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• Wisconsin collects statewide data on serious police uses of force, but inconsistent reporting standards make it difficult to reliably compare departments.
• Police departments differ in what they define use of force, with some tracking actions — such as dog bites, pointing firearms or vehicle maneuvers — that others do not.
• One expert says inconsistent statewide standards can make agencies that report more comprehensively appear more force-prone, potentially discouraging transparency.

A Madison police officer’s fatal shooting of 38-year-old Corey Ruiz last month was the department’s first in more than five years.

Madison police officers are less likely to open fire during an arrest than officers in most similarly sized departments nationwide. But police shootings account for only a tiny fraction of all uses of force in Madison and elsewhere. 

How does Madison’s broader use-of-force record compare with other departments? Inconsistent state-level data makes that question difficult to answer.

State lawmakers laid the groundwork for such comparisons in 2021 — one of many police oversight reforms enacted nationwide after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd a year earlier. Wisconsin lawmakers voted to require the state Department of Justice to catalog serious uses of force by police departments and sheriffs’ offices. The DOJ now maintains a public Use-of-Force and Arrest-Related Death database, but the underlying law leaves room for law enforcement agencies to differ in the types of force they report to the state.

The result: The data offers apples-to-oranges comparisons that make it difficult to meaningfully weigh one agency’s record against another’s. 

Departments vary in rules for use-of-force tracking

Law enforcement agencies generally require officers to report uses of force to their chain of command.

Most agencies compile those records into internal datasets or annual reports, but they vary widely in the types of incidents they track.

The Green Bay Police Department, for instance, requires officers to file an after-action report if they use their police car to block, pin or strike another moving vehicle. The Milwaukee Police Department requires officers to file a similar report after conducting a “forcible blood draw.” Madison Police Department guidelines mention neither type of incident.

Both the Madison and Milwaukee police departments, however, require officers to file after-action reports if they point their firearms at a person, regardless of whether they fire a shot. Green Bay’s department does not. 

“There’s really no uniformity,” said Matt Graham, a senior data analyst with the nonprofit Center for Policing Equity. 

While some states — New Jersey, for instance — have standardized use-of-force reporting rules for law enforcement, Graham said, Wisconsin’s patchwork of policies more closely resembles the national norm.

Though internal use-of-force data can’t be used to compare agencies, a single police department can still use its own data to “analyze whether any racial or other demographic disparities exist in their use of force patterns” and evaluate whether policies and training effectively limit unnecessary use of force, said Meghan Stroshine, associate director of Marquette University’s Criminal Justice Data Analytics program.  

Internal Madison Police Department records show more than 2,300 uses of force between 2020 and the first quarter of 2026, sometimes listing more than one use of force for a single police encounter. Most incidents involved bodily force alone, though officers reported using Tasers 197 times and pepper spray 127 times. The department averaged roughly 185,000 annual calls per service in recent years.

Officer Kiel Baitinger-Peterson’s shooting of Ruiz in late July was the department’s seventh since 2020 and its first fatal case since October 2019, when officers killed 63-year-old Dean Thomas in a shootout on Madison’s southwest side. 

Limited state-level data

The Department of Justice database is more complete than Madison’s internal records in at least one instance.

Madison use-of-force records include an entry matching the December 2024 arrest of 32-year-old Richard Johnson in a hotel parking lot. Officers tackled Johnson while investigating a reported car theft; the department’s entry describes his resulting injury as an “abrasion.” It does not note that Johnson went into cardiac arrest and died at a hospital the following day. 

The Dane County medical examiner ruled the death an accident, citing Johnson’s cocaine use as the primary cause of his heart attack. Madison’s Office of the Independent Police Monitor disputed that finding in June, arguing that Johnson’s death should be treated as a homicide. 

Unlike the internal Madison records, the DOJ’s database includes Johnson’s “arrest related death.” 

The 2021 state law behind the DOJ’s use-of-force tracking efforts requires the agency to collect records only on incidents resulting in “great bodily harm or death” and those involving gunfire — either an officer shooting at a civilian or vice versa. A separate law requires the agency to log any cases in which a person “dies while detained, arrested, or in the course of being arrested,” even if the death isn’t a direct result of a use of force. The DOJ combines both sets of records in its database.

That dataset lists 70 arrest-related deaths between 2022 and 2025. The Rock County Sheriff’s Office reported five of those deaths, all but one of which took place in the county’s jail. Though the database doesn’t specify causes of arrest-related deaths, the sheriff’s office characterized one death as a suicide and another as an accidental drug overdose.

The DOJ’s records are far from a perfect measuring stick. The DOJ relies on law enforcement agencies to provide up-to-date reports of serious uses of force, but agencies differ in the types of force they consider serious enough to report to the state.

While the agency “works continuously with agencies to train on proper data entry and usage of the form, as well as performs incident audits,” DOJ spokesperson Riley Vetterkind wrote, “the responsibility to report accurate, up-to-date data falls on each law enforcement agency.”  

“Ultimately, even when relying upon a rigid definition, human judgement is still a factor,” he added.

Those variations can skew the number of incidents a given department reports to the state. 

Green Bay police, for instance, reported 31 serious use-of-force incidents to the DOJ between 2022 and 2025 — second only to Milwaukee’s police department, which reported 35 incidents in the same period. 

Milwaukee employs roughly 1,500 sworn police officers and received over 1 million calls for service over that four-year span, compared to Green Bay’s 176 sworn officers and roughly 270,000 calls for service. 

