Law enforcement harms Milwaukee
Many in Milwaukee, even those who participated heavily in protests against police brutality, and especially those in political office, have turned their back on the movement inspired by George Floyd’s murder in 2020, and its demands. This month Milwaukee Beagle is covering the city and county budgets, joining activists in reviving the once-popular call to redirect funds away from law enforcement and into human needs. People in power simply do not want to hear about defunding the police anymore, even though, in Wisconsin, police killings and the incarceration rate are rising dramatically.
That’s why we took a hard look at Milwaukee law enforcement and put together two articles. One explaining how law enforcement does not keep Milwaukee safe, and this article, focusing on the ways law enforcement harms Milwaukee.
Disclaimer: this article contains harrowing stories of violence against Black people, and may be difficult for our readers. We share these stories as part of an effort to organize for prevention of further violence.
Four years ago, Milwaukee historian Dr. Deborah Blanks gave a lecture on the history of policing which argued that police brutality is not an accident, but a symptom of institutional racism. In this lecture, she used a framework of progress and retrenchment, saying that “often progress is met with a significant backlash… retrenchment is achieved when progress is challenged, neutralized, and undermined.” Unfortunately, since 2020, the US has seen more retrenchment than progress, especially here in Wisconsin, where politicians who posture as progressive keep expanding the funding and reach of police.
Some of those that are on forces, are the same who burn crosses
Law enforcement in Milwaukee, and the entire United States is a white supremacist institution. While the police hurt everyone—especially low income and marginalized people—in the US, this institution is primarily focused on perpetrating anti-black racism. So, this article is also going to focus on that anti-black racism.
The origin of US police can be traced back to slave patrols. After emancipation, cops continued to work closely with the Ku Klux Klan, and this tradition of cooperation between law enforcement and overt white supremacist organizations continues, and is tolerated to this day. Locally, white supremacist organizing is increasing in and around Milwaukee, and some area law enforcement have been caught joining racist organizations and wearing white supremacist regalia to work.
Policing in Milwaukee has always been racist. Here are some nightmarish examples. In 1861 MPD allowed George Marshall Clark to be lynched. In 1958 MPD officers killed Daniel Bell and covered it up. From 1964-1984 chief Harold Brier’s MPD routinely harassed and murdered Black people, he was even complicit in the burning of an NAACP office on Center Street. In 1991 MPD officers handed Konerak Sinthasomphone over to Jeffery Dahmer. In 2004, they tortured Frank Jude in public, beating him and stabbing a pencil in his ear. From 2007 to 2012, district 5 officers sexually assaulted more than 75 Black men on the street in broad daylight.
All these killer cops, we don’t need em, need em!
This is not just a “bad apples” situation where some racist cops tarnish otherwise race-neutral policing. First, police departments and unions tend to defend bad apples, and retaliate against officers who try to hold co-workers accountable. Second, white supremacy functions both through racist individuals, and through racist institutions. Even color blind, well-intended, and non-white law enforcement officers are part of a racist and violent system. Let’s unpack that, again, with local examples.
Milwaukee police disproportionately target the Black community and kill Black people. In 2018, MPD settled a racial profiling lawsuit with the ACLU, requiring regular progress reports from a federal monitor. Initially, racial targeting worsened, then improved, but still continues. For example, the “frisk rate” for Black residents is still eight times higher than for white residents.
Police will often escalate these routine stops and other encounters to lethal violence. While the recent, high profile killings of Samuel “Jah” Sharpe Jr. and D’Vontaye Mitchell were perpetrated by private security and out of town cops, and others like Alvin Cole and Jay Anderson were killed by neighboring departments, we cannot overlook or forget the killings by officers working for MPD or the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). Here is a short list. In 2021, MPD shot Roberto Zielinski. In April 2020, an off-duty MPD officer strangled Joel Acevedo. In 2017, MSCO deputies shot and killed Terry Williams at the lakefront. In 2016, MPD shot Sylville Smith in Sherman Park. In 2014, MPD shot Dontre Hamilton for sleeping on a bench outside Starbucks. In 2011, MPD officers assaulted Derek Williams and trapped him in their squad car until he died of his injuries.
