Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Morning, and welcome to the Thursday, April 30 meeting of the Public Safety and Health Committee. Could we please quiet down? It is 09:04. I'm Alderman Scott Spiker, chair of the committee, joined to my right by Alder Taylor, joined two places to my left by Alder Moore, and to her left by Alder Chambers. Alderman Bergalis will be joining us shortly. We have and Alderman Bergalis to my right. Shortly, sir. So we have two very substantial communications, one communication file and one resolution that will take up quite a bit of time. So, we're going to get going right away with item one, file number two five two one five six. This is our ordinance relating to parking controls.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. Scott Rheinbacher with Department of Public Works. We have a few changes to the city's parking regulations before you today. First is to essentially remove the no parking zone on North 37th Street, North of Custer to free up parking for residents. Second is to implement a one hour parking zone from 7AM to 7PM, Monday through Friday on Fillmore, Hayes, Montrose and 51st Streets near the global components global power components facility. Third, we are proposing to install three hour meter parking in front of the UWM dorms from eight a. M. To six p. M.

Monday through Friday as well as Fourth, we are proposing to install accessible parking spaces for disabled persons, five of them on the East Side Of Milwaukee. And finally, we are proposing to create an exception to the overnight parking regulations on North Palmer Street from East Vine Street to East Center Street. All of these have been coordinated with the local alders. Happy to answer any questions.

Mr. Chair. Alder Bergelis. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The parking area around global power components in my district has been a challenge for the last year and a half. And I think it's very important to be transparent that this company is building AI data center components and that company has been terrorizing the neighborhood. Residents can't get out of their driveways. Residents can't get a fire truck or a garbage truck down the street because it's parked over, up and down all around this company. They're creating a lot of jobs.

That's important. That's needed. But we that can't come at the expense of destroying a neighborhood. These one hour parking zones near global power are a lot, and we've tried to do progressive adjustments to parking regulations working with the department. But right across a couple of blocks away in the city of West Allis, West Allis just went in and put in a two hour zone pretty much everywhere in their neighborhood, which has pushed more and more parking into the city of Milwaukee and onto the County Parkway nearby.

It does seem like a lot and we may need to revisit these restrictions moving forward after some time passes. But I think it's necessary to listen to neighbors in the neighborhood because even yesterday someone had to have a car towed because they couldn't get out of their driveway for a doctor's appointment.

These are quality of life concerns. The business, I

think, is trying to be a

good

neighbor but it just hasn't been enough. So these one hour zones are sorely needed in the 11th District.

Very good. And I'll move adoption. Okay. Alder Berglis would move to recommend passage. Alder Moore.

I just had a quick question in reference to the Maryland parking. You're moving to a three hour parking.

What was it prior? Prior, it was a mix of regulations, little un uniform in the area. I believe it was either two hour or four hour in places. I can get that information to you, elder woman.

Not necessary. I just wanted to make sure that, you know, it's students that are impacted by this parking. So, I just wanted to make sure that we were not limit, you know, reducing it versus, you know, keeping it something adequate where they can go to a few classes, right? So, thank you. Correct.

Our goal is to this restriction uniform in the area so that it's easier to follow and

not catch them off guard. Thank you.

Okay. So, Alder Berglis has moved to recommend passage. Are there any objections? Then, so ordered. Item two, file number 252157, ordinance relating to traffic controls.

Yes. Today's file includes two changes to the city's regulatory traffic controls. First is to to install an all way stop at Malvina And 83rd. And second is to remove a yield sign at the intersection of Reynolds Place and Pierce Street that we don't feel is no longer needed because there's no conflicting traffic movements. Both of these were coordinated with the local alders and happy to answer any questions.

Questions? If not, Alder Moore would move to recommend passage. And hearing no objections, so ordered. Item number three, file number 251,407, substitute resolution directing the health department to collaborate with the Department of Employee Relations to develop strategies to prevent clinic closures due to staffing shortages. This is sponsored by Alder Cogs, Alder Pratt and Alder Dmitryovich. Is Alder Cogs with us?

Yes, moved to hold until she returns.

Okay. Alder Chambers had moved to hold to the call of Chair. Hearing no objections so ordered, we'll address this at a later point in the meeting when the sponsor is available to discuss the vision here. Moving on then to Item four, file number 260,007. This is substitute resolution authorizing the expenditure of opioid settlement funds. This is sponsored by President Perez and Alderman Jackson. So I see President Perez is joining us. So as the primary sponsor, we'll start with president Perez and then we'll go to the departments. I President

thank you. I appreciate hearing the file and the patience with everyone had to hear it. I had many questions about some of the direct impact in my community for the opioid settlement funds and figuring out where the direct intervention would go. We've had a couple of meetings, had some good information that was provided and just look forward to the presentation and maybe some additional questions will come forward.

Very good. And I also want to express my thanks to the Health Commissioner and the Fire Chief for working with me and the LRB in resolving some of my concerns regarding metrics. So there's a bunch of resolve clauses that have been added to deal with that issue. So I appreciate the collaborative work there. With that, we will kick it over to the Health Commissioner and the Fire Chief.

Good morning, Mr. Chair. Good morning, members of the committee and President Perez. Thank you for this opportunity. We're really excited to share this information.

With that being said, since there's a lot, we're going to get right into it. We're presenting a slide deck that was shared with our board back in February to really help orient how this investment is going to really focus on a whole of government approach. So it includes not only the health department and fire department but a recent addition is the Department of Community Wellness and Safety looking to support their credible clinicians program which is a part of the workforce development work that the grant was looking or the settlement was looking to support. But overall, what we did over the last year was really to look at how current funding across the landscape has been administered both by the county and what was going on in the city to identify what we call a continuum of care of service provision from prevention to intervention to treatment and recovery and through that systematic review, we implemented a couple different strategies and frameworks and looking at both national examples, resources from Johns Hopkins, resources from the CDC to really help us build out this continuum of care and in some of the supplementary documents you can see that there aren't certain boxes that are checked.

So we're not really providing a lot of funding into the recovery space because Milwaukee County supports you know tens of millions of dollars into that space so we don't want to put a small drop in that bucket because that bucket is pretty full. However, we do want to invest in things like workforce development, prevention and interventions that the chief and I are going to talk about here. One of the pieces that we really used is to identify budgeting priorities systematically. So a lot of credit goes to our senior strategist Anna Narvey who really led this effort to ensure that we were looking at the evidence base and picking priorities that fit with the needs of the community and didn't duplicate services that the county is doing and one of the attachments to the the packet is a letter from Milwaukee County DHHS outlining that partnership and the support that we're giving them in return to ensure that these historic investments are transformational for our communities. So if folks are familiar with the Vision Zero plan, that really is a similar example to what we're trying to do here.

And again, a whole government approach, a whole of government approach that looks to bring in best practices, bring in community feedback and input and work with, you know, elected officials, other departments, other stakeholders to create a plan that yields measurable change. So our plan here really looks at that continuum and I know it's a little small on this screen here, but there's a kind of half circle on the bottom and that's the continuum of care that we're talking about. And within that continuum of care, there are different slices that we're prioritizing and focusing on with the investments and you'll see that in a couple of slides here. But really this is a holistic approach to address the complex needs that lead people to use and help people or prevent people to get the treatment that they need. Part of this work is guided by a collaborative work group with members listed here on screen.

It is not exhaustive. Melissa Beauford is on here and then Karen Tyler now that she's confirmed as the director of community wellness and safety. She will also be on this work group. But really this group is tasked with ensuring that they're reviewing the evidence base, ensuring that they're helping to keep track of some of the metrics that we're interested in tracking and really serving as a sounding board for other ideas that we look to fund in future years. So here's that. I don't know, Chief, if you wanted to add anything about this work group before?

Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Commissioner Todoritis and thank you to this Board and to the sponsors as well as a whole bunch of other council members and staff throughout the city of Milwaukee who have, it appears, congealed in the past few weeks on some very, very positive directions forward. This worker has been underway as I think the commissioner said for over a year or about a year and there's been a lot of learning going on in this. And what I think is noteworthy about this is it takes the focus at least for the fire department's point of view, it takes the focus away from what we've been doing which is crucial and critical and continue advocating for, but it recognizes the whole nose to tail nature And

part

of the all these things. Now we can't solve every one of these problems overnight, but what we can do, and I credit the commissioner and Anna Narbe for this plan. This plan is one of the most comprehensive I've been pleased enough or lucky enough to be involved in. Huge supporter of tying this all together and continue to move forward. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you. So I'm just going to jump ahead into the budget then that we're proposing. So what we're really trying to do here is to create the framework and infrastructure that the city can make sustained investments. 5.6 roughly of the funding that's coming to the health department will go back into the community through a variety of initiatives.

The actual scopes of the RFPs or re granting that we're going to create out of this allocation have not been developed yet. We know that they will fit within this pie and will be focused on the different efforts that are needed in our community. Treatment is a huge part of that. I know the chief has some exciting partnerships that I think he's going to mention later but there are a lot of work still to be done to develop these grants and RFPs and we look to work with the committee, our Board of Health and stakeholders across the region. One question that we've gotten in several spaces is ensuring that we're not duplicating investments with the county.

Our staff collaborate with the county on their selection process to ensure that you know we're not funding the same entity double E or triple E for the same service. So that's a key part that I would just stress here And if I go back to the actual budget, there's a more detailed budget that's attached to the file and that actually breaks out the positions and the different investments with our contracts and re granting

and those are broken out.

Commissioner, just so folks are following along, so there is a document. Think it was included in the list that Mr. Schapinski sent out last night to committee members, the council as a whole. So on one side it says strategy summary for investing City of Milwaukee opioid settlement funds with three year proposed budget. And then on the other side, there is MHD three year OSF budget request where it does break down the positions. Is that the document? Yes.

Thank you. So there is more detail in there. I'm happy to dig into that one through the presentation. But really these investments allow us to issue larger grants and sub grants to participants in the community. So instead of giving them a twelve month contract, they can have up to two year or three year contract and really scale up to the need of our community.

So that's a key part that I want to stress that this is a historic investment and gives agencies the ability to grow and to sustain the critical work that's needed in our community. A portion of that also funds parts of our team here to ensure that the work is happening and help with evaluation, with ensuring that our Narcan and Xylazine and harm reduction supplies are going out in the community training folks on that. So there's a lot of pieces to that. I don't know, Chief, if you wanted to add anything about MFDs.

Yes. So I think you're familiar with the Mori program, it's the Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative. This is on the arc, the pie wheel here, it's towards the right, falls under treatment. This is where we are responding in many cases to nine eleven calls following up with our specially trained Mori teams that include peers with lived experience in this space. Just very quick summary, Department gets us in the door, the peers keep us inside and that allows for a greater percentage of people that we actually get to treatment.

So we act as connectors, facilitators, locators. But one thing that I think I've learned isn't as clear as that we can take referrals. We do take referrals. So from other agencies, from other folks in a clinical space, homeless outreach programs, folks that are in the neighborhoods, you all, we can take referrals to start that process. Thanks.

Yes. Excellent. All right. So we'll grab kind of dive into some of the examples that were of what we're talking about in the different wheels of the pie. So if you look up on the top right corner, I know it's a little bit small, but it really highlights the different sections of the continuum of care that we're looking to support.

