Police department agrees to certain conditions for grant intended to reform operations. By Jeramey Jannene - Jan 19th, 2021 11:03 am //end headline wrapper ?>Milwaukee Police Department. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
After rejecting a $9.7 million federal grant to pay for 30 police officers for three years in December, the Milwaukee Common Council reversed course Tuesday and voted to accept the grant. But the approval comes with conditions.
The Milwaukee Police Department command staff has pledged to work towards changing how the department operates.
The conditions target improvements to response time, traffic enforcement, crime reduction strategies, technology integration and community-oriented policing.
Alderman
Ashanti Hamilton led the negotiation with the police department. “There has been a tremendous amount of cooperation on behalf of acting chief
Nine council members blast Barrett, claiming he s not committed to police reform. By Jeramey Jannene - Dec 16th, 2020 04:02 pm //end headline wrapper ?>Police Administration Building, 951 N. James Lovell St. Photo by Christopher Hillard.
Should Milwaukee accept a federal grant to pay for 30 additional police officers?
Some Milwaukee officials, including Mayor
Tom Barrett, believe it’s a simple answer: yes.
But a majority of the Common Council has argued it’s far more complicated.
The council rejected the grant’s acceptance on an 6-8-1 vote Tuesday before one member used a procedural move to set it up to be voted on again in January.
Committee proposes 7 conditions for police department in order for city to accept federal grant. By Jeramey Jannene - Dec 14th, 2020 02:45 pm //end headline wrapper ?>Milwaukee Police Department. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
It will attempt to impose seven policy requirements on the police department in exchange for voting to accept the grant. The requests include improving response time, allocating more staff to traffic enforcement and cooperating with an administration analysis on the right balance of civilian staff with sworn officers.
“It will put us in a position that there’s an expectation of what to expect from hiring more officers,” said sponsor Alderman
What sounds like community oriented policing will really expand the War on Drugs. By Paul Mozina - Dec 10th, 2020 04:23 pm //end headline wrapper ?>Police Administration Building, 951 N. James Lovell St. Photo by Christopher Hillard.
The Common Council must reject the $9.7 million Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Grant on December 15; otherwise, the Milwaukee Police Department will dedicate 27 veteran officers to Task Forces in the DOJ’s Operation Legend Initiative, and 3 to ATF Task Forces for the next 4 years. That would be a surge in the War on Drugs masquerading as Community Oriented Policing. Acceptance of the grant would require that 30 new officers be hired; and, apparently by virtue of simply becoming an MPD member, they would be doing Community Oriented Policing. Is the MPD doing Community Oriented Policing now?