These most notorious cases make up only some of the 29 people killed by MPD and MCSO since 2013 according to the mapping police violence project. According to reporting from Wisconsin Watch, fatal encounters with police are rising in Wisconsin, and are outpacing those in neighboring states. District attorneys often excuse the killings despite officers acting outside of training requirements, and in most cases, police justify their acts by claiming their victims were fleeing, or armed. That’s also what officers said about Daniel Bell back in 1958, and it's what many believed until 1980 when a retired cop exposed the lie. Regardless, in every one of these 29 cases, police initiated an interaction that escalated to someone’s death.
Another prison system for you and me to live in
Not every encounter with law enforcement is lethal, but death is not the only harm police inflict. Police encounters often lead to arrest and incarceration in Wisconsin’s racist, torturous, and deadly prison system. Wisconsin incarcerates Black people 11.8 times more often than whites, this is the second-worst disparity in the county. Wisconsin prisons are located in small towns, where rural staff members like to provoke incidents that they use to justify locking the prison down, beating people, and putting them in restraint chairs or long term solitary confinement (both solitary and restraint chairs are recognized forms of torture). The Department of Corrections (DOC) is very cagey about reporting any details about people who die in their custody. Deaths are frequently classified as suicides with no transparency or public oversight. There have been five deaths labeled suicide in Waupun Correctional alone this year.
Another form of harm initiated by police encounters is community supervision. Sometimes people are not incarcerated, but instead put on probation, or held on “extended supervision” after release under our deeply unjust truth in sentencing system. Combining all its forms, Wisconsin subjects more than 63,000 people to supervision. A report from the Columbia Justice Lab found that Wisconsin’s supervision system disproportionately targets Black people and people from Milwaukee. While on supervision, a person faces at least 18 additional rules that can get them revocated and immediately re-incarcerated without a trial. Wisconsin also counts community supervision irregularly, allowing supervision officers to reset and thus increase the length of the sentence beyond what a judge decided at court during their original sentencing.
Michelle Alexander’s best selling 2010 book The New Jim Crow is about how this kind of supervision creates a second-class citizenship status. When that status is combined with racial disparities and targeting, it functions as a system of racial caste. In Wisconsin, our caste system is exceptionally brutal. It is more invasive, restrictive, and more racially targeted than most other states. Police are the front line of that caste system, pulling people into it, and keeping them churning through it.
Bitch better have my money
Every part of being worked over by the system is expensive. Fines and fees, restitution, and asset forfeiture add up. People get sucked into this system abruptly and unexpectedly, which can cause them to miss work and lose jobs. Any police encounter might cause someone on supervision to lose their car to parking authority impoundment, to lose their housing, or custody of their children. Every family connection is strained or obstructed by police involvement.
These are some of the ways Milwaukee law enforcement takes money and other resources from Black people. They combine that money with the taxes we pay and use it to pay themselves to take even more from the communities they target. It is a vicious, self-serving feedback loop, and its impact is clear. Wisconsin is the state with the highest income disparity between white and Black people in the US. A 2020 UW Milwaukee study found that Black families are worse off here than they were 50 years ago. Milwaukee County declared racism a public health crisis in 2019. Police play a very clear and pivotal role in all these statistical outcomes.
A recent report from Black Leaders Organizing for Community (BLOC) examines the local impact in depth, concluding that “Milwaukee and Wisconsin’s criminal legal systems are a collective source of trauma for incarcerated people and their loved ones, causing social, financial, and additional upheaval” and recommending that we “shift power and money away from police and the criminal legal system.”
We gon’ be alright
In the four years since Dr. Deborah Blanks gave her lecture, most liberal politicians in Milwaukee have turned their back on the people and tied themselves to retrenchment and a pro-police status quo.
In 2020, the present generation of youth learned how to fight. Now they are learning first-hand how retrenchment works. We can see what happens when people stop fighting and leave change up to politicians. Let’s stop doing that, and start making demands.
Please read this article on ways to get involved in community efforts around Milwaukee’s city and county budgets.