And then it gives you what that definition is, the strategic aim, the domains that it fits within and the examples of programs that we're looking to support. Some of the examples and activities are non specific like outreach and education because we're really going to tailor that to the available agencies in the community that do that kind of work. And similarly, even in the last week, we've had partners reaching out to partner with us. So that's encouraging for us to ensure that we're meeting the moment with providing RFPs and re granting that fits with what's available. And again, by doing the three year investments or two year investments, it gives an agency to grow into a space that they wanted to.

So one of previous iterations of our allocation, we funded additional beds, recovery beds and that was very successful in scaling up the ability for that agency to grow and then sustain more services. The other so that's I'm sorry, health promotion, which really is focused on a lot of the harm reduction and early intervention, prevention pieces there. And then we have substance use prevention. And as you can see on the bottom right, there are focuses on both the public health system and Maury has called out on the bottom right there under tertiary prevention, which really speaks to what the Chief was saying in terms of the different layers of support that MORI can provide. The other part from the health department's perspective that we're funding through this is the neighborhood nursing team.

Our team are active in President Perez's district and going to be as well on Alderman Jackson's district because those are the two areas that have the highest concentration of substance use issues. So our teams are scaling up to meet that moment and

And just Commissioner, just

for

the public in general, could you say just a very brief similar to the Chief about Mori introduction to the neighborhood nursing program, what they do?

Yes. That's one of the programs that we've been growing over the last year. Initially it started with health disparities funding and now it's going to be supplemented by overdose settlement funds is the scales neighborhood nursing program and it's really a callback to a lot of public health nursing that we've done historically at the and that's having our public health professionals going into the community, meeting with people, helping to screen people and make referrals right there on the street. As a former community organizer, I know the power of being in front of somebody at their home or where they socialize and our team really looks to take their medical training and their health promotion training that they have with their community health workers paired with a nurse to meet people in the moment that they need and we're hoping to start focusing on chronic disease and substance use disorders but then as this continues to be successful, we're hoping to grow that and add more to it across the city because we've really heard from our residents and our clients that we serve that they need accessible services and having teams that can go into the community to actually support people directly is a really critical function that we're looking to fill here.

Okay. Thanks. Chief, if you had anything else on this slide?

Well, I think I do want to touch on something. This space is evolving and it's moving fast. I wish I could report we're getting our arms around it. We are seeing a reduction in general in fatal overdoses while the incidences of overdoses continue to climb. So that's a testament to the health department's work, the Milwaukee Fire Department's work as well as a whole bunch of community partners and even private businesses and citizens and flooding our neighborhoods with Narcan. Ready we're

we're

do I credit both that. Of our credit several alders with speaking out and saying let's get some medically assisted treatment facilities in our neighborhoods. Our mortgage program for a long time had to take people to West Allis to continue that or begin that treatment and recovery process. We now have several very strong facilities in our cities, very near our hardest hit or in our hardest hit neighborhoods. We had a meeting yesterday, which the timing on this is absolutely unbelievable.

There are mobile medically assisted treatment vehicles, it's like a big RV basically. These are operated by clinicians. The Department drug enforcement agency has very, very strict controls on where these things can be deployed. So I had a very, very good conversation and I don't want to out specific businesses or corporations right now, but it really appears as if we're going to be able to plug using fire stations as anchors hosting these in some of our hardest hit neighborhoods. And so it Yeah.

I almost don't want to jinx it but it's huge because the outreach that we speak of and the availability on the streets in the hardest hit neighborhoods in your neighborhoods. It seems as if that's much closer to being a reality. So we're going to continue pushing that and I'll any conversations I have like this we're going to steer towards whatever RFP processes come out so that the health department can sub grant to these agencies and make this work.

And that's a really good point that I would underscore of meeting our clients and the residents of our city where they are. That was a huge lesson that the health department learned during the pandemic was if you made it accessible to do testing or vaccination, folks took advantage of that. They didn't have to go out of their way to pick up their kids and go to a testing clinic or a vaccination clinic. We offered vaccine testing in a lot of schools and a lot of public locations that made it easy for folks to get access to that and that's what we're trying to do here with a lot of these investments. So that segues really nicely into the treatment section of the pie, both case identification and treatment of known disorders are pieces that we will focus on.

Obviously, Maury has called out in this part and I would highlight the skills neighborhood nursing team, which will also be doing referrals. They have access to an electronic health record system that's shared by all the federally qualified health centers and health systems. So when we encounter an individual, we can look up their history and say, hey, you know, you had an appointment for medically assisted therapy, why didn't she show up for that? And if it's a transportation issue, we can make that referral. But we can also help just the client or individual we're working with help them understand their health information as well because that's been the other piece that our team does in our clinics is when someone presents for a vaccination or testing at our STI clinic, they often don't know how their medication might work with something else or they might not know how their diagnosis fits with their course of treatment and that's what our team does is help provide that education and ensure that we're connecting them to additional care if they need that.

So that's a core tenant of this treatment arm and we look to have outcomes to track with that. So seeing obviously number of contacts, we can track that through our electronic health record but we also want to see that those referrals are upheld. We don't want to refer to an agency and then not have them have that individual show up. So we're looking to track that longitudinally to ensure that those referrals are being taken advantage of. And then lastly, the maintenance and aftercare.

A lot of these recovery kind of longer term services are what I was calling out that the county DHHS really supports heavily. So there's less funding in this bucket from the city, but I can assure you and I have a memo to that effect. I don't think it's a part of this packet but we can share it with the broader group that outlines those investments that the county and the state have made to ensure that we're that area is well funded and that we don't need to be putting funding into that space. And that is that.

Okay. So Alder Jackson has joined us as well. He is also a sponsor. Would either of the sponsors like to take the initial follow-up questions?

Sure, I would. Thank you both for the presentation. And in our prior conversations we talked about, at least for me, the priority around some of the intervention which is the treatment category. Could you just put on the record a little bit about how some of the initiatives that will be directly related to the street and some of the intervention and then I know that in this collaboration with the county and a lot of the things they're doing, how is it that that coordination gets to this body or communicated to residents in my district about if if we're very clear about cities in this lane, counties in this other lane, how is it that that collaboration, there's some communication or really accountability to everyone if we're sharing the work that we can talk about, that we can evaluate and then as piggyback on some of that discussion just how all the whereas clauses and I appreciate all the miss Biker for really staying consistent and you know getting the clarity on the evaluation of the program. We talked about it like you know that and so we're clear moving forward that there's going to be opportunity to say you know what we need to channel some funds.

We need to channel a different strategy. We being out here, we realize the need is this when we're pushing in this direction, evaluating that, working on that with community members, just some of that collaboration between city, county, and community. Yeah.

Chief, do you want to take that first for

more here?

Yeah. I'll touch on the more stuff. I briefly touched on it just a few moments ago but we are responsive, meaning we're not just reactive to when we have the overdoses. We are out in the streets. We have made a ton of connections first off by opening up our hours so we're not just a Monday through Friday shop because And to been do 16 is the number of gas that.

Stations, stores, shops who we have direct connectivity with and we've begun to receive referrals from folks. And at present, that's over, I believe, in District 12. And so we're receiving referrals that way. We can receive referrals as I mentioned before directly to our program from anybody really anybody that's aware of somebody that is grappling with come the to I

in its infancy, but we would be possibly the

second to municipality in the state to actually get one of these going. So that would be a huge thing. It's a very difficult thing to make happen and we crossed some bridges yesterday. So I'm looking forward to that.

And I would add to that much like the Moray program and MFD can take referrals, our scales neighborhood nursing team can take those similar calls and triage whether or not that's a referral to the county housing folks that we work with for folks that are housing unstable or if it's a referral to the behavioral health services. The key part that our team has is boots on the ground to be able to go out and talk to people and really understand what's going on. We had some lessons learned about some issues in Kosciusko Park with individuals who were socializing there and you know they didn't have, they had housing. So that wasn't the issue that we thought was actually driving them to be in that park. So those are the lessons learned that we can glean from actually interacting with people And as the president was mentioning, we're really excited to be able to say, hey, here's a $100,000 contract to do this work and then if that work goes well, we can add more money to that contract.

We've done that with previous grants in the health department, we're well versed in being able to do that. And we're also not shy of saying this isn't working well and pivoting from that investment. So that might be ending a contract slightly early or amending the scope to include additional referrals or treatment. But those parts processes come before this committee and FNP to ensure that you are aware of those amendments to those contracts. But I think it really starts before that to ensure that the voice of the constituents and the alders, our Board of Health are factored into how we put those grants together and those sub awards.

So we're really excited to be able to put some substantial money into the community through that process and include call out to ensure that we have good data to evaluate. So we want to make it easy for folks to administer the funds and track their data because then at the end of the day we get that data back and be able to report out I think in the text I talked about quarterly, but we're also looking to have some public dashboards too that are refreshed and show people what's happening with this funding. We owe it to everyone here to ensure that people understand where those investments are going and be able to admit if we need to pivot or add more money to a different contract. I think that's a critical part of this by having a three year investment allows us to be able to do things that we have been able to do before. So I'm really excited about some of the opportunities that the Chief has talked about with the mobile clinics and there's other agencies that do much smaller scale versions of that here in the city.

Aurora has a community health kind of arm that does a lot of access through a nurse practitioner and a mobile truck. So they're much more smaller scale. So if we could supplement that into a much larger operation like what the Chief is mentioning, those are the things that we're looking to scale with this funding so that people can have access. But we're really going to be guided by the evidence base and the data and for unfortunately for right now, we know that that's in President Perez's district and Alderman Jackson's district. Yeah.

And just a follow-up to that. Yeah. And I know that you're you guys have have experience with the RP process. I just ask that in in those RP selection committees that key members of the community participate in some of that to make sure that that some of the decision making on with the RP there looks like or respondents to it, they feel that it's it's meeting the need of the community.

I I think I would offer that we don't we we could I think the best spot and you correct me if this doesn't meet your intent here, I think the best spot to include them is in the creation of the scope of work because the RFP process is pretty tightly managed legally by city purchasing. So like I in so far as we can influence the final do they meet it, don't they, but I will offer it and I think we talked about this recently, I will offer that even if respondent doesn't meet every mark on an RFP or a bid process, there is flexibility for us to go, yes, but. This there are so many other benefits here, they just don't happen to have a red telephone on their desk. We can live without the red telephone, right? So there is flexibility there.

I just I never want to represent on behalf of a different department what the legality is of the construction of that selection committee. I agree with you. The information needs to be there and the will of the people needs to be represented.

One quick question. Know you said referrals are welcome. Doesn't like with Mori, it doesn't have to be a response to a previous overdose. You could get referrals from an Alder. Similarly, for the health department, is there any sort of public facing element to that? So if members of the public wanna call in, I don't know that that's widely publicized. So I have business owners sometimes who have issues and they, you know, will call the police and they don't know similarly with our issues with the unhoused, you can contact the county

For sure.

And pursue that. Is there a similar avenue for business owners, members of the public to contact you all when they see someone in trouble? And if so, is there any plan to publicize that more So

our outreach teams have been leaving that information, albeit to your point it has not been widely broadcast. Just entertain me for a second. So we've got a community paramedic hotline, Maurice housed within our community paramedic area and that's (414) 286-5230. I realize that's not what you're asking for in the broad scheme of things, but there is a hotline that people can call with these referrals. And as part of this, we definitely need to similar to the smoke alarm hotline, right, we need to broadcast that and publicize that.