The Kenosha Police Department, with more sworn officers serving a city only slightly less populous than Green Bay, reported only five incidents. 

Those figures do not include arrest-related deaths, including the February 2024 suicide of 40-year-old Steve Evaristo Ventura after a shootout with Green Bay police officers. 

But Green Bay may not be as much of an outlier as it appears. All but three of the department’s use-of-force incidents in the state database involve police dog bites. 

Madison’s police department has not reported any dog bites to the DOJ since 2022, though its internal records list 27 incidents involving dog bites in the past four years — most of which sent the bitten person to the emergency room. A Madison Police Department spokesperson did not respond to questions about the department’s threshold for reporting uses of force to the state.

The Milwaukee Police Department likewise reported no dog bites to the DOJ between 2022 and 2025, though the department’s own use-of-force records list nearly a dozen dog bite incidents — many of them accidental. 

Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis told Wisconsin Watch he can’t neatly explain his department’s relatively high use-of-force tally without first reviewing peer agencies’ standards for reporting to the DOJ. 

“Our intention is to report everything to the state that we’re required to under the law,” he said, “because I think it’s good for the public to know.”

Most Wisconsin law enforcement agencies reported no uses of force to the DOJ. Among those that reported at least one incident, a third exclusively reported incidents in which a police officer discharged a firearm.

The mismatch in use-of-force reporting standards across departments limits the usefulness of the DOJ’s data. 

“If you’re able to actually compare across departments, you could have a good idea of what reforms (or) what interventions are actually reducing use of force,” Graham said. “So far, that’s generally not possible in most places in the U.S.”

In the meantime, agencies that report a broader range of use-of-force incidents to the DOJ risk appearing more force-prone than agencies with narrower reporting standards, Stroshine said. 

“Without an insider’s understanding of the data and what it represents, one could make any number of erroneous conclusions about a department, its culture, or the nature and frequency of its officers’ use of force,” Stroshine said. “As a consequence, one could argue that nonstandardization creates a disincentive for data transparency.” 

The 2021 state law left some discretion for law enforcement agencies to decide which incidents to report to the state. 

Some of that flexibility was intentional, said Scott Kelly, chief of staff for state Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, the bill’s prime sponsor. 

“One of the things that was discussed was that different departments do record uses of force differently,” he said, “and we didn’t want to change how they dealt with it themselves.” 

With law enforcement agencies already under heightened scrutiny at the time, pushing departments to standardize their use-of-force reporting could have been too much to ask, he said. “That’s for a future legislature to decide.”

Davis, the Green Bay chief, says consistent statewide reporting is an achievable goal.

“We already use the same standards for use-of-force training and policy throughout the state,” he said, “so I think it’s not too far to jump to get to the same standards for use-of-force reporting.”

Wisconsin tracks police use of force, but the numbers are hard to compare is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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When a Madison police officer fatally shot Corey Ruiz on July 22, his death sparked outrage — and questions. 

Among them: Why was Ruiz killed, and what kind of training or rules could have prevented his death?

Ion Meyn, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, has studied exactly that. For a 2021 paper, he and his team interviewed police officers across the country and watched dozens of training videos to understand how police think about use of force and what guidelines they learn — even as departments argue that such situations can never be governed by hard and fast rules. 

In this case, police say Ruiz pulled a knife when officers were trying to detain him. Meyn predicts authorities will conclude that the officer who shot Ruiz acted in line with his training, and thus that they won’t issue criminal charges or disciplinary action. 

“I’ve seen so many of these shootings, so I see the justifications that are going to be provided,” Meyn said.

That, Meyn argues, is why communities should create enforceable rules for police. He spoke with Wisconsin Watch about how police training can make interactions with civilians more dangerous and why officers aren’t the only experts who should shape policing policy.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

According to your research, what rules are police officers following when they’re making decisions about when to use deadly force?

This is a really contested space. If we say “What rules does the Madison Police Department follow?” the first assumption would be that officers only follow the training they hear from Madison Police Department trainers. I don’t believe that. We have officers who are keyed into officer networks. We have supplementary sources of information for training. We have the training that occurs in squad cars after the official training.

There’s a much larger ecosystem of input officers are receiving. 

If you look at some of the biggest national providers of training, the videos that are available to officers are very aggressive. From my perspective, many trainers use language that is dehumanizing, that is part of this culture of “us” and “them” that the officer’s duty is to identify criminal elements and to protect good people from these bad people. 

I haven’t been privy to the training rooms in the Madison Police Department, so I don’t know exactly what’s being trained, but the (common) general principles include things like “Always retain a tactical advantage,” “Reaction is slower than action,” and “The only person that can deescalate is the civilian.” 

Now, there is a Madison Police Department protocol that says when you approach a situation, you should try to build in time in order to allow dialogue between the officer and the suspect. But then it says only do that within what you’ve been reasonably taught about tactics and these other principles, and so those other principles are in so many ways, in conflict with this protocol, and so it’s almost like the exception that swallows the rule.

You can see that playing out in many incidents in the way that the officer interprets the likelihood that they’re going to be subject to some kind of major bodily injury or death. They’re going to imagine the worst-case scenario because they don’t want to give the bad guy the first shot, right? 

One of the takeaways from your article is that people without police training often seem to act less violently than police do around some of the same potentially threatening people.

