. Thank you. Thank you, Alder. Alder Matthews.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a follow-up also on Davey's questioning, which is, I guess, if you could explain if the revocation didn't go through, would this previous license holder be able to get a new license in the future? or like how that works, I guess.

Well, that's the other thing that was I think maybe a little confusing by some of the comment that you heard is that nobody can step in and operate under somebody else's license. So if they had evicted Mick Roberts and he had surrendered his license, then they could certainly lease the spot to another tenant, but that tenant would have to apply for the license and go through the process. And the committee could decide to give them a license or could decide not to give them a license.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Evers?

Thank you, Mayor. Just to drive the point home one bit further, if the property owner had prevailed upon the licensee or consented to your request to evict in January or November, December or January, would it have been your decision to not revoke at that time?

Well, I think had they evicted him, the likelihood of him surrendering the license would have been pretty great.

So it's your opinion that the property owner failed to responsibly deal with the information that you provided and therefore It kind of closes the case in your mind. Is that correct?

Correct.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Harrington-McKinney, additional questions?

No, Madam Mayor. I'm sorry, I just did.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Whitover, questions?

Yes. So this business had a Class A license, and that is what's being revoked. Does that mean that there can be no other Class A license for the next 12 months, or that there can be no alcohol license for the next 12 months? No alcohol license. Thank you.

Thank you, Alder. Alder, Matthews, additional questions?

Yep. Thank you. Sorry. I must not, I don't think I was clear before. And I don't know why, I don't know why my microphone is doing that. That's why I turned it off before. But my question was originally if you could explain for this license holder that we're talking about, if this revocation didn't go through would that person be like the impact of this revocation on them since they have suspended or sorry they have um right uh given their up their license already would they be able to get a license in the future and that would the property owner be able to get someone who could get a license in the future

Is that clear? I'm sorry. So are you asking had the licensee surrendered his license or had he been evicted?

No, I'm asking if this revocation, if we voted no on this, would that license holder that this complaint is against... would they be able to get a license in the future given that they do have the felony convictions? Like the impact of this, I understand you kind of described some of what the city put in and the reasoning there, but just the impact being that this isn't, I'm just not sure, right? Is this something that would stop him from getting a license in the future?

It should, because if somebody has a felony conviction, if the conviction is substantially related to the licensing activity, which in this case I would say it is, then they are not entitled to a license unless they can show rehabilitation. And I mean, maybe in 10 years. but not anytime in the near future.

And you're saying that that is already the case regardless of what is decided tonight?

Well... Or does this add to that, I guess? This adds to that. I mean, and it's important to, I think, send a message to other license holders that if you engage in illegal behavior, if you are operating a nuisance property, you face real penalties that can have an impact on what you do in the future.

Okay, thank you. Attorney Haas?

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to remind the Council, as Attorney McReynolds, I think, explained, the Council is not starting with a clean slate. So I just wanted to read a couple statements from the ordinance. It says, if the Common Council, after considering the committee's reports and any arguments presented by the complainant or the licensed, finds the complaint to be true, or if there is no objection to the report, which there has not been in this case, the license shall be suspended or revoked. It also says if the counsel rejects or modifies the report, the counsel shall adopt appropriate findings of fact and conclusions of law. It says if the counsel If the recommendation is based upon a full fact-finding hearing, which this was, the recommendation shall become the decision of the council unless reversed or modified by a simple majority vote. No further evidence shall be allowed before the common council. So I just wanted to focus the council back on the report of the ALRC. the recommendation of the committee based on the subcommittee report. So the council is not really, the effect of the revocation is automatic in the ordinance. What your decision is is whether the evidence in the record supports the decision to revoke the license. And if you think it does not, you have to make findings of fact to the contrary based on what's in the record. So I just wanted, Amber, if you want to weigh in to confirm or add anything to that, feel free.

No, thank you, Mike. I was just about to jump in and basically say the same things that you were. So I really appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, as far as findings of fact, if you are trying, if you are thinking about deciding to not recommend revocation, you're going to have to justify it and it will have nothing to do with the property owner, what might happen to the property or what could happen to any other corporation that is not a party to this case. So it really is about the facts of the case and the justification of why this will be revoked. You have to separate that completely from what the effect of revocation might be. Thank you.

Thank you for that context. Alder, are you here?

Thank you, Mayor. Straightforward question. If the council sustains the findings of the ALRC, what is the start period for the 12-month period that no other license can be awarded to that location?

Any attorney.

Amber? It's the date of revocation.

Which would be tonight? It would be when the council proceedings are signed, probably.

Okay. Not the January date on the complaint. It would be tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Figueroa-Cole?

I don't have a question at this moment. I keep it for comment.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Mayer, questions?