And I would add to the county has their better ways to cope campaign and that's a really excellent entry point for folks that are either personally or it's a family or friend that's working through a substance use disorder to actually go and and get this information. On the other side of it, president Perez actually had the idea of really coordinating a lot of these activities through the target team meetings that happen at the district level with the police department and neighborhood groups, DNS and DA's office where some of these issues can be triaged through those specific arms of the criminal justice system or community stakeholders like Safe and Sound or SOC on the South Side. And I think the other part of that is there are pieces that only come like MHD, we do the needle pick up. So if constituents are seeing needles in their district and they need someone to come safely dispose of those, they can make those calls to us and it's (414) 286-6800 and they get routed to our environmental health team that does those pick At the same time if they're concerned about individuals congregating and using in their communities, those are referrals that they can also make to our scales neighborhood nursing team or some of the community outreach teams through behavioral health services at the county.

But you are right, we do need a more concrete

Yeah, just to drill down on that a little bit more so the accessibility of the information is what's pivotal here. So I guess I would urge partnerships with the police department, partnerships with the Department of Emergency Communications who are taking in calls and deciding how to triage them. If they aren't aware of if their folks who are taking those calls aren't aware of the proper way to route it, then that's an opportunity missed. Two one one. Right. And

I would just share to celebrate the Department of Emergency Communications. They've been incredible partners to supporting the health department in the last year, helping us triage some of our calls after hours and have been really great partners. So I am confident, Chairman Spiker, that we can make something like that happen.

Alder Chambers, you had

a question.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We received the Maury funds and we received the OIBDA funds, I'm sorry, in 2022, correct? And you just now developing a plan this past year? Why why now?

Originally when the funds were accepted by the city, Alderman Murphy was really the champion of these funds in putting together some of the guidance and direction of the funding. And at the time, we had a strategist that was working really closely with him to make some of these decisions and investments. So there were two investments that were made pretty early on. One was for a media campaign around reduction and the other was for additional recovery beds. So that was '23 into '24, I think.

And it was really when I became commissioner in '23 that I started asking what about a bigger plan. We can't just do these one off investments and I was concerned about decisions being made in isolation and wanting to open up this process. And in 2024, Anna was promoted to senior strategist role and she's like, what do you want me working at? I said, take the time to ensure that we're investing the money in the right spaces. We don't want to do one off things that was happening prior to that.

And to do really comprehensive literature review and looking at where the data is going, so looking at those trends of where overdoses are happening, where they're not happening, looking at the service provision and really landing on this continuum of care that took time to put together and getting feedback from the elders and our board that all takes time. So here we are in 2026 coming together with a plan that looks to make a historic investment for three years. The city doesn't have opportunities like that and we didn't want to run into it as had happened early on with just some singular investments that don't really look at the bigger picture. At the time, there were similar groups in the city doing media campaigns around harm reduction. So we reevaluated that contract and said, we should stop putting money into this contract because we don't need additional media campaigns.

But the recovery beds was a really good investment and that's part of the treatment arm of this investment is to grow things like that. So it took time. And if folks remember, I think the last two budget cycles I've talked about developing this plan. So we've been talking about it but finally we have something to dig into And I think what dovetails with Alderman Chambers, your question is a part that I would stress that this is a living document. So as we make success in some areas of case referrals or reductions in folks that are having fatal overdoses, we want to recalibrate and say, hey, we've been having really success further up on the continuum in prevention, let's reinvest in more prevention services.

So that might be outreach and education and we might have some agencies that we're working within the community that have a contract with us that we look to add more money to their contract because they have good outcomes and metrics. The other part to this is just ensuring that we had the infrastructure to do the tracking and the data dashboards and that took time as well. Our team last year built a lot of dashboards internally for the health department that now will be leveraged for this moment. And I but I I will say this took a lot longer than I had hoped it would. As I mentioned, I'd been talking about this process for two years.

Well, thank you for that answer. I I guess, you know, my my concern is is, you know, there were other, I guess, other things that was going on. Know, other people who are thinking about other ideas on, you know, what to do far as outreach in addition to the Maury program. And then it's kind of like, oh, now this is just popped up surprise in a way. That's how I see it because this this program is besides the Maury program, this new program is news to me. I have not spoke to no one about it. So, that's unfortunate then continue

to to

that.

That.

Previous

question, by unanimous council resolution 03/22/2022, the funds were dedicated to Mori and harm reduction strategies by this council. And so we set to work like, okay, now we're going to be able to use some of the opioid settlement funds to fund this as we transition away from some of the grants. And we spent the next over two years trying to access funds. And so that brings us to 2024. That's about timing out with when the health commissioner and I began communicating about like there's got to be a broader strategy here.

So with apologies for not having communicated more frequently or directly with you on it. I I nobody wants this, you know, to be the excuse, but there's there's been legislative and bureaucratic static in this space. And we thought we were doing what we were asked to do by this resolution. And now we have a much clearer picture. We've spoken with folks who have sought us out and been very vocal about like, what about this, what about this, what about this and here we are.

And commissioner, at what point was at what type of involvement was the office, the Department of Community Wellness and Safety involved is not just in the focus group but like.

Yeah. The that's a great question. Obviously, as we're all aware, their leadership status has been tenuous for the last, you know, couple years and miss Tyler was recently confirmed. So I think it was last Friday, deputy commissioner Hayat Oates and I met with director Tyler to have a conversation about how we could support them. It was actually on a separate, I think DOJ grant or SAMHSA grant looking at children's youth access and mental health services and really just help sustain the work of the credible clinicians network that they've really successfully been building through the recast grant which is a SAMHSA award.

And through that conversation we were talking about the concern for the longevity of that program given that SAMHSA really hasn't announced that they are going to continue to fund that. Deputy Commissioner Haydoltz and I walked out of that meeting thinking what about the work that we are trying to do with this fund and I apologize for not reaching out more directly to you and I would offer that there's still plenty of opportunities to help shape what's happening with this investments. And part that we took to our team then after meeting with Karen was to see if there was space within what we're looking to support that could support some of what they're doing with recast and there is. So we had a workforce development kind of rough budget line. We actually ended up putting additional funding to it to ensure that the workforce development was focused on mental health professionals and providing staffing essentially or a pipeline for more people with lived experience or folks that frankly don't look like it need to be able to provide treatment in the community and that's what Credible Clinicians is doing.

And Karen's team was able to share that a lot of their clinicians in their network have the dual certification where they do the trauma therapy as well as substance use therapy. So we've taken that back to our team looking at what's in the budget. That's something that we're looking to fund directly with that work.

Okay. And thank you, Mr. Chair, for giving me the revenue. You got about maybe one, maybe two questions. So I I hear you. I hear I hear this this last statement but at what point in developing what you presented today, you said this is a living document that you've been going for since you've been, you know, a commissioner. At what point did you see to include that department? Because I feel like far as the outreach and the people that they impact, they're about just as parallels, the fire department.

Mhmm.

When doing that. So what is what I hear from you is that you just now included them now that, you know, director Tyler is involved but there were subsequently three other directors prior to and this department which was office back then and actually was housing your department prior to budget change in '24. You know had been there. So, I I guess I'm I'm trying to understand.

Yeah. I was just reminded too that one of their staff also participates in our community health improvement plan which is focused around mental health and kind of injury prevention pieces which aligned really well with what was OVP when it was still in our department. And I had talked to mister Purcell about doing some of this as well but obviously that was a short lived moment in our city's history. So there have been conversations. I think the challenge is looking at the moment and seeing who is going to be working with us and the one staff member from OCWS or DCWS had been a part of our work focused on the service provision and I think that's part of why we continue to keep in the back of our heads that we need to bring them into the work.

And as I mentioned at the beginning, for the actual work group, Ms. Tyler is going to be sitting on that work group as well.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Shepard. I have more questions, I will move it over. Thank you again.

Okay. Very good. Other questions from committee members? I guess one thing I just wanted to follow-up is again, I do appreciate the efforts on metrics and specifically not just process or activity metrics but outcome ones. I understand it is until you actually do some stuff that you can measure those outcomes, but I think we have a structure in place and aligns with the reporting you're required to do for the Board of Health anyway. So again, I appreciate that effort. Do you have any concerns there or does that seem like a reasonable path forward?

I think it's a great path forward. As we shared in some of the meetings and it's one of the attachments, it's executive summary of the evaluation plan and has examples of kind of a logic model. But essentially it's a placemat that shows where the funding is going to go, what kind of outputs we're going to track and outcomes we're going to measure and we're looking to have those developed for each of the different buckets of funding that we're having. So if it's focused around outreach and education, we want clear metrics of, you know, obviously the easy one is how many people are you talking to. But part of that I would argue will be referrals and making sure that folks are successful referrals.

So that's something that we're going to look to track with our skills neighborhood nursing teams and have that kind of logic model, the placemat accessible to the public so they can see what we're kind of funding in that bucket as well as then subsequent dashboards or data reports that will align with the quarterly reporting structure that's outlined in the text. Because I think the big piece of this is is funding that's going to be here for, know, whatever it is, 18 or something like that. So we want to create the front end that makes it easy for whoever is in my seat in eighteen years. I don't think I'm going to be here in eighteen years. God help me if I am, to You'll lose your hair.

Yes, yes. I mean, right. I'll get more gray. Have the keys of the car and the car is working. So this is really building the engine and the infrastructure of the car to make sure that it's going to be able to be driven for eighteen years. Mr. Chair?

Yes. And just quickly on that point, it's good also and it says in the resolution that we establish a baseline of where we're at and then we can see the progress over time that being communicated clearly because as the Chief noted, it's great that we're having fewer deaths due to overdoses, but if the overdoses themselves are continuing apace, that's something we need to wrap our arms around and as the chief also said, naloxone, the Narcan saturation is surely an advantageous thing here. I'll be transparent that I have sort of companion legislation working with Alder Pratt to try to get some of those into some of the facilities like hotels, convenience stores, things like that to make sure that that access is provided and staff has it on hand and knows what to do with it. And I take it that's kind of in keeping with the broader goals of the health and fire department to get Narcan everywhere we can and to reduce the stigma its application. So Chief?

I would add, whereas we have eighteen years or the remainder of that whatever we're digging into these years here of these settlement funds, much like a smoke alarm or fire prevention program. I want to just assure everybody, we have no intention of attempting to consume these funds for the next sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years. The idea of this working is that we put ourselves out of business in this regard, that we get our arms around this epidemic and we can begin to sunset this at some point. And I have to just in good faith believe that that is not going to take the next eighteen years. Agreed.

To your point with the metrics we're on board, I and I think the three month thing is fine. I fear we're not going to be able to to enough change in the first three months, right. And then the increment between three and six, it's going to be a nudge. But I think you can't change it unless you can measure it.

Right. And the three month was meant to reflect the Board of Health cadence. The annual reporting is more reflective of the progress we look to see.

And the dialogue will be worth it.

And say again?

The dialogue will be worth it.

So that

might be worth it. And that's why we have the touch point with LRB to make sure that we're keeping in touch with the council and their expectations. Alder Moore.

Thank you so much, mister chair. Just briefly, commissioner, can you share a little bit because one of the concerns that I had was about funding being deployed during our summer months and if we would be able to, I don't know how quickly or you know how smoothly we can transition funds particularly into community organizations that are on the ground doing a lot of preventative work particularly among our young people and young adults. Can you just talk briefly that you know once this process moves forward what timeline are we looking at? Is it late summer? Are we going to be able to get some work done during the summer?