That is the conclusion I draw. Take Tamir Rice (the 12-year-old Cleveland boy who was shot and killed by a police officer who mistook his toy gun for a real gun). If you watch the video of Tamir Rice with his fake gun that looked like a gun, he’s kind of waving it around. People walk by him before the police get there, and they wave him away, or they say, “What are you doing?” They’re assessing risk and they’re not seeing an imminent threat, or if they’re seeing a threat, they’re deescalating it and seeing what they can do. 

This also happens in situations where someone has a knife and (other civilians) are trying to talk to the person with the knife, but they’re scared. They’re keeping their distance, and it’s been going on like this for a while. Then they call the cops, and the guy’s dead in 10 seconds. Why is that?

The reason is their training. The training makes this person with a knife (appear) much more dangerous than they are to a person who might be trying to assess the situation without that training. Another thing that you see in training is a constant flow of videos that show officers getting hurt, and that’s just not empirically a representation of what happens in these situations. 

Criminologist Franklin Zimring argues that police departments should write rules that tell officers when to refrain from shooting or stop shooting. What kind of rules do you think police should be following?

To me, (the question is), what kind of conversation are we going to have about the rules we want, and who’s an expert on what force should be used? Who is the Madison City Council going to invite into police reform, and how significant a voice are they going to give to, say, sociologists and social workers? The best way forward is inviting those voices in and giving them a significant role.

I am not the person to come up with the best set of rules, but I am the person that’s going to say, “It’s clear that you’re not bringing in other voices. It’s clear that you’re not bringing in empirical data to appropriately assess risk.”

Another point you make in your article is that community members should trust their own reactions to these kinds of events, and that local governments can actually set their own standards for how they want police to operate. 

They can. Police departments will say, “We’re in compliance with the law and national standards and the Constitution and all those things, and therefore your attempt to change things is unreasonable.” That is absolutely wrong. 

What the Supreme Court actually said is, “It’s not our job to regulate training or use of force. Our job is to say if a police department uses a tactic that is so egregious, that it’s unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” That’s regulating an outer boundary of minimally acceptable conduct. The court said, “We leave it to communities to determine how they want to be policed.”

So communities have a lot of power to regulate it. They’re going to be up against a police union. They’re going to be up against powerful political players. They’re going to be up against an organized campaign that will tell people who are trying to change it that they have no right to speak in this space. 

So that’s the political aspect of it, but it’s certainly not a legal one. There’s no legal constraint to changing the way that we train police.

You predict there won’t be any criminal or administrative sanctions regarding Corey Ruiz’s death. Given that, what do you hope might come out of this incident?

My hope every time with these things is that it increases the number of people talking about it in a way that is open and curious. They want to learn how police are trained. They want to learn what rules officers are subject to. By the way, it’s very dangerous for civilians if they don’t know what police training is. 

(I also hope) people start feeling like they have a voice. I’ve just seen people get stepped on left and right, told that they just don’t have the right to speak, that they don’t know anything about policing, that they don’t know what it’s like to face a bad guy. That’s the constant refrain you hear. 

And I really hope that this community in Madison works with dispatch and comes up with a program that really is serious about directing a good portion of calls away from police into folks with a different set of expertise that’s much more based on getting social support for people.

Q&A: What the Corey Ruiz shooting reveals about police training — and who shapes policing rules is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Twenty-two people have been arrested since the city of Madison began clearing out a protest encampment on the city’s near east side, officials said Wednesday after a night marked by clashes between protesters and police.

After city workers approached the encampment around 5 a.m. Tuesday and some of those occupying the space did not leave, a police spokesperson said the demonstrators threw rocks and set fires. Police moved in, and the street reopened to traffic just after 9 a.m.

For close to 13 days, the area had been blocked off by a memorial to Ruiz, a 38-year-old Black man. That memorial morphed into an encampment spanning several city blocks, as people brought tents, mattresses and grills to the site at South Baldwin and Williamson streets, known as Willy Street to Madison residents.

Around 8 a.m., city street sweepers moved in to clean the area. City workers placed memorial objects into boxes that were later taken to Demetral Field, a nearby park.

“For nearly two weeks, I and City staff have been working day and night to peacefully resolve the occupation of Williamson and Baldwin without law enforcement intervention,” Mayor Satya-Rhodes Conway said in a video message on Tuesday, adding that city officials plan to work with the Ruiz family and other community members to create an ongoing space to grieve. “But that work could not begin while city streets were occupied, local businesses were on the verge of closing, and residents in the Marquette neighborhood were caught in the middle of an increasingly volatile situation. ”

MPD: People threw objects, set fires

The operation to clear the streets started at roughly 5 a.m., according to Madison Police Department spokesperson Stephanie Fryer. She told WPR that the city initially sent in non-police staffers to tell people to clear the area. She said that the city sent in its Community Alternative Response Emergency Services and that street division workers walked through the encampment with a megaphone “essentially telling people now is the time to begin grabbing your belongings and leave.”

Fryer said police got involved after people started starting fires and throwing objects at Streets Division workers.

“We also had been told that they were taking candles that were lit for the memorial and also throwing those in the air, trying to start fire that way,” Fryer said.

Two people protesting were injured while the encampment was being cleared, according to Fryer. One person was evaluated by medical staff and taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and the other refused treatment. Fryer said a city employee was taken to the hospital after suffering a “medical event.”

Fryer emphasized that one’s personal property from the site was being thrown away.