Attorney Haas, thank you for that explanation. I think my... I think my conflict is more going to be with the ordinance, I guess, than what we're talking about based on what you've said, and that's not what we're deciding tonight. Because what I'm trying to reconcile is how do you revoke something that's already been surrendered, but that's not really a proper sentence.

Right. I would just also note the ordinance is based almost exactly on the language in the state statutes. State statutes has a little different time period, but there is also a consequence for the property owner. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Alder Okubitz.

Call the question.

There's no need because you're the last one in the queue. But thank you for the sentiment. All right. So the motion is to accept the report and recommendations of the ALRC and its hearing subcommittee. And just so we're all clear, and the attorneys should interrupt me if I'm wrong, but the standard in the ordinances, it does use the word shall. So the council shall revoke. if there is no objection, which there was none, or if you cannot find contrary findings of fact or conclusions of law. If you do not revoke, you must articulate findings of fact and conclusions of law to justify the decision not to revoke. Is there upon the motion any discussion? Alder Matthews.

I am sorry. I just would like to say that at the beginning of this process, we were told that we are not allowed to consider the property owner at all in this decision. But I did hear from both of the attorneys that the actions of the property owner did, you know, very much factor into where we got to in this process. Maybe I'm misunderstanding that, but, so I just want that to be noted that there are going to be consequences to the property owner and that that is part of it, even though we're not allowed to consider that in this decision. And I don't really like that. And so I, sorry, I had to say.

Thank you, Alder. You're welcome to examine the ordinances, but as the attorney said, they're pretty close to state statute. Alder Figaro-Cole, discussion?

Yeah, just a couple of comments. I mean, Carmela and I were the two Alders at that subcommittee. Alder Glenn. Alder Glenn. Alder Glenn, Alder CG. Anyhow, so it is not an easy, that was not an easy decision for anybody. We did deliver it for a long time. So, especially when you're taking the livelihood of people away from them. So in this case, the evidence was, a lot. Like, there was a lot of testimony, a lot of facts presented to the table. So, as hard as it was for us, there were three different recommendations that we had to give, and we voted. The third one that we voted against it is really because it was her say, whatever you say that term, but the person that was present wasn't at the hearing, so the testimony was heard through somebody else. But if that person had been there testifying, that would make it a full recommendation. So I understand that the ordinance language of penalty is pretty significant. But in this case, there's also evidence that that there was communications with the owner to try to mitigate for us to be here. So I think in this case, a word that I don't use often, but I'm gonna make an exception, we have to respect the process and really obey our own rules and our own ordinances. So for that, I mean, so I hope that we close this chapter, which is very painful, and revoke the license. Thank you.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Glenn?

Yeah, I'll just make this brief. It was because of us alders also that it was delayed the first time. Really, this whole thing for us was about... making sure that we lived within the ordinance and made sure that everybody felt represented. And so the first time when the person's lawyer wasn't there, we were the ones that asked and voted for it to be delayed so that even though in a civil case there isn't the right to have a lawyer, we wanted... since they did have a lawyer, that the lawyer was there. We really wanted to make sure. I do not ever take lightly anything to do with the criminal justice system. And initially, when I was listening to the statements earlier tonight, I sat and often do this as I do of what is the least harmful way to approach this. I work in housing a ton, and these are protections that I always appreciate and end up working with Attorney Azilevi on and other ones, holding people to hold people accountable when they don't have a voice. And so sometimes it's this situation, but other times it's a situation where it's a landlord who isn't doing the right thing by the people that are living there. And so you get a drug abatement, and then we have to make sure we bring them to the table and hold them accountable and make them meet with us and have meetings. And so... You know, sometimes it doesn't feel right when the harm is to a business than the people. The people of the community didn't deserve to have what was happening there. I thought it was personally... not that smart to fight in the civil when you got a criminal case you're fighting. That's another story. But I think that we have to stick with what we know and I'll be voting to support my original statement of revocation.

Thank you, Alder. I have no other Alders in the queue. Attorney Zillevee, you rang in.

Thank you. I was just going to add that in my many years of doing this work and filing revocation actions, It's rare that a case actually goes to revocation because typically the license does get surrendered prior to the process starting because the parties want to avoid those penalties. And that is why I talk to the property owner if there's a property owner separate from the licensee. well in advance of filing a complaint to inform them of potential consequences and giving them the opportunity to avoid those. Thank you.

Thank you. I have no other alders in the queue. The motion before us is to accept the report and recommendations of the ALRC and its hearing subcommittee, the result of which is revocation of the license. It's been properly moved and seconded. Is there any objection to recording unanimous vote in favor? seeing no objection we'll record a unanimous vote in favor and that will take us to item 34 which is legistar 92363 authorizing the city's execution of a purchase and sale agreement and lease between the city of madison and the salvation army or their successors and assigns for the purchase the property located at 3030 darbo drive in the city of madison and leaseback period subsequent to closing in District 15. On item 34, President Madison, a motion, please.