I know Mori is already operating. That's sort of ongoing. But just the other aspect of it, how quickly are we able to move resources to be able to support our community?

Yes, it's a great question. Our Board had a similar question as well. We really want to have the funding going out the door as soon as possible. So a lot of credit goes to Erin Schapinski, who is our administration manager for the department to do a lot of the legwork with the city attorney's office so that we could get agreements in place or template agreements that help us expedite the contracting process. But there's a lot of unknowns to some of that, how quickly those get issued,

I'm sorry,

like posted online so people can apply to them.

Sure.

We are obviously staffed in our neighborhood nursing now so that team will be out and about and we have staff in our strategy team as well that are outreach education or community outreach specialists that already are in the community right now doing the work and part of that partnership as well goes with like DCWS as well with their staff that we share gun locks with them and vice versa. We share an Arcan and other harm reduction tools that they also putting out. So there are some feet on the ground but we are really looking to issue those contracts as fast as we can. There is just red tape that we have to go through to issue those contracts but I am committed to making those go as quickly as we can.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

So is it overly optimistic to expect that some of those contracts will be executed by the summer? That seems like a very aggressive timeline.

You want to weigh

in here? I would agree with you.

I would agree with

you.

The other Erin at the table.

Good morning Mr. Chair and committee members. I'm Erin Chapinsky, Budget and Administration Manager for the Health Department. I was just messaging my colleagues in ITMD talking about a timeline. We're excited about this opportunity and another item that's going to be before you this morning because the health department has really wanted to formalize our ability to issue grants and create funding opportunities that are accessible for smaller organizations. Yes. And the opioid settlement funds are going be the catalyst to get that done. We're designing that RFP process currently. Purchasing has a great one. It's probably more than what we need for this.

And to what the commissioner and the chief have said and what the council and the president have asked for, we want to have a lot of people involved in designing and evaluating those. And so we have the tools in hand now to sort of run this in house. We're building those. I would love to have grants out by the end of the summer and hopefully sooner. We do have a template in hand. I appreciate the city attorney's support both in administering the funds and then getting those ready but you know I've been around for a long time. I know that this doing part is one of the most important and we really want to make it go as quickly, efficiently and with the most accountability that we can have.

And I really appreciate that intentionality, particularly with our small organizations I've worked with dozens of them and a lot of times they get overlooked because they don't have the infrastructure to be able to apply for opportunities like this and I think it's our duty- to be able to figure out ways- to support those organizations because they're the ones you all that are on the ground- that are doing this work day in and day out so. I'm really grateful- that you all are thinking about ways to be able to do that. Thank you.

Thank you. Other questions, comments from committee members?

Mr. Chair, could I add just one detail?

Just one second. Okay. Ms. Ortiz, if you wouldn't mind listing me as a co sponsor as well, I appreciate it. Did you have a question?

Yeah. No. I was just gonna make a comment. I actually had spoken with both Chief Lipsky and Commissioner and had lengthy conversations with both of them. And and at least I just think that it's just important to to note.

I know that chief Lipsky just said a little while ago that fatal overdose are on a decline. And then you said that the overdose is on an increase and so it's just very important and I talked to both of you at length about the treatment just being very long term because if we just keep reacting to what's happening, then you just keep having it happen. But when you begin to provide that long term treatment and then you start seeing those results where we can see a decline in the actual overdose, and I know you just said that that is the ultimate goal to get to. And so I appreciate the work that you guys are doing together, the collaboration that you're bringing together because I think that's the only way that we're going to get to a program where we're going to actually start to see a reduction in overdose. And so I also appreciate too that commissioner had mentioned that you do have a person on staff that's looking at data and collecting that data and where to concentrate our efforts and I think right now, what I hear throughout the community is that we have a shortage of treatment beds and facilities and I think I'm mimicking my colleague down there on just focusing on those kinds of things so that we begin to really address the issues of what's really causing these overdose to take place anyway.

So I just didn't want to leave today without making sure that we speak to that continuum of care that takes us to a long term solution. So and the work that you're doing to get us there. Thank you.

Mister chair, can I add a response to that? Mister chair.

Say again?

Can I add a response to

Yeah? Of course. I you

know, I really appreciate that call out to that piece because that was as I was listening, I didn't mention earlier, part of our team and this is what comes with funding our staff is having the actual policy experts and bigger supports to coalitions and policy work to make sure that medically assisted therapies are accessible, destigmatized and there's a lot of stakeholders in medical community that are looking access to these things. We work as Department of Corrections, Community Corrections for folks that are coming back into the community. The DOC programs give harm reduction materials to folks that have SUD diagnoses and we're helping to supplement their supplies for that too because we know having access is critical. So there's a lot of policy work that also looks to ensure that access is happening and that's not necessarily called out in this but the grants that we're looking to issue should be supporting access and ensuring that system wide that folks understand the need for this.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Alder Bergallis? Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Frankly, I think it's disappointing that we have to fight over pennies coming back from a settlement for an industry that has devastated our community and communities across the country. The cost and the burden on the administration and departments, not to mention the community that's been impacted, will never be repaid. I wish there was was more we can do. I wish there was more funding available to do more in Milwaukee and throughout the country.

This has hurt every zip code in our community, every neighborhood in our state. Thank you for what you're doing. I think the model that Milwaukee developed is something that other communities are looking to and bringing back to improve their own communities. So thank you for taking a leadership role on for the past year, number of years. I am glad that we have something from the opioid settlement. It is far from enough. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Alder Chambers.

I support parts of this of this file. I'm gonna be abstaining right now. My hope is at council that there would be some type of changes to the file to incorporate department of of Wellness and Safety as far as the financial side to assist with them, you know, have them go out and do more outreach as well because they are equipped and trained to do so as you mentioned. So that is my ask moving forward prior to getting my support at council. Thank you, Mr. Do

you have a proposal or anything you want to have discussed at committee?

I can have a conversation with commissioner in chief at the appropriate I

just want to make sure we do our committee work in committee. Okay. Very good. Any other questions, comments?

No. Thank you.

Mr. Chair? Yeah. Could you add me as

a co sponsor please? We'll let the record reflect. Any concluding remarks from the chief sponsors?

Adoption. President? Have a comment. I just appreciate some of the clarity on the treatment and the intervention in the neighborhoods. It's what I'm really committed to.

I'm glad that there is some commitment and transparency to moving forward in a reflective, evaluative, and communicative way and it's been said. So, I look forward to that moving forward and just want to make sure that we're all paying attention as the reports come in and we're all talking and some of the coordination. I mean, we talked about it very generally because it's early but I I really want to make sure we're going to tighten that up as this money goes out the door and these RFPs are out the door as soon as possible and that these communities are feeling and seeing the work of the settlement funds and coordinating whatever the county is going do so we all have some clarity. Thank you, mister Chair.

Thank you. Alder Moore.

Please add me as a co sponsor as well.

That will be done. Alder Berglis has moved to recommend adoption. Are there any objections? No. So ordered. Thank you. Mr. Chair? Hang on one second. Chief Alder Cogs is waiting for her file. Do you think you could stick around five minutes

to Absolutely. Okay.

Yes. I will have to move to reconsider Item three now.

Yep. Okay. So that's what I was just sorting out. So item Alder Chambers moves reconsideration of Item three and hearing no objections so ordered. This is file number 251,407, substitute resolution directing the health department with department of employee relations to develop strategies to prevent clinic closures due to staffing shortages. This is sponsored by alder Cogs, alder Pratt, and alder Dimitriovich. Alder Cogs.

Thank you. Thank you, mister chair. Members are remembered. This is just a resolution, to follow the footnote that we did during budget. I know that the ER and the health department have been doing work, on this issue already, but this was just the follow to the footnote. We will later do a communication file for them to explain what they've done and what they will continue to do to ensure this, but this is just the form formality of the resolution of following the footnote. And I would hope that you all could approve it. Thank you.

Very good. Does the health department have anything to add? You're supportive of this?

Oh, we are, and I have lots to share.

Okay. Very good. So alder Chambers would move to recommend adoption. Any objection? And so ordered. Thank you very much. Thank We'll move out of the agenda order to items thirteen and fourteen to dispense with those quickly then we'll get back to our street takeover file. So item 13, file number two five two one 8 seven, resolution authorizing Milwaukee Fire Department to enter into the agreement with Managed Health Services Insurance Corp for community medic paramedic services. Please.

Alright. Assistant chief Joshua Parish from Milwaukee Fire Department. The item before you is one of our is a contract for our one of our resistance service providers as we were just speaking to in exhaustion. The partnerships that we have for doing this work are really really essential. This is actually one of existing partnerships that we have. So we're happy to have it for us today to enable us to continue the amazing work that we're doing in the community with a partner that's been with us for quite a long time to get this work done. Happy to take any questions you may have.

Okay. Any questions about this from committee members? If not, then Alder Taylor would move to recommend adoption. Hearing no objection so ordered. Item 14, file number 252205, substitute resolution approving an EMS emergency medical services intergovernmental agreement between the city Of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County effective 01/01/2026 through 12/31/2031.

I'll jump in real quick. So this is the master agreement that all communities throughout the county engage in with their departments if they provide paramedic services which we do. We're the largest provider. We are pleased to report that we sat on the committee as this was renegotiated with the County Office of Emergency Management. This was approved at the Intergovernmental Cooperation Council, the ICC recently and now it comes before you for approval or questions.

We were happy to maintain the metrics that are used which recognize land mass, number of paramedic units, the relative busyness across different departments and we top out on all those metrics. And other than that, there was not any other there were no major substantial changes to the contract.

Okay. Any questions about the contract or anything else related to this item?

Move adoption.

Alder Chambers, you move to recommend adoption and hearing no objection, so ordered. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Moving back to our agenda order item four. I'm sorry, item five. File number 260024. This is a communication from Milwaukee Police Department and the Department of Community Wellness and Safety relating to their response to vehicular street takeovers. This is sponsored by Alders Perez, Taylor Baumann, and Dimitrijevic. President Perez is the sponsor. Would you like to go first?

No. Well, I just I'll yield some time to any of the cosponsors, but I just wanna hear what the plan is. Last year, we heard about some dedicated patrol missions dedicated to street takeovers and when there was a shift in services when there were issues on Lauder Street. I just wanna hear what the plan is so that we can have measured outcomes for community members as they contact us with complaints, concerns, or what the reaction will be moving forward as we try to get ahead of the street takeovers. But when they start, what can our constituents expect from a response or as a response?

Okay. With that, we'll kick it over to MPD and DCWS.

Thank you to the committee for hearing us today. My name is Heather Huff, Chief of Staff of the Milwaukee Police Department. I'll give a brief introduction and then talk about both our patrol and our criminal investigation bureau responses to street takeovers. I think what's all on our minds right now are the street takeover activities from last weekend. Last weekend, it was originally reported out.

There were 12 street takeovers throughout Milwaukee and more in surrounding jurisdictions. We will get the data and the results of that and some more information from inspector Grant shortly. But with that in mind, know that the Milwaukee Police Department's response is twofold.

Pause one second, please. An update. Let's soldier on though.

Okay. Our approach is one, the immediate response to the incidents that are taking place in the city. That is challenging. Sometimes, we have information ahead of time that we have gathered or that the community has relayed to us about the location of the street takeovers. Oftentimes, we do not.