“The only things that were removed and actually thrown away were the items that obviously were started on fire or actual trash in the area,” Fryer said.

Protesters describe heavy machinery clearing camp in pre-dawn hours

Samuel Brooks of Portage was among those cited. He said he was handcuffed, taken downtown and later released by police after being at the encampment early Tuesday. Brooks says he previously spent more than a decade living in the Willy Street neighborhood, and he had been at the encampment overnight.

“We saw city vehicles moving around, and then we got word that the police were massing nearby, and yeah, they just circled up,” Brooks said.

Brooks said city officials arrived some time before dawn. When that happened, he said he was among the people trying to wake up a couple who were sleeping in a tent and who he believed to be homeless.

“Bulldozer was coming straight for their tent,” Brooks said. “People were trying to get things under his wheels so we could get these people like out of the way before they came through.

Brooks’ arrest report showed that he was arrested on suspicion of resisting arrest. It listed a $449 fine from the city. He said he wasn’t worried about the citation.

“I’ve got resources,” said Brooks, who is white. “I think my skin is a shield against police violence in a lot of situations.”

Chaous Riddle of Madison said she was also at the encampment when it was forcibly cleared early Tuesday.

“The whole thing was actually horrific,” Riddle said, as she recalled seeing heavy machinery and construction equipment plowing through the encampment. “They came in with their ToolCats. They barely missed people because it was dark.”

A sculpture of a raised fist that had been part of a memorial for George Floyd in Minneapolis had been brought by protesters to the Madison site. That sculpture, flowers and signs were also moved to the nearby park.

Encampment began as protest site for Corey Ruiz

The encampment started as a protest site following the death of Ruiz in a struggle with police. It has blocked a busy thoroughfare and shut down traffic to businesses and residences in the neighborhood since.

Police said Ruiz, who was homeless, produced a knife during a struggle with police, injuring one officer. Police used a Taser that they said was unsuccessful, and then an officer fatally shot Ruiz. The shooting, which was captured on video by bystanders, is being investigated by the state Department of Justice.

Protesters have called for a permanent memorial to Ruiz as one of their demands following the shooting.

Devon Snyder, a civil rights activist who is part of Madison’s Police Civilian Oversight Board, said he found the city’s move to clear the site “hypocritical.”

“This is disheartening,” Snyder told a WPR reporter at the scene. “Something that was a tragedy, built a beautiful community. And they come and do this? … They want to call this an unlawful assembly. If this was an unlawful assembly, then why did the city support this for the last week?”

The move to clear the encampment comes after days of escalating warnings by the mayor. 

On Sunday, she said the city would issue tow orders for vehicles blocking the street. On Monday, she signaled that city action was imminent.

“Countless efforts have been made to convince people that the occupation of Williamson Street and Baldwin Street is counterproductive,” Rhodes-Conway said in a statement Monday. “A huge amount of patience has been given because the last thing Madison needs is a large-scale police operation. That’s why those occupying the area need to leave immediately.”

Madison’s Common Council will be meeting Tuesday night for the first time since the shooting. That meeting will be in virtual format only. A city spokesperson previously said that decision came out of an abundance of caution after threats against multiple elected officials.

Editor’s note: WPR’s Sarah Lehr and Jenny Peek contributed reporting.

A version of this story was originally published by WPR.

Madison police clear encampment at shooting site, arrest 22 is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Editor’s note: This column was excerpted from an open letter sent on July 30, 2026, to Madison city officials. On Aug. 2, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway announced plans to remove barricades and tow vehicles occupying Williamson Street — while relocating memorial items. 

On July 22 Madison police shot Corey Ruiz on Williamson Street. That shooting should have been a moment of profound self-examination for this city. Instead, what has followed has exposed another failure of leadership.

Let me be clear: The shooting raises profound questions about Madison’s use of force and demands a full, independent investigation and public accountability. A man is dead in a system that too often relies on armed police to respond to public health and social crises.

But what has happened in the days since has become something else entirely.

I spent time walking along Williamson Street this week and speaking with business owners. I watched volunteers attempting to provide mental health support, addiction services, sanitation and basic necessities that should never have fallen on their shoulders.

This is not a functioning response.

I saw broken glass, discarded needles, human waste and other signs of a neighborhood under tremendous strain. Businesses that have served this community for decades are struggling to stay open. That includes St. Vincent de Paul, which helps keep families housed by paying utility bills and distributes thousands of diapers every month. 

Small business owners who had nothing to do with the shooting are seeing their livelihoods threatened as city leaders allow others to shoulder responsibilities that should belong to the government.

This crisis was entirely predictable.

Williamson Street has long been home to organizations that provide food assistance, harm reduction resources and help navigating housing and social services. Those organizations perform essential work, and our community is better because they exist. But they were never meant to become substitutes for a comprehensive public health system.

When a city fails to provide sufficient emergency shelter, addiction treatment, psychiatric care, crisis response, supportive housing and outreach, people in crisis congregate wherever help can be found. This is the consequence of the government failing to build a system capable of meeting people’s basic needs.

Instead of investing in that system, Madison has effectively concentrated its social safety net in one neighborhood.

That isn’t compassionate.

It isn’t sustainable.

And it isn’t fair — to people struggling with addiction or mental illness, to the volunteers trying to help them, or to the residents and small businesses that call Williamson Street home.

What disturbs me most is that everyone now seems to be fighting the wrong battle.

The shooting of Ruiz should have united Madison around demanding better policing and stronger public health infrastructure.