Motion to adopt. Second.

Moved and seconded to adopt item 34. On item 34, are there questions for staff? Alder Madison.

I just got a single question from a resident. What is it and why? So just simply a pretty brief overview. Like super brief.

Yes, Director Wachter.

Yes, so we are proposing to purchase the Salvation Army's Darbo Drive property and lease it back to them while they work to consolidate this site with the site that they currently rent from us on Milwaukee Street and their East Washington property over the next few years. So... by allowing them to stay in this property they can finish their fundraising anything they need for land use approvals to move ahead with um that sort of consolidated property in the near future thank you all there are there any other questions for staff alder mayor yeah so would this help with so the salvation army location on east washington in my district would this help them with that process of redeveloping that site is that part of yes so as part of this transaction we would uh pay them the the value of the darbo property which go towards their capital campaign for um for a new yes project okay thank you thank you all there any other questions for staff seeing none it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion

Seeing no discussion, I would just take a point of personal privilege to say this deal has been a long time in the making and I'm very delighted to see it moving forward at this point in time. So thank you to staff who have been working on it for years and also to the folks at the Salvation Army. Is there any objection to recording a unanimous vote in favor of item 34? Seeing no objection, we'll record that unanimous vote. And then we will move on to item 39. Item 39 is legislature 92909, authorizing the mayor and city clerk to execute a development agreement to fund a tax increment finance loan that was authorized in the 2026 EDD capital budget in TID 53 to Wash Franklin LLC or its assigns to construct approximately 222 units of affordable housing and approximately 68 parking stalls located at 501 east washington avenue in a proposed boundary amendment to tax increment district 53 in district 6. on item 39 president madison emotion please motion to adopt moved and seconded to adopt item 39 are there questions for staff alder madison

Thank you, Mayor. Really, just, I guess, another brief overview for this one. I'm more so looking for what is the affordable housing type. Like, is it 30% AMI, 60% to 80% AMI? And that's it for now. I think that's it.

Thank you, Alder. One of the maps, perhaps?

Thank you, Mayor. I can answer that question. The number of units is 222 units. And this is a LIHTC transaction where there'll be income averaging to 60% of AMI. So they anticipate that the rents will be between 50 and 70% of AMI averaging up to 60%.

then just one last question what it right now like what is the area median income is it still like 90 000 or what is it i'll have to defer to director walker on that he has those numbers memorized better than i do 80. sure so um do you want the the ami or do you want to know what 60 of ami would be

Um, so for, yes, so for the Dane County area, it's right around $90,000. Um, and then when we look at the 60% standard, uh, we're looking at is for a, uh, like a one bedroom, that's a household making about 57,000. If you're talking about a, uh, three, um, um, bedroom unit, we're talking of household making $73,000.

Gotcha. And then just maybe one last question. What is the unit mix? Will there be units for larger families?

I think it's mostly one bedrooms. Mostly one bedroom.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you all there. Any other questions for staff on item 39? Seeing none, item 39 has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion?

Alder Mayor. I just want to say I've been following this project both because it's in my district and because we reviewed it on UDC and I think it's an excellent addition of affordable housing that we sorely need. Thank you.

Thank you all there. Is there any further discussion? Seeing no further discussion, it's been moved and seconded. Is there any objection to recording unanimous vote in favor? Seeing no objection, we'll record unanimous vote in favor of item 39. That will bring us to the end of our agenda and any announcements or introductions of items from the floor. Oh my. Alder Lane Keller.

All right. I rarely get an opportunity to invite my colleagues to District 7. We are having a ribbon cutting for Cottage Grove, Shelter, and then Fruit Soul Court opening this coming Thursday, which you've probably all seen in your blog posts. I will invite all of you to come and join us on Thursday, 3.30 p.m. Thank you.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Tischler.

I'd like to announce that Bill Tischler moved into District 19 about a month ago. Very successful. And that's the Bill Tischler Sr. My father did. Just didn't want to. Been very busy helping them move into Oakwood, but they're doing well.

Thank you, Alder. Alder Madison.

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say happy belated birthday to Alder Lane Keller and happy birthday to Alder Verveer.

Happy birthday. All right. Alder Herrington McKinney, it's your turn. To adjourn. Thank you, Alder. Is there a second? Moved and seconded to adjourn. Is there any objections? Recording unanimous vote in favor of adjournment. Seeing no objection, we stand adjourned. Have a good night.