On September 23, 2019, the first annual report of the Consultant in the case of Collins v. City of Milwaukee – the “Stop and Frisk”case – was released. The ACLU of Wisconsin had the following comment:
“Although the City of Milwaukee has made progress in implementing the settlement agreement in this case, so far, the promise that the City of Milwaukee has made to the community remains unfulfilled. The agreement required the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) and the Fire and Police Commission (FPC) to undergo significant reforms and to establish progress in eliminating stops and frisks conducted without reasonable suspicion or based on race or ethnicity. Although parts of the agreement have been implemented, the City has a long way to go to establish compliance,” stated Karyn Rotker, Senior Staff Attorney.
Among the issues that must be addressed are:
● The need for the City to take leadership in ensuring full implementation of the agreement
● The need for the City (including the MPD and the FPC) to reallocate their resources to provide adequate staffing to ensure compliance and to fulfill the promise of the settlement to the community.
● The need for the City to collect detailed data about every stop, frisk, and search conducted by the MPD, including demographic data and data to establish reasonable suspicion, and extract it in a usable manner, and to use this data to ensure proper supervision of MPD members is occurring.
“The City also must ensure that the mechanisms that were set up to ensure community involvement – including a revamped and expanded Milwaukee Community Collaborative Committee – are in place,” added ACLU of Wisconsin Senior Organizer Jarrett English.