Instead, neighbors are turning against protesters. Protesters are turning against businesses. Businesses are turning against the city. Residents are exhausted. People experiencing homelessness and addiction remain trapped in the same circumstances that existed before the shooting.

No one is winning.

I’ve read dozens of comments from Madison residents, many of whom initially supported the demonstrations but now say they feel abandoned by city leadership. They describe blocked businesses, unsafe conditions, interrupted access to essential services, fire hazards, open drug use and a neighborhood that increasingly feels less like a protest than a place where the government has stopped governing. Whether every account is accurate is beside the point. The common thread is unmistakable: People feel abandoned.

Government exists precisely for moments like this.

It is not enough to allow volunteers to build makeshift public health services on a public street while trained professionals remain absent.

It is not enough to leave sanitation to neighbors cleaning up broken glass, discarded needles and human waste outside their own storefronts.

It is not enough to ask local businesses to absorb devastating financial losses while waiting indefinitely for a resolution.

And it is certainly not enough to respond to profound social failures primarily with police.

Madison prides itself on progressive values. Those values mean very little if they amount to outsourcing public health to nonprofits, addiction treatment to volunteers, housing to charities, sanitation to neighborhood residents and crisis intervention to police officers.

Williamson Street deserves better.

The people living with addiction deserve better.

The business owners deserve better.

The residents deserve better.

Corey Ruiz deserved better.

If this city truly wants to honor his memory, then stop managing symptoms and start addressing causes.

Invest in mental health infrastructure.

Expand shelter and supportive housing.

Fund addiction treatment and professional outreach.

Restore sanitation and public safety.

Support the businesses and nonprofits that have borne the costs of this crisis.

Hold officers accountable when they use unlawful or excessive force.

And stop expecting one neighborhood to carry burdens that belong to all of Madison.

The tragedy began years before the shooting when we accepted that nonprofits, charities, neighborhood volunteers and police officers could substitute for the public systems that are supposed to be run by the government. 

The shooting was one terrible consequence of that failure.

The chaos that has followed is another.

Madison can do better.

Right now, it is choosing not to.

Sarah A. Larsen is a Madison resident. 

Guest opinion: After the Corey Ruiz shooting, Williamson Street encampment exposes Madison’s deeper failures is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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A Madison police officer last week shot and killed Corey Ruiz during an attempted arrest on the city’s east side. The shooting renewed debates about race, policing and use of force, while also prompting broader conversations about homelessness and mental health.

To help readers make sense of the fast-moving story, we’ve collected reporting from across Wisconsin that explains what happened, what’s next and why it matters.

We’re working on several in-depth stories exploring the issues the shooting brought to the forefront, and we’ll continue sharing that reporting in the weeks ahead.

What happened

The shooting unfolded in less than 30 seconds, but questions about what happened and whether the officer’s actions were justified continue to shape public debate.

For readers seeking a closer look at the shooting, ABC News produced a frame-by-frame analysis of the fatal confrontation. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked three policing experts to review the encounter. Two raised concerns about the officers’ tactics and use of force, while a third concluded that Ruiz’s resistance during the arrest and the presence of a knife likely justified the officer’s decision to shoot.

The Wisconsin State Journal reviewed Ring camera footage and police scanner audio that shed light on the calls that prompted police to attempt to arrest Ruiz.

Read:

• Madison officials identify Corey Ruiz as man police shot and killed — Associated Press/Wisconsin Watch
• Visual analysis of the deadly Wisconsin police shooting — ABC News
• Some police experts troubled by Madison shooting of Corey Ruiz  — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (republished paywall-free here.) 
• New details emerge about the moments before police shot Corey Ruiz — Wisconsin State Journal

How political leaders are responding

The shooting has become an issue in Wisconsin’s race for governor, while drawing responses from elected officials across the state and beyond. Most political leaders have called for transparency and an independent investigation, but state Rep. Francesca Hong, the Democratic front-runner for governor, quickly labeled the shooting an “execution,” while others — including Republican front-runner U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany — have urged the public not to reach conclusions before the investigation is complete.

Read:

• Candidates for Wisconsin governor react to Madison shooting — Wisconsin Public Radio
• Guv candidates react to police killing in Madison — WisPolitics
• Wisconsin congressional delegation reacts to deadly police shooting — Spectrum News 1

Questions of accountability

The shooting has revived long-standing debates over how Madison investigates police use of force — and whether the city has appropriate oversight tools. As required by state law, the Wisconsin Department of Justice is investigating whether a crime occurred during the shooting. At the same time, the Madison Police Department is conducting an internal administrative investigation into whether officers followed department policies. Madison’s independent police monitor is carrying out a separate review.

WPR explores the role — and limits — of Madison’s independent police monitor and examines why Madison remains one of the few major Wisconsin cities without police body cameras. The Cap Times breaks down what each investigation meant to answer and why city leaders postponed broader police oversight reforms after the shooting.

Read:

• Madison revisits police body cameras after years of debate — WPR 
• Madison’s independent police monitor investigates Corey Ruiz shooting — WPR 
• Here’s what to expect from the Madison police shooting investigations — Cap Times 
• Madison police oversight changes tabled after fatal shooting — Cap Times

Searching for healing

Memorials, protests and an encampment have turned the Willy Street neighborhood into a space for mourning, reflection and demands for accountability.

