MADISON, Wis. — Following a series of protests in Madison this summer, the Madison Police Department is working with the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, a research group affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Law School, to conduct an in-depth review of how the department handled the civil unrest.
In a Facebook post that Madison’s Interim Police Chief Vic Wahl posted in July, he announced that “MPD is committed to continuous improvement, and I look forward to working with the Quattrone Center as they do this valuable work.”
John Hollway, the executive director of the Quattrone Center, said his organization is currently reviewing “hundreds of hours of video, thousands of pages of police reports [and] we’ve got a website we’ve created to solicit input from the community.”
Hollway said MPD has been cooperative and willing to hear their recommendations once their report is complete. He described the review process as, “A group of people who are civically minded, including the police, who want to accept the responsibility for an event that didn’t go the way we want it to and learn from it so that the next event is more in line with community expectations.”
A survey that’s circulating the Madison area is asking those who participated in the protests to describe their interaction with police during the protests, provide video and documents if desired and suggest recommendations on how MPD can improve its response to civic protests in the future.
Co-founder of Madison’s Community Response Team Greg Gelembiuk said MPD’s handling of the protests “was a disaster.”
“The police response completely exasperated the situation and precipitated what ultimately occurred,” Gelembiuk said.
Wahl had a different response.
“I’m very proud of how we handled things and how our officers acted,” Wahl said. “We recognize some areas of improvement.”
Gelembiuk is also a former member of the MPD policy and review ad hoc committee. The partnership between MPD and Quattrone was a result of a series of recommendations during his tenure.
Gelembiuk said he encourages as many people s possible to fill out the survey so that Quattrone can have a comprehensive understanding of how the protests unfolded, make better recommendations to police and allow for systemic change.
However, several community members who shared the survey link online were hesitant to participate out of fear that MPD would use the information to make more arrests and further incriminate or convict people.
“That’s certainly not the intention of any of this,” Hollway said. “It is possible that information will be shared. We would encourage people to not share any information that they don’t feel comfortable sharing. It’s a voluntary process.”
Wahl said he is not asking the Quattrone Center to share any video unless necessary to make a point when they go over the recommendations.
“If someone submits a video of them killing someone, I’m not going to tell you that we aren’t going to use that or if there is some very serious crime that ends up in the hands of the Quattrone Center. I haven’t asked them to share things with us, I haven’t asked them to compile evidence. That’s not why we’re involved in this,” Wahl said. “The whole point is to have some recommendations and things for us to consider. Obviously sometimes, if you look at these things in general, recommendations might have a financial impact so they might be things that are out of our control.”
Gelembiuk said he understands why members of the community are hesitant to participate but encourages people to only share the information that will help MPD improve its response to protests going forward.
“I would like to see change in practices,” Gelembiuk said.
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