We know there are lots of individuals involved in street takeover activity, and they generally share those locations in discrete ways, not on social media. But they do have social media accounts highlighting their race cars. Some have YouTube videos showcasing some of the chaos they're causing in communities. And so we have teams of individuals tracking and gathering information in hopes we can have it ahead of time. But as you saw from this last weekend sometimes that does not occur.

So we have the immediate response from patrol that inspector grant will go into and we have the follow-up investigation conducted by CIB. We might not get you or get to you right in the moment of the street takeovers, but that doesn't mean that we're not continuously looking into those events. Last year I think we highlighted some success we had in tracking down a participant in a jurisdiction it was Mount Pleasant or Pleasant Prairie or something like that follow-up based upon intel gathered from the events that occurred, technology like license plate reader cameras and follow-up on social media. So I'm sharing some slides today and this is something that inspector Law will go more into detail about, but this is just an example. So we have an individual with an alias SRT Rick four one four.

And on this Instagram, there are tons of pictures of the individual with different street racing cars. SRT stands for street racing technology, I believe. Nothing to indicate that they're using these for street takeovers but this individual says YouTube links to videos that showcase different street takeover events. We gathered information after the events this weekend to understand this was the primary organizer of the street takeovers in this area. This is not a resident of Milwaukee.

This is somebody that came here from an outside jurisdiction, organized these events from a location that's not Milwaukee. And so while his Instagram account says SRT Rick, it probably stands for street racing technology. As of last night,

how do I

it stands for Sorry Rick Towed. We were able to tow one of these vehicles based on probable cause and a warrant and Rick will be able to get that car back once he's out of custody. So we are doing serious follow-up on individuals who participate with information gathered. And I will now turn it over to inspector Grant, to talk about the patrol response and, inspector Loud to talk about the long term investigations.

Good morning and thank you all for allowing us to discuss this important matter. So as it relates to the street takeovers that took place Saturday, April 25, those calls came in began to come in at about 11PM and the last call was at about 02:40AM that Sunday morning. And just to provide you with information regarding that, there were nine identified street takeovers, which produced 17 total calls. So that means that there were only nine incidents. However, 17 individuals along with our police officers notified dispatch regarding these incidents that were taking place.

And I'm sorry, inspector. How many of these were the same group going from place to place versus different groups? We

at this point, it's undetermined. However, we believe that this is the same group of individuals. They leave one location once officers arrive

Mhmm.

To make arrests or to conduct traffic stops, and they go to another location.

Okay.

I'm sorry. I I I got lost. What what was the total number?

The total number is nine, sir.

Okay. Because we got reported 12. So that's inaccurate?

Yes. So after additional information, additional investigation regarding these calls, there were actually nine. So there were 17 calls which our residents, officers called out. However, there were actually nine identified street takeovers.

Mhmm. That's all within the city?

Yes, sir.

Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir. Alright. So out of those nine incidents, we had two vehicles that were towed, one individual who was arrested on scene, and seven citations that were issued. It should be noted that while officers

were to whom were the citations issued? Bystanders or actual citation.

I'm get gonna into that a little bit later. I can I can talk about it now if you like?

Yeah.

But just

That Yeah.

So one individual was cited as a spectator. Also, there was another individual who was cited as a spectator as well. One individual was cited for cited and arrested for reckless driving as it relates to the stunts and his involvement in the street takeovers.

So one for reckless driving, two for Spectating. Spectating, and seven citations

total? So some individuals received multiple citations.

Okay.

So the individual who was arrested on scene, he was cited for the reckless driving along with operating while provoked and also without having an ignition interlocked install into into installed into his to his vehicle. And his vehicle was also towed.

Okay.

I'm sorry. So that's seven citations between three people?

Yes. Thank you. Yes, sir. Alright. And so for that particular individual, he received over $1,400 in citations and fines.

But I want to make sure that we also understand this as well. Our officers who were assigned to investigate the street takeovers. They were extended and while this was taking place from the hours of 11PM through 02:40AM, our officers totaled throughout the city of Milwaukee were dispatched to a 105 calls for service and so handling the street takeovers does take away from our ability to make sure that we are responding to these calls for service and so that's why we're taking this extremely extremely serious So moving forward, one individual, this individual, he actually lives in Caledonia. He was also, as I indicated before, cited for spectating another individual who we are seeking right now. He led officers on a three mile pursuit.

His vehicle was towed. He actually evaded officers. He was cited. However, we are seeking criminal charges on that individual to hold him accountable. As it relates to the arrest that was made yesterday, I'll turn it over to inspector Lau to provide us with a criminal investigation details regarding that situation.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for having us. Inspector Paul Lau, Criminal Investigation Bureau. I just I wanna give a shout out to our fusion division investigators who have been diligently tracking some of these got these incidents for the last few years.

They finally been able to ID the main guy which we took in custody last night for a felony recklessly endangering safety for his actions last weekend. We have three other main actors identified that we're we're we're looking into. I expect some charges on the main the guy that we arrested yesterday in the upcoming days. And I I just want to say that the the investigation, a a lot of the stuff that we're able to do after the fact through social media analysis, license plate readers and just from the knowledge that some of our investigators have looking into this, I'm very confident we're going to be hold beaming up to hold more and more people accountable as we move forward.

Impressive press.

So is that is that how can you elaborate on that? I mean, how are you gonna ramp up?

As we identify them to investigate, we're going to go and we will be arresting them as we are to identify who's driving these vehicles in the fashion that we see in these videos, that that that equates to recklessly endangering safety. We've already had conversations with the district attorney about that. Mhmm. Some of the difficulties are is that these got a lot of the drivers of these cars, they're wearing mask, so a little more diligent and thorough investigations need to take place. We sometimes we can identify the order of the car, but we might not be able to identify who's driving at that time based on that.

So a little more work has to go into it. And that's what's kind of led up to the arrest yesterday and hopefully in the future some more arrests as we're able to dig deeper into this and one arrest and investigation like such as last night can ultimately lead to other information which can us other arrests.

So you're hoping that as as you react to the to a street takeover through social license plate plate readers and so on that that will increase the accountability?

Absolutely. And then we have to remember that when as we make an arrest, we might take an offender's cell phone. We might get a warrant for that. There's information in there that can lead to other people. Sometimes people wanna cooperate and they'll tell on others. So so it's all all that type of stuff. Interviewing of other witnesses which once we identify one person, we can identify others. So

And and the reason inspected that you mentioned the 165 calls for service is because you're saying that these were officers doing what they do and they were pulled away in order to deal with the street takeover?

So some of so we have actually, we actually have deployments. So we have officers who have been identified to address these street takeovers. However, when we noticed that these these incidents are taking place, those officers could be utilized to take other calls for service. And so we are we realize that this is impacting our response times, and so we are taking this extremely seriously. And so the individuals, as I indicated before, that one individual who fled from officers led officers on a on a a three mile pursuit.

We even though he got out of the vehicle and fled, we are going to track that individual down and hold him accountable for his actions as well as the other individuals involved because we don't have time to chase vehicles around when we have individuals who need our services. So these individuals who are engaged in this behavior, they will be held accountable. Whether they will be arrested, citations issued at that at that time, their vehicles towed on scene at that moment, or working with our criminal investigations bureau to conduct further investigations to track these individuals down and hold them accountable.

You between between the nine street takeovers, you have an estimate of how many people were involved?

So right now, we're still working with our intelligence fusion center. We know that there were cameras in that in those general locations that can provide us that information. So that is still information that we're working on.

Okay. I mean, the feedback I've gotten from constituents and whether it's either anger, questions, in general is seems like two cars told an arrest and seven citations between three people seems relatively low. How do we explain that or tell that to to folks who are angry about it happening a block away from their house.

I understand that frustration, sir. And so what I would explain to those individuals is that we wanna make sure that our officers are using safe tactics when they're out here attempting to apprehend these individuals. We know that some of these individuals flee. Multiple individuals flee upon sight of our officers. And so our goal is to do the best that we can to apprehend these individuals while keeping safety at the top of our minds.

I mean, some of the just some of the behavior we see, it it feels like it's a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt. And, I mean, that's what we're all trying to avoid beyond the nuisance and the reckless behavior feeling like things are out of control. So how how proactive can we be about these takeovers?

So I want to let you know that we began our initiative last year because we noticed that there was a a rise of those incidents taking place in the city of Milwaukee. And so we've met with all of our district captains to to devise multiple plans and different strategies to deploy depending on what the situation and circumstance was. And so although I cannot provide you that information due to the sensitive sensitivity in nature, we can definitely have conversation offline. But I want to advise you that our members are equipped with the tools to utilize, whether that's outbursts as relates to the auto plates readers, whether that's stop sticks. If we need to use on those vehicles to deflate those individuals' tires and also along with a variety of other tools as well.

So we do have a variety of different deployment strategies that we will utilize. However, I cannot divulge that information in public setting.

Is technology one of them?

Yes, sir. And if I may just add to that, the challenge of being proactive in these situations is that we don't have the locations ahead of time. And so once the location is identified, I believe we took a look into our response times and it's three to four minutes. But then our officers have to get there quickly so there are lights and sirens getting to the scene and then those individuals see the police coming and then they generally disperse to a new location. So for us, it's kind of a game of catching up unless we have the information ahead of time where then we can preplan having individuals and officers deployed.

But we have identified that taking people offline in further investigations after the fact is really generally another successful tool in the toolbox.

May I add some? Sure. Briefly.

Yes. Yesterday, our investigators developed a probable cause and with hour within hours, we went and arrested the individual I talked to you about. Mind you, while this was going on, we had a three year old get his grandfather's gun and shoot himself in the head fatally. We had an 11 year old shoot a DNS worker that we chased and caught, and we had a nine year old that was shot in the head during a domestic violence incident which we all handled. So we're doing this in the middle of responding to our normal course of violence and trying to hold keep the community safe and to hold people accountable. Thank you.

Alder Taylor?

Thank you so much. I I do want to say thank you and I and I think I can speak for my husband before anyone else but I do recognize the work that you guys are doing with the with what you just gave us the information you just gave us Because I got a call Saturday, and I think after talking to president Perez that it may have been the same group, but somehow it doesn't take very long to get from the South Side to the North Side on a busy street. And I got, you know, a resident calling, sending me a video of what's happening in the middle of 76 in Good Hope. And it's I mean, you're putting all these lives at danger. You know, she was so afraid.

She could barely get out what she was trying to say on the video. So I think just wanting to let you know that we do recognize that you're trying. And it's very difficult because looking at the video, I don't know how to begin to try to identify someone that's driving. You might be able to get the car and hope that maybe the owner could lead you to the driver, but I know ultimately you need the driver. And and that's that's the difficult part.

So we know how difficult it is, but your diligence in staying on top of it and trying to identify because I've gotten, even with the event basis, I've gotten, flyers text to me, say, here's a, undercover party or something that the kids have gotten real slick with some of the the language. I'm looking at it thinking like, is this? You know? But they're looking at it going, oh, there's a secret party over here, you know, because of the language. So it's very difficult to keep up with them. I do understand that too. But so staying on top of those things and trying to figure those things out, we appreciate that.