The Cap Times captures the emotion of a vigil honoring Ruiz. Isthmus explores how the intersection has become an evolving community hub — what some are calling “Corey Street” — while examining why longtime residents see echoes of previous police shootings.

Read:

• At Corey Ruiz’s vigil, a Minneapolis statue stands for solidarity — Cap Times
• A community hub on what’s now dubbed Corey Street — Isthmus
• In the Willy Street neighborhood, history repeats itself — Isthmus

The conversation continues

The shooting has prompted statewide reflection on what healing and recovery might look like.

@wisconsinwatch

Memorials and an encampment have transformed the intersection of Williamson and Baldwin streets into a space for mourning and protest after a Madison police officer fatally shot Corey Ruiz during an attempted arrest on July 22. Businesses near the site face a balancing act. Many owners support calls for justice while struggling with the financial effects of street closures. Here’s a rainy day look at what some have renamed “Corey Street.” Read more about the shooting and its aftermath at WisconsinWatch.org. #coreyruiz #madisonwi

♬ original sound – Wisconsin Watch – Wisconsin Watch

Alan Robinson wrote in Madison365 about what the city owes Ruiz and what meaningful accountability could look like. “Corey Ruiz’s name cannot become a ladder for anyone’s campaign, organization, career or social-media following,” he writes. “No person owns this moment. No organization owns this grief.”

The Wisconsin State Journal, meanwhile, highlights the balancing act facing businesses near the protest site. Many owners support calls for justice while struggling with the financial effects of ongoing street closures.

WMTV reports on the city’s effort to move unhoused people from the area with hotel vouchers. It has drawn criticism from at least one advocates, who argues the strategy prioritizes clearing the neighborhood over addressing long-term housing needs.

Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service gathered a range of voices from Milwaukee and beyond.

“Another senseless police-involved shooting,” Milwaukee resident Bryan Winters said. “I believe there were multiple missed opportunities to get Corey the proper mental health treatment that was missed by the community and the justice system.”

Read:

• The city we owe him — Madison365
• Willy Street businesses feel the strain as encampment enters second week — Wisconsin State Journal
• ‘People don’t want to go’: Madison nonprofit questions city’s motive behind hotel vouchers for unhoused community — WMTV
• We talked to Milwaukee residents and others about the police killing of Corey Durell Ruiz. Here’s what they said. — Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service

We’ll continue sharing reporting that helps add context and clarity as this story unfolds. 

The Corey Ruiz shooting: essential reading is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Most Wisconsin law enforcement agencies use body-worn cameras.

The Madison Police Department, despite being one of the largest in the state, does not — at least not department-wide.

That could change, if Common Council members support a budget proposal backed by the mayor and the police department.

Madison’s lack of body cameras has drawn renewed attention in recent days after a Madison officer fatally shot Corey Ruiz, a 38-year-old Black man last Wednesday. Police say the officer was injured after Ruiz pulled a knife. Four officers are now on leave pending a Wisconsin Department of Justice investigation.

Currently, the only Madison officers with body-worn cameras are those on the SWAT team and motorcycle unit.

But at a Thursday press conference about the killing of Ruiz, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said she wanted to fund body-worn cameras for the entire police department. She’s backing a three-year phased plan, that would lead to full adoption by 2029.

That comes after years of contentious debate and multiple failed proposals to broaden the use of body cameras.

Ruiz family calls for body cameras

Now, following Ruiz’s killing, attorneys for his family have expressed outrage about Madison’s lack of department-wide body cameras.

“We are in a major metropolitan city in the state of Wisconsin, and Madison is one of the few cities that still does not have police body cameras,” attorney B’Ivory Lamarr said. “In 2026, solving a police shooting should not be a mystery.”

Corey Ruiz’s brother, Adam Ruiz, also said body cameras are needed.

“I believe that system is corrupted and us, as the people, we need to stand up and come together to put a stop to this madness,” Adam Ruiz said. “They need body cameras to stop future incidents to stop future incidents from happening.”

Bystanders took video of the shooting, and Ruiz’s attorneys said, given MPD’s lack of body camera, that footage is essential.

“If there wasn’t video, we can only imagine what the narrative would have been,” attorney Ben Crump said. “Thank God for all of those people who had their cell phones out.”

Mayor says cost swayed her decision

Previously, Rhodes-Conway supported a pilot program that tested out body cameras on a limited basis. But until now, the mayor had not committed to backing a permanent body camera program.

On Thursday, Rhodes-Conway said budget considerations had swayed her decision.

“My main concern has been the cost,” Rhodes-Conway said in response to question from WPR. “When we initially got the estimates from the pilot, there was a very large price tag, and the (police) chief has worked to bring that price tag down in various ways.”

In a budget request submitted earlier this year, Madison’s police department asked for $414,784 over three years to roll out body cameras. That phased approach would start with officers in the city’s north policing district in 2027. By 2029, the cameras would be used across the entire city.

Rhodes-Conway says she plans to back that request from the police department when she submits her own budget proposal later this year. The funding would ultimately need to be approved by Madison’s Common Council.

For more than a decade, Madison body cam proposals have stalled

For more than a decade, Madison’s elected officials have debated whether the city’s entire police force should use body cameras. But efforts to introduce the cameras have been stymied. Over the years, opposition has come from some of the Common Council’s more left-wing members, as well as from some local activists.

Some have questioned whether body cameras would actually change police behavior. Others have raised concerns about privacy and “over-policing.”