And if I could just say to, the committee and to, you, Alder Taylor, when you receive those videos or if your constituents have those videos, those are really good for us to receive as well. We know oftentimes when these things occur, they are posted on social media and it takes us a really long time to find them with the investigation that happens after the fact that if we have these videos in real time, getting those to us and we can perhaps pull out identifiers, encouraging constituents don't post on social media. That's what the people causing this harm want. Instead, post to the Milwaukee Police I think is something to get out there in the public sphere. Mister chair.

Thank you.

Are you concluded? Okay. Alder Moore.

Thank you so much. Thank you all so much for the work that you all continue to do. I know that it's not easy. I know we sit behind here and ask, you know, various questions and critique. But, you know, from being in this position, I completely understand sure you're

right.

Response time particularly for the incident that happened down here by City Hall?

Thank you very much, ma'am. Thank you for recognizing the work of the men and women of the Milwaukee Police Department. So as it relates to the street takeover that was taking place, no one had actually called police. And so our captain one of our captains who was downtown in the the downtown district entertainment zone monitoring the activities that were taking place as he was driving, that's when he observed observed that that takeover. Takeover and that's when he activated his lights along with other officers that were in their vehicles responding to try to capture some of those individuals. So no one actually called. Thank

you so much for that. Another quick point that

one of

you can share as well when you talk about you know I know you all do everything data right I tell my residents all the time please don't assume the gunshots you heard or the- the drug deal you may have. Witnessed whatever right like these incidents please please please. Call them in can you all please share that if. An individual witnesses something here something- can you just reiterate court who should they call is it is it 911 is it the non

emergency line-

in in regards to- what older woman- Taylor shared that hey residents are sending me up stuff all the time like she's not the police right. Who should they be directing this information to.

So they should call police and they can call 911 because this is a very important this is a very dangerous situation that's taking place where an individual's life could be lost based upon the reckless activity that's taking place. I wanna indicate also at the incident that took place at KKN Lincoln Avenue. One caller called at 11:43. It was dispatched at 11:46, and our officers arrived on scene at 11:50. Wow.

And so even though individuals may think that someone else called, I mean, it it's it's not for us to assume that someone else is someone else is calling. It's important that we pick up the phone ourselves as residents or as witnesses and call because we can assume that someone else will do it. And so our officers arrive within minutes Minutes. Of this incident taking place at KK in Lincoln. And so we just wanna make sure that it's not good enough just to post this stuff on social media for our residents. We have to make sure that you're calling us so that we can get there.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah.

I was

just gonna say we have an email, IFCIntelligenceFusionCenter@Milwaukee.gov. We encourage everyone that has videos of these to send them. As inspector Grantson

What was that? What's that?

Ifc@milwaukee.gov.

Ifc@milwaukee.gov. Yep.

Thank you.

And again, the similar to my question with the health department. In the fire department, do we have any means as public relations doing anything to promote this? I, you know, we're finding out about it at committee. Is there any way for the public to know where they're supposed to be sending this stuff?

We do have a street takeover website on the Milwaukee Police Department's public relations website. This is a great opportunity to send that out and circulate it. I will send that following this meeting to everyone here and also we'll repost on our social media. It does have contact information for if people have information about these particular events and it was created last year.

Okay. Yes. Social media is the medium that people are posting on and communicating via that medium would seem to make sense. I guess I have one quick question before I pass it to Alder Bergelse, which is, are we honestly outstripped here in our capacity to respond to these? Because citations.

I'm not criticizing the work being done. You're doing the best you can under the circumstances. But are we really having a deterrent effect if we're catching, you know, one big fish and then a couple spectators when there are scores and scores of spectators. Is there any grounds for optimism that we can actually change the behavior here given the limited resources and the speed with which these groups move around town?

So thank you very much for asking that question, sir. So I just wanna let you know that we have identified a communication gap between the Department of Emergency Communications and our agency as it relates to the street takeovers taking place. And so what took place Saturday evening into Sunday morning was that our districts were operating in silos. So that means that a street takeover may have been taking place in District 6, police district six neighborhood, and our officers in District 7 did not know that these incidents were taking place. And so we've been in communication with the Department of Emergency Communications to just basically shore up those communication lines so that when there is a call for street takeover, that it's notified broadcast throughout all of our districts so that even if an incident is taken in Milwaukee police district two, Milwaukee police district four is aware.

Mhmm. And so also what that does is that activates the the our night watch captain who acts as our incident commander for these incidents so that he or she can get our resources together from each district in order to stabilize these incidents. So they're not moving from place to place without the other districts being aware of it.

Mister chair. So I appreciate the communication and the transparency about that flaw and the plans to remedy it, the the question still stands. If we can't even make an example of one group, which, you know, I've long said just if we could make an example of one group come in, you know, surround the situation, arrest people and scores, that would get media attention, that would get some sort of hope from the public that we have a way of wrapping our hands around it. If we're just getting nibbling pieces around the corner, again, I'm looking for what we can change given our staffing limitations that would allow us to get our arms around this problem.

So I just wanted to assure that information up with you all to let you know what took place this past weekend. So now that we have this information and this communication gap in alignment, we are confident that we'll be able to dig more dig deeper as it relates to the arrest that we make and the individuals that we hold accountable. I'd also wanna keep you all advised that we're working with districts district officers from each district throughout the city of Milwaukee along with our specialized patrol division, along with our criminal investigation division officers as well, which inspector Lyle can also provide you additional information on.

So but again, touching on my question, how are we going to ever get a handle on this given the staffing requirements even if you alert all the districts at once? Are we is there ever a plan or is there even an ability to surround one group? I know we're focused on dispersing, but unless we make an example of somebody, I don't know why the behavior would change.

So, sir, just so that you know, our we do have a we have robust plans in order to make mass arrest of these individuals. Is that what you're referring to? Yeah. As I indicated before, I cannot provide you the details of those plans just due to the sensitivity and nature. We don't wanna advise the street takeover individuals of what our goals are and what we're gonna do, but the goal is to make mass arrests of these individuals. Okay.

And I'll So hopefully we'll see that this summer.

Okay. I just wanna add one thing and I sir, I I kinda get what you're asking about making mass arrests. The guy we took in custody yesterday, those are serious felony. That's prison charges. It's not citation.

Mhmm.

That is one example. We are making and we plan on making in upcoming days. And as the message gets out on that, I believe that'll be at a turn as well that some guys facing prison for a street takeover as opposed to just a set simply a citation.

Yeah. That's if the rest of the process works.

Just follow-up on your point.

Say again?

I said that that's if the rest of the process works whether Right. There's charges, the a, judges, the whole nine, then

everything has to be We're gonna do our part.

Yeah. And we'll refer.

And also And you mentioned prison time but that only someone else attention. And

may I just add one thing to your inquiry share?

Briefly.

Briefly, it is about mass arrests. So I want to level set here. These situations when we encounter them, our officers are coming in grossly outnumbered. So when you have an officer writing a citation or taking somebody into custody that takes that one officer offline. And so the challenge for us is we will do as many arrests and detain as many individuals involved as possible.

But for each one of those, one of our officers at least is offline then and can't respond to the chaos that's surrounding so. When we say we'll do everything we can those are the challenges and that's why that follow-up is so vastly important. As the next step

some eerily similar response to what we heard about addressing issues on Water Street when you there's so many people.

Yeah.

Every officer you bring in to address it is one off the street. So Yeah. There's a problem here. Alder Moore.

Just briefly. Just a quick follow-up.

Is it illegal illegal to spectate.

Yes ma'am and it is a $750 citation.

And then.

Proof is you were just there at the times like how do you. Prove right because a lot of times that's what it boils down to-

if we're citing someone for- spectating. There is a legal challenge to that because you have individuals who see this occurring in front of them. Sure. And they get out their cameras because they're mesmerized by the chaos and they're not necessarily spectators. They're not following these groups around.

But we're, you know, working on crafting some questions that pointed questions for officers to ask individuals to really get to the heart. Are you a participant as a spectator or does this just happen to be going on in front of you and you're stopping to figure out what's going on so. It is a challenge. There is on-site investigation that needs to occur to determine a person's intent in that situation. But it was the council actually that created the harsher penalties and shored up the language to the ordinance scheme to allow us to cite those spectators.

Yeah. Yeah. That was just last year with President Perez's legislation.

And if I can just make this really quick point to, you know, that I believe, I think it might have been inspector Lao or inspector Grant shared as far as just a number of calls to that happen between that period of time that figuring out how to balance, yes, how do we address this issue and be able to because there was stuff going on in my district as well, right? How to address other things that are going on- in different parts of- our city so you know this is. Very some unique situations- that we're that we're dealing with and figuring out how to best. Best address this in in the way that we need to let folks know let the folks know that participate in this stuff like this is unacceptable. We're not going to tolerate it but having enough bodies to be able to do other things in the city as well.

Definitely challenging and, you know, figuring out ways to pull these partners in together to address it. Thank you, mister chair.

Thank you. We have alder Berglaus in the queue and then we'll go to present President, Alder Dmitryevich, I believe, is online.

So Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And

then Alder Taylor, so we have a robust queue. Alder Berglis?

Thank you. Thank you, mister chair. This isn't new. Right? Street takeovers have been around for a while. Last summer, we saw lots of these incidents. How did CIB help identify those bad actors last year? How many people were charged criminally that were organizing these?

That that number of I'm gonna have to get back to you. I'm aware of the one arrest last summer for the I believe it was for the driving recklessly and danger, but I I can't confirm that right now. But last summer, we also had the street takeovers, then we had Water Street, and then we had Kendall Quarter, officer Quarter getting murdered. So that took away from again, I'm not using it as an excuse. Those are reasons right there.

Right. Well, I'm I'm looking for the track record. And last summer, we had one criminal charge. And this year, we already have one.

This year, one felony criminal charge?

One felony. Yes. Any but last year, we didn't have any felony charges?

I I gotta get back to you on that. I think we arrested one from last summer, like I said. I just have to make sure of the exact charge.

The SRT model sometimes really terrible things happen in the city. And these takeovers really shake residents to the core. It's disruptive. It's frightening. We have to get these people accountable for their actions. They're terrorizing neighborhoods. You said that there were you're still looking at how many cars were involved in last weekend's

Yes.

How many people are you investigating currently?

We've identified the four main targets. It it from all the video we have, we're able to make the we had nine takeovers. There's one video that's really broken this open. That's why I can't express enough that it's very important that we get as many videos as we can sent to us. Mhmm. Now in terms of trying to identify we're we're not giving up on we're to identify participants, spectators, and drivers even after the fact. So Do you expect to

have charges ready for more people from last weekend?

I do. Yes.

The SRT initials sometimes really terrible, think comes comes forward pretty quickly. I'd like to see a change to safe, responsible traffic or safe, responsible today. Safe and responsible today. What are the next steps? How is the department preparing for the inevitable street takeovers that are going to be here next weekend and next month?

Look, as inspector Grant touched upon, we do have a plan in place. We're also we're adding until we have a program, let me just digress a minute, called Summer Guardian, which is starting in three weeks. Before that starts, we're going to be dedicating other officers from our special investigations division to assist with patrol to include surveilling, making arrests, filming some of these on our own. So if we can't catch somebody there, perhaps we're going to arrest them later on, whether it's a citation or a felony charge or other charges because some of the people that we're dealing with here are also linked to illegal drug trafficking or illegal weapons possessions. And I I'm confident some of that will be coming forward in some of the charges that we're dealing with.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. We have president president, Alder Dimitrijevic.