The use of body cameras often gains attention in the context of police misconduct. But increasingly, law enforcement officials are using body camera footage as evidence to secure convictions.

During a Common Council meeting in 2023, Madison resident Steve Verburg was among those who spoke out against body cameras.

“What’s happening is this ongoing surveillance ends up worsening over-policing of marginalized communities,” he said.

Another resident, former Common Council candidate Michelle Ellinger Linley, told the council the purpose of body cameras is “not to make our communities safer, but to uphold unnecessary surveillance, tracking and record-keeping of communities at highest risk for exploitation.”

Those remarks came just before Madison’s Common Council voted to approve a pilot to test body cameras in the North Police District. That 90-day trial has since ended.

Council president: Community now wants body cameras

More recently, in November 2025, Alder Barbara Harrington-McKinney introduced an amendment that would have redirected just over $400,000 from the Office of the Independent Police Monitor to fund “staffing capacity needs related to implementing body worn cameras.” That amendment failed 17-3.

The amendment would have eliminated the police monitor’s annual budget. And some alders complained it was introduced too late in the budget process.

On Thursday, Madison Common Council President Sabrina Madison said she believes a body camera proposal will clear the council in 2026.

“The community, for a while, was not wanting to implement body-worn cameras yet,” Madison said. “That has changed.”

The city’s police cruisers are outfitted with dashboard and backseat cameras. And cellphone videos from bystanders have been circulating online after Wednesday’s shooting.

But DOJ investigators have no way to review body camera footage if it doesn’t exist.

In an interview with WPR, Madison said it’s impossible to know whether a body-worn camera would have changed the outcome of Wednesday’s shooting. But she said those cameras could provide additional information.

“Now folks are really having that discussion more often about what is the gap that we’re missing when we don’t have that footage,” Madison said.

Madison Police Department backs body cameras

During Thursday’s news conference, Police Chief John Patterson spoke about tensions in Madison following the killing of Ruiz.

“Everyone in this room can feel the thinness of trust in this city right now,” Patterson said.

He called MPD’s lack of body cameras “another challenge to repairing trust in our community.”

In his budget request submitted earlier this year, Patterson called body camera funding his “No. 1 request.”

Patterson’s predecessor, former Police Chief Shon Barnes, tried to implement department-wide body cameras. Barnes was unable to do so before he left to lead Seattle’s police department last year.

The Wisconsin Professional Police Association, a union representing police officers, has also advocated for body-worn cameras.

“Unfortunately, because Madison officers are not equipped with body-worn cameras, investigators and the public will not have the benefit of video from the officers’ perspectives in this most recent case,” said the association’s executive director Jim Palmer, referring to the shooting of Ruiz. “Body-worn cameras aren’t perfect and don’t always capture everything an officer sees or experiences, but they can provide critically important additional evidence and context.”

During Madison’s last mayoral election in spring 2023, Rhodes-Conway’s opponent, Gloria Reyes, came out in support of citywide body cameras. Reyes is a former Madison police detective, who was endorsed by the city’s police union.

At the time, Rhodes-Conway did not categorically oppose the proposal. But she cautioned that body cameras alone cannot solve police violence.

Rhodes-Conway expressed a similar sentiment in the days after the killing of Ruiz.

“(Body cameras) are part of a solution,” Rhodes-Conway said Thursday. “But they are not the solution.”

If the police department’s latest proposal is approved, Madison would purchase 220 of body cameras by 2029.

This story was originally published by WPR.

Madison revisits police body cameras after years of debate is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Protesters burst into a Thursday news conference about the police shooting of a homeless man in Madison, taking the microphone from the police chief and arguing with some attendees who said they wanted to hear more about the investigation.

The group of roughly 20 protesters burst into the room at the Madison police station, shortly after Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and Common Council President Sabrina Madison identified the man killed by police as Corey Durell Ruiz, a homeless resident.

Ruiz, 38, was shot and killed Wednesday after police said he resisted arrest and injured an officer with a knife.

Police Chief John Patterson stepped away from the microphone when the protesters were shouting, and one man in the group took his spot at the podium. The event quickly devolved into a shouting match.

@wisconsinwatch

A vigil for Corey Ruiz was held Thursday at the intersection of Williamson Street and South Baldwin Street in Madison, where Ruiz was fatally shot by a Madison police officer. We spoke to several Madison residents about the fatal shooting. Madison Police Department’s police chief, John Patterson, said Ruiz’s death will be investigated as a homicide during a press conference shortly before the vigil. The Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating the shooting. #wisconsinwatch #coreyruiz #mpd #madisonshooting #madison

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One protester held a sign saying “Corrupt cops deserve to die too!!!”

Moments earlier, the mayor said the shooting will be “rigorously investigated.”

“It does not matter who you are or what your past is, you should not lose your life as a result of an encounter with law enforcement,” Satya Rhodes-Conway said.

Madison, for her part, said “Corey could have been my brother because my brother is homeless and he often rides a bike.”

Court records show Ruiz had been in and out of jail over the past decade on charges including failing to pay child support, driving a vehicle without consent, jumping bail, threatening authorities, taking a vehicle without consent, possessing drug paraphernalia, resisting an officer and retail theft.

“He’s a human being. He had a family. He has parents who loved him who brought him home, who cared for him,” Madison said, adding that she’s struggling to understand what she’s seen in videos of the shooting that have circulated on social media.

“My first thought is, when the officer’s walking away, why isn’t he walking away in cuffs,” Madison said. “I’m angry, there’s no way around it.”