This briefing or some strategy, is this something we go to our captains too? Is this something, inspector, you'll talk to us about?

Regarding summer guardian?

No. Just about the initiative with the street takeovers that you said.

Yes. So our captains are are all on board. They're aware of what their resources are what resources gonna be utilized from their independent districts. And so we are all on board regarding what we're gonna do as far as how we're going to implement these strategies. Now we do know that Cinco de Mayo is this weekend and also next weekend. So we are preparing for some of these individuals who will use that beautiful celebration of culture as a way to take over some of these streets. And so we are prepared to deal with those individuals.

Okay. Then some of the is the briefing the things you said you have to talk offline, did we get that from you or from our captains or

So we can work with myself and the chief staff heading off. Okay.

And and I will say, you know, some of the information, we're happy to have conversations and share some details. All of the details will not be shared just because we don't want the individuals participating in these you know this harm to our community to get that information and then build strategies to have street takeovers around those operational plans.

And just some of the questions that that that I want just to put on the record. One of the things is, can we can the police department cite, write a citation for an owner owner of a vehicle whether they can prove that's the person driving or not?

Or

doing any reckless acts in a in a vehicle?

We we've looked into that and I'm quite confident the answer is no on that right now.

That's a state statue?

Well, there are some owners liability, strict liability laws. I don't know if any of those may apply to these particular circumstances but we're happy to work with the district attorney's office or the city attorney's office to explore.

We know that citation exists for hit and run owner responsibility along with some others. So if we if there's an opportunity for us to, like, get the chief of

Could use the mic. Spectrum inspector.

Yeah. If there's an opportunity as Heather as chief of staff Hoff has indicated to work with the city attorney regarding, I think that that would be very beneficial for our members to be able to hold those the owners of those vehicles responsible even if an individual is observed driving, evades police, we can still hold someone accountable for their vehicle being utilized in that manner. But listen,

if I'm sorry to interrupt. But if if a if a vehicle is used in a crime and you have evidence that the vehicle was involved in a crime that threatens the health, safety, welfare of the public, if you why couldn't you impound that to investigate that crime? Just like if you saw a a car leave a bank robbery In your absence why couldn't you impound that

You're absolutely correct, and we did so yesterday when we've identified the vehicles. I think the question was of the owner's liability ticket though. That's I think that's two separate things. I understand what you're saying and we do impound those cars that are used in felonies like we did yesterday. So

President Press?

No. I just I I think constituents have asked. I know council members I've spoken to believe that it's an appropriate citation for the owner of a car where they're they got a balaclava on or it looks like them but you can't prove it. I I think there's support for

that. Good.

Alder Dimitriovich.

Yes. Good morning. I just wanna make sure you can hear me okay?

Yes. Okay.

Thank you chairman Spiker for allowing a virtual questioning here. I truly appreciate it. We have a number of things going on my district at this time, and this was one of the items that kind of put people over the edge, which I understand. I do have to get a few questions answered from my constituents, and I've been listening in. Why were there no tickets administered or given at the KK and Lincoln takeover gathering. I know that many were saying that it took thirty minutes. I appreciate the inspector saying it took between five and seven minutes for response. If they were there within five or seven minutes, why were no tickets issued?

Ma'am, thank you very much for asking that question. I did speak with the sergeant that responded to that location who indicated that as soon as the officer and himself, himself responded to that area, KK and Lincoln, those vehicles fled immediately upon sight. And so there were only two officers excuse me. One officer in one vehicle, one sergeant, and another vehicle. And so it was not appropriate for those members just based upon their safety to chase those individuals. And so that is the reason a citation was not issued. Those individuals that were involved in that that takeover at KK and Lincoln, as soon as they observed those members, they fled.

Okay. That's helpful. Number two, the I believe they're referred to as stop sticks, the tire puncturing

think And I the

that's stop sticks at the district.

Okay. And is the that and if you're not able to share that because it's a unique in intelligence tactic, I can understand. But are those you know, is that part of the process? Can those be, like, part of the vehicle that responds to these takeovers?

Yes, ma'am. That is a part of the plan, and it should be noted that those have been utilized. Those stop sticks are utilized to to in our pursuits and things of that nature. And so they have been utilized in the past, and they will be utilized moving forward as we work to decrease these incidents from taking place in our city.

Okay. Do you have a read on how long the KK and Lincoln incident actually lasted? I mean, it sounds like you can only read it from when the call you went through the timing from when the call went in. Do you have any gauge of how long it might have lasted?

We only have information just based upon the call type at this time and that's why it's extremely important for residents when they see these incidents taking place that they call us immediately and not assume that someone else is calling because that call may never Yeah. Be

The time that people take to put it on social media and film it could be a time calling the police. People are quick to gather their phone and create a video, which actually is a point that I need to make, mister chairman. We, in September, as a council, and it was a a challenge because we had to be really careful with people's First Amendment rights, took aggressive steps to have spectators fined. The problem is is that there are many more, hundreds and thousands of online spectators, and additional spectators when people share the videos out to report it. And I can understand why when you're unsettled sometimes that's that's a way to do it.

But we've got to find a way and and I have introduced a communication file to keep these social media corporate giants accountable like MEDA. And I'm investigating and looking at with the city attorney's office just like Chicago did possible very large fines because they have a role to play in this too by making these wrongdoers some kind of social media superstars. It is not the only way to combat this, but it is one tool in a very small toolbox that we have, and it must be looked at. It's a nationwide trend. Unfortunately, we're going to see more and more of it if we don't start taking social media responsibly.

This is a way that could actually help parents. With that point, Mr. Chair, I'll conclude. I want to ask, do you know, inspector, the average age of the people that took a role in those 12 street takeovers this past weekend?

Ma'am, I believe The four people we have identified that we know were involved to include the one that we arrested I believe were between the ages of like 22 and the oldest one is 26. Now that's.

Can I just?

Go ahead.

I I I don't those are the four that we have identified. So in terms of like the other people that were cited, I have to turn that to Inspector Grant if she has that. But some of the main participants are in the low to mid twenties.

Okay. That's helpful to know because there's some thoughts that this was the exact same thing as like a teen event. And I think it's important to at least have that information out there. People can do with what they what they want. But, you know, these are at this point, at least this group of individuals that were arrested as well, I I understand in Glendale. And that's the other thing is when people are moving about within the county, there needs to be a county wide discussion because I from my understanding, I heard that the group that was in Bayview then moved on to Glendale, which is a totally different jurisdiction. Can you just discuss how jurisdiction county wide discussion is going?

Do you wanna add

one? Yeah. Okay.

I just wanna let you know that we have been in in contact with other law enforcement partners, also including the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office as well as relates to these incidents because we know that when something is taking place perhaps in Glendale that it's just a matter of time before it impacts the city of Milwaukee, another jurisdiction as well. So we've also been in contact and will be in contact with the Department of Emergency Communications so that we can work together. If they receive information from their dispatch channel from another jurisdiction, they can provide that information over to us. And so those conversations with our intergovernmental partners will be taking place regarding this these these takeovers.

Okay. There were also fireworks that were launched as part of the KK Lincoln incident. Fire chief Lipsky stated that the investigation was not conclusive. Do you also if there's fireworks presence and you're on the scene, are you ish through issuing citations for illegal fireworks? Because that is dangerous and people did consider that that could have impacted a nearby house fire. I just wanted to know that and that'll be my last question, mister chair.

Yeah, ma'am. Thank you. As we identify people more and more and we're going through the videos that we have, if we're able to identify somebody who's actually lighting the fireworks or in possession of them inappropriately, yes, we will follow-up with the citations much like if we can identify some of the spectators. And when I say that with respect to the First Amendment violate, if we see the same spectator going from takeover to takeover to takeover, that's a good sign that they're an active participant in it. And that's some of the things that some of the ways we're looking at addressing this. And again, I can't encourage enough to those videos are very helpful.

Yeah. I imagine on the videos, can see people's license plates and whatnot. So

Yes. Thank you.

Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I really appreciate this opportunity. And thank you, President Perez, for sponsoring this and allowing me to be a co sponsor. I'm looking forward to a much more safe summer. I'm also have asked the Office of Community wellness and safety to look into this matter because I think that we need to invest in the preventative side of this as well. Thank you.

Very good. Alder Taylor, next in the queue.

I think alderwoman Demetrius asked almost all the questions that I The only one that she left out was with the because I was looking at the age of of those individuals that you guys have encountered or arrested or excited. And then the other one was with the fireworks because some of the residents were thinking that fireworks but then there also may be some weapons on-site as well. So I was just wondering because I know that that will increase the danger that you will encounter. Yeah.

That's a great question. We did hear we did receive information that shots may have been fired. It's inconclusive at this time. However, we did seize a lot of firearms in our investigation since then. I'll be able to give opine on that a little more in the future if you if you give us some let that investigation transpire see where we get. But, yes, it seems to be. And another thing I wanna say with some of the spectators too, with this ringleader that we took in custody and the other three, they were able to draw a lot of people from Illinois that weren't even Milwaukee residents based on the social media research we're able do. So it's not all Milwaukee or local people that are involved in this.

Thank you.

Thank you. Other questions, comments from committee members?

Mr. Chair? President Press

concluding remarks.

I just hope that as a I hope we have a safe summer and that we can stay in front of this. I just want to as you guys move forward just keep this file open if if needed to have an update or briefing in the future because of street takeovers and notice it for closed session if we need to go into closed session and talk strategy and for sure have a communication file at the end of the summer and fall to evaluate what we did together between departments and police, all there's complaints, information and figure out what's working and not working. Mister chair. Especially technology.

Elder Taylor had one quick follow-up then back to elder Moore.

Yeah. Just real quick. And and, so one of the reasons why I was thinking about the age of the individuals, because this week is youth victory over violence week. And so there are individuals who are working hard to work with our teams to try to just get them to focus on more positive activities as we enter into the summer. And I think they're working along with Office of Community Wellness and Safety.

So even though these are young adults in there, like, you know, early twenties, mid twenties, how would would you say then to office of community wellness and safety or these other individuals kind of just work with some of our teams just to make sure that they aren't looking at participating or sharing out those videos on social media. Is there any comments or anything that we can do in that regard?

I think a really important message for especially young adults with this type of behavior is young adults are really self focused and they think of what's fun and what's for them. And having them understand the larger greater impact of their actions when these occur, it's not just the risk of endangering the people involved in them. It is the chaos they're causing to communities and residents. It's the noise. It's the fear that people are feeling when these things come.

It's the innocent people who are trying to drive or walk down the street that are impacted and their safety is on the line. And so these behaviors may seem fun, but they have this huge potential to cause such harm to others and really messaging that to youth in some way that's going to impact them and make them at least think twice about these actions is really important.

Thank you. I think that that sounds like we might need to have you make a visit through one of those workshops. Yes, sir.

I just wanna add on being informed. My memory was jarred here. Our officers, the best years of fusion and ATF last summer were able to take into custody and make a case regarding somebody who was making fireworks that were used in part of the street takeovers last So I was just just wanted to add to that.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Alder Moore.

I just wanted to have the Department of Community Wellness and Safety. You all came to the table and just wanted them to share any input or insight since you all are here today.

Thank you, orderwoman chair. Thank you to chairman, to all of the council members. Really wanna pour honor on the Milwaukee Police Department and the law enforcement in the city of Milwaukee for the great work that

they've been doing. Can you identify yourself, sir?

Yes. Quinn Taylor with the Department of Community Wellness and Safety, currently serving as a community violence prevention program coordinator in the process of transitioning to community outreach and engagement manager. So a lot of this work in regards to informing, constituents and communities on how do they respond in situations like this. That'll be a part of my responsibility, ensuring that they know of the MKE mobile action app when to use 911 and the nonemergency number, ensuring that they know of programs such as the alert neighbor program where block clubs can receive equipment such as cameras and motion lights to help deter this type of behavior, but also report it to the IFC and other platforms where law enforcement can have this information to hopefully make arrests. We work very closely with many of you with automatic walks, community cleanups.

There was a pop up that we had scheduled yesterday. Thank you to president Perez that helped to lead those discussions to to initiate that. With that said, DCWS recognizes that vehicular takeovers impact community safety, neighborhood stability, and resident well-being. While DCWS has a role in prevention, coordination, and community support, we are not equipped, especially in our current state, to manage or intervene during active takeover events. Mhmm.

Those moments involving moving vehicles, large crowds, and unpredictable safety risk requires specialized response and traffic control. Our role is best positioned before and after, helping share credible information when available, supporting prevention messaging, connecting with impacted residents, and working with partners to reduce the likelihood of future incidents. We wanna be a part of the the solution Mhmm. But in a way that protects the safety of our teams and keeps DCWS focused on prevention, engagement, and community stabilization. Yeah.

Thank

you. So briefly what steps have has DCWS taken with respect to Street takeovers in the past or what's the plan in the future? What concrete steps can you take that MPD is not in a position to take? What can you do?

Thank you for that question. We do have team members that survey social media sites. Some of the ones that's highly popularized and used by the by youth. Certain videos we've been able to get them to remove, stopping to promote that type of behavior. When we do have information of possible street takeovers, we do refer that information over to law enforcement.

Very thankful for inspector Grant and captain Lyle that we have direct communication where we can relay information in real time. Also, inspector chief deputy Barco with the Milwaukee Sheriff Department. Having that open line of communication has really enabled us to communicate in real time with law enforcement when we do have certain information. So those are some of the things that we do. But after situation, we go into neighborhoods and make sure that residents know of the resources to help mitigate those those things and also if they're dealing with any level of trauma, how our office department can support them.

Okay. Any other questions? If not, Alder Taylor would move to hold this item to the call of the chair so we can take it up at a later date. Thank you very much, everyone. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you.

We'll do a little bit of a shift change here. Back to the health department. So item six is file number 252126. This is a resolution relating to acceptance and funding of the twenty sixth through twenty seventh Wisconsin congenital disorder newborn screening grant from the state of Wisconsin Department of Health Services. We haven't opened it up to public testimony.

We would

have to notice it for them.

We would have to notice it. Yeah. Sorry.

Okay. Mr. Schapinski?

Good morning again Mr. Chair and committee members, Erin Schupinski, budget and administration manager for the health department. The newborn and congenital grant that is before you today brings in about $300,000 and that supports long standing work at the health department helping connect families and their newborns with care in the event that they have hearing deficiencies and or adverse results for other congenital disorders that the state mandates testing for. So our nursing staff, does a lot of follow-up and we actually offer this on a regional basis. So this program will be funded through 06/30/2027 under this grant.

Okay. Very good. Again, Mr. Schupinski had supplied us with a list of the grants we're talking about today and some background information. Anybody have any questions or comments? I move. Then if not, Alder Moore would move to recommend adoption or referral to finance and personnel. Hearing no objection, so ordered. Item seven, file number 252,136, substitute resolution relative to acceptance and funding the 2026 Beach Water Monitoring Grant from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Sure. Mr. Chair, committee members, this is a grant we've received for several years. It helps support our summertime beach water testing at the three county beaches located in the city. Our staff goes out every day. They test the water and report back and advise on beach closures. It's a very successful way for us not only to serve the public but to provide some opportunities for student work to go out and collect samples and do some testing with our lab and our EP teams over the summer. So I believe funding is about $20,000 and we will be funding the two temporary positions with this grant.

Okay. Any questions about the beach water monitoring grant from DNR? If not, then Alder Berglis would move to recommend adoption. Hearing no objection, so ordered. Item eight, file number 252158, resolution authorizing the Commissioner of Health to enter into grant agreements to carry out the purposes of the Healthy Food Establishment Special Fund.

Mister chair, committee members, semi related to our opioids discussion earlier this file authorizes the commissioner to award grants based on submissions and evaluations of submissions for the Healthy Food Establishment Fund which has moved into the health department in 2025. We're very aware and supportive of the mayor and council's actions to address grocery store closures and food deserts in our city and we're eager to play our part by administering these funds as well as other funds that were allocated by the council recently for this important initiative.

Okay. Any questions about the funding here? If not, then Alder Taylor would move to recommend adoption. Hearing no objection so ordered. File number item number nine, file number 25200186, substitute resolution amending common counsel file number 251,240 relating to acceptance and funding of the 2026 WIC grant from the State Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

Mr. Chair and committee members, as noted this amends our WIC funding. It is to essentially change the term of the grant. Typically these grants ended in December. The state is changing a lot of grant calendars and so the WIC funds will now term out at the September and then pick back up in October. So we're reducing the grant a little bit, again, not because of deficiencies or cut funding or anything else just because we're spending it in nine months rather than twelve. We'll have a new contract before you probably in August, August but September.

Got it. Right. Yeah. Thank you for that clarification. Mhmm. Questions, comments? Nope. Alder Moore would move to recommend adoption. Hearing no objections so ordered. Item 10, file number

Mister chair. Yes. Can you just make sure I get reported as an affirmative on items number six and seven?

Okay. Let the record reflect. And then without objection, so ordered. Item 10, file number two five two one one nine, resolution relating to acceptance and funding of the 2026 Wisconsin DOT Board of Transportation Safety Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Enforcement Grant. Thank you, mister Shibinski. Good

morning. Petra Decker of the Milwaukee Police Department. And I'm joined today by my colleague. I'll let him introduce himself. No problem.

Eddie Sparkman, budget and finance. Say again? I'm sorry. My name is Eddie Sparkman. I work with MPD as a county grant specialist. Okay. Mister Sparkman?

Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

So this file is about a grant that's coming to us from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Safety. The grant amount is 25,200 and there is a $6,300 match. This is one of several grants that we get regularly from the Wisconsin DOT for a high visibility enforcement campaign. This one is targeted at pedestrian and bicycle safety violations.

Thank you. Very good. And locations as far as are adapted, those are all in the file? Or

Well, it's covering the entire city of Milwaukee. Kind of notable this year, new partner is the University of Marquette's Police Department.

Oh, okay.

They're getting a portion of the funding as partner of the grant.

Okay. Very good. Any questions? If not, Alder Berglis would move to recommend adoption. Hearing no objections so ordered. Item 11, file number two hundred fifty two thousand one thirty five, resolution related to acceptance and funding application acceptance and funding of a fiscal year 2025 Edward Byrne Memorial JAG or Justice Assistance Grant Program local solicitation grant.

Yes. Thank you for this opportunity. We will be presenting the JAG grant for FY 2025. The total award for this one is $946,496 A portion of that will be distributed to our sub awards, as sub awards to Milwaukee County and also the Milwaukee Bar Association in return for the Milwaukee Community Justice Council. Our portion here for the city of Milwaukee will be 480 $408,248 which will fund various supplies, equipment, and temporary contract employees during this season for Milwaukee Police Department.

Okay. Questions about the

grant? No.

If not, Alder Taylor would move to recommend adoption. Hearing no objections so ordered. Item 12, file number two five two one seven four, resolution relating to acceptance and funding of the state of Wisconsin Department of Children and Families Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds Program, Milwaukee County Domestic Violence High Risk Teen Grant.

This file relates to the acceptance of a grant extension. The original grant comes to us from the state of Wisconsin Department of Children and Families by way of a sub award from the Sojourner Family Police Center, Peace Center. And the the original grant was for $325,000. The program period ended at the 2024. This extension provides an additional $448,751, and it increases the grant term by twenty two months. The purpose of the grant is to identify and manage cases at higher risk highest risk for homicide to save lives.

Okay.

Very good. Alder Taylor would move to recommend adoption or referral to financing personnel. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have dispensed with items thirteen and fourteen. So we'll go to the last live item, item 15, file number 252147. This is our standard communication from FPC relating to standard operating procedures. Thank you for your patience.

Good morning Mr. Chair and committee members. Leon Todd, Executive Director of the Fire and Police Commission. There are seven policies before you in this file. These were heard by the Fire and Police Commission at its April 2 and then the April 16 regular meetings.

The files from the April 2 meeting include a new file SOP I'm sorry, a new policy SOP 100, which is titled Foot Pursuits and it creates guidelines regarding the use of foot pursuits given that they are inherently dangerous. So that's a new policy. And then there was also a modification to SOP three twenty, which is for canines and that added roles and responsibilities for the new electronic storage detection K-nine which will assist MPD in investigations regarding sensitive crimes and K-nine is specifically trained to help with the detection of digital storage items. I'll pause there and see if there is any questions.

Where is the report on the foot pursuits? I see the one from the public memo relating to 04/16. There

should be another memo dated March 25. Hopefully that's in the file. If not, I can

is that not in the file?

I don't see it in the file.

Okay. That must be an oversight. I can get that to you.

Please For

the do entire committee. So what is the change with the foot pursuits?

So the foot pursuits is a new policy. Specifically have a policy on this before. It is a fairly detailed policy that codifies prior training standards and other requirements and codifies that into a formal policy.

So what are the highlights of the policy, the new policy? Again, not having the The

policy is in the file. It recognizes that foot pursuits are inherently dangerous and it seeks to balance the need to apprehend suspects and the seriousness of the crime with the inherent danger to the public as well as members. It is fairly detailed as I mentioned. Yes. It's 11 pages.

Yes.

So is there a summary of it or why don't we hold this one and hear it next time when we have the memo?

Sure. Okay.

Thanks. And Mr. Chair, if you will indulge me, I would just like to draw your attention to Section 100.3, sub D, sub six, sub C of the policy, which is on Page 10. It says, Supervisor shall evaluate whether foot pursuits are in compliance with the policy and assess among other things whether any missteps were made. I just find that language very nice because we wouldn't want any missteps in a foot pursuit.

Okay. Sorry. I couldn't resist. Totally checks. Okay. So Ms. Ortiz, can you make a note that we'll be hearing this item relating to foot pursuits next time and Mr. Todd could make sure we have that summary so we can just go over the details And in

then just to continue at the April 16 meeting, there were five policy changes that were in the We are of instruction with the exception of the new SOI on crash reconstruction unit. I believe the other changes are fairly routine for example, prisoners in booking, they added a section related to persons who are arrested and are used wheelchairs as they must be conveyed by private

equity. Yes, we have it on file. If there is anything that's not purely technical, always draw our attention to that.

Again, I believe the only non routine change is the creation of the crash reconstruction unit SOI.

Any questions on the remainder besides the foot pursuit? Okay. Then Alder Berglosa move that this item be placed on file. Thank you. Thank you. Item 16, file number 211260 and item 17, file number 220510 are both sponsored by Alder Cogs who wishes to have them placed on file. So Alder Taylor would make that motion and hearing no objection, those items are placed on file. And that concludes our agenda for today. Thank you very much. We're adjourned.