Once the protesters quieted down, the chief resumed his presentation, promising his department’s full cooperation with the state investigation.

Police have released few details

The shooting has roiled Wisconsin’s capital city, with Gov. Tony Evers calling for “transparency and accountability” and Madison community members gathering Thursday at a growing memorial.

None of the four officers who were detaining the man wore body cameras, but passersby recorded the confrontation on video, and accused the officers of overreacting.

“I thought, ‘Holy cow — what could have warranted that?’ It looked to me like they had him under control,” David Ortiz-Whittingham, who saw officers swarming and heard the gunshots, said Thursday. “Even now, knowing about the knife, did he have to die for it? Could this have been de-escalated without him losing his life?”

The police chief released few details Thursday, saying the investigation into the officer-involved shooting must run its course.

Earlier Thursday, Madison’s independent police monitor, Aeiramique Glass, said police have not yet shared evidence or the officer’s identity with her office, which will review the case and can recommend to the district attorney that charges be filed if warranted. She said the department and city are “obstructing what the community and the public” want.

“Let me do my job,” she said.

Patterson said the police were committed to cooperating with Glass as the independent monitor’s investigation is carried out, at the same time as the state’s probe.

The chief urged people not to draw conclusions

Patterson has urged caution in reading too much from the cellphone videos. He said none show the perspective of the officers, and additional video that hasn’t been released is being reviewed.

The officer who fired his weapon is a veteran of the force, the chief said. He and the three other responding officers will be placed on administrative leave pending an independent investigation by the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation, as required under state law.

Patterson said police were responding to calls that someone was attempting to enter parked vehicles, and the suspect fled on a bike before the officers surrounded him. One deployed a taser, but Patterson said he didn’t know if the taser worked. Those efforts failed to control the man, Patterson said.

In the videos circulating online, the man can be seen standing before he’s brought to his knees as the officers struggle to force him into a prone position. Then he falls quickly to the pavement after what sounds like three gunshots and seems motionless as the officers handcuff him behind his back. Arriving officers then escort one of the officers a short distance away.

Patterson said he did not know the extent of the injuries sustained by the officer who was injured by the knife.

“This situation was clearly dangerous,” Patterson said. He later continued, “I am incredibly saddened by the loss of life.”

A neighborhood now accustomed to police shootings

The shooting happened in the middle of an intersection in the popular Marquette neighborhood, which is lined with restaurants, bars, shops and homes less than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the state Capitol. The bystander videos show numerous cars at the scene, with people watching and commenting as it unfolded.

“I saw everything! I saw everything! You did not need to kill him! … We watched it all!” a woman yelled in the video recorded by Ortiz-Whittingham. Three loud shots could be heard among the sirens, followed by screams.

Residents who dealt with two other police killings within the same few blocks expressed their frustration on Thursday.

In 2015, a white police officer shot and killed Tony Robinson, who was biracial, on the same street. Large protests followed, but the district attorney filed no charges, determining the officer was justified. In 2012, Paul Heenan, a white musician, was fatally shot after he had been drinking and mistakenly entered his neighbor’s house. That officer was exonerated as well.

The chief acknowledged that the neighborhood “has experienced a lot of trauma” and urged people to support one another.

“I want transparency, I want accountability,” Patterson said.

Questions about race and technology emerge

The race of the officer who fired his gun on Wednesday and that of the man he killed were not released by police.

But Black advocacy groups, protesters and politicians spoke out against the crime and said they believe the man was Black.

The shooting also focused attention on the Madison Police Department’s lack of body-worn cameras. The force of around 500 is among the largest in the Midwest that doesn’t use the devices.

Common Council President Sabrina Madison said Thursday that she expects a police request for $400,000 to be approved, enabling the cameras to be phased in over the next three years. Others lamented that cameras aren’t already being used.

“Nobody can agree on anything,” said Katey Nelson, a member of the police civilian oversight board and operations director at YWCA Madison, a racial justice group. “Now we’re here, looking at another police shooting where we don’t have what we need to make sure the officers are held accountable.”

The mayor said her budget, which has not yet been released, will include funding for body-worn cameras. Rhodes-Conway said the city needs to put together a policy for the use of the cameras, and said that will be completed before the budget takes effect in January.

And now it’s a talking point in the governor’s race

Madison, home to the University of Wisconsin, has a long history of organized protest dating back to the 1960s. More than 100,000 people marched on the state Capitol in 2011 in favor of union rights. There were large demonstrations that turned violent after the death of George Floyd in 2020.

And so the shooting quickly infused itself into the race to succeed Evers as governor, with voting already underway in the Aug. 11 primary.

“This state sanctioned violence was an execution,” posted Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist candidate who appeared with a bullhorn at the scene just a few blocks from her campaign office. She has called for defunding the police.

Another Democrat in the race, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, said while the details must become public, “these reports are painfully reminiscent of the tragedies we have witnessed in Kenosha, Minneapolis, and far too many communities across our country.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany called on his rivals to let the state investigation “establish the facts without politicians rushing to judgment or stoking division” in a statement that also said he would “work to end revolving-door criminal justice policies.”

Associated Press writers Ed White in Detroit and Jake Offenhartz in New York contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: The Associated Press erroneously reported George Floyd was shot and killed by police. An officer in Minneapolis murdered Floyd by pinning him to the pavement and putting a knee to his neck. This story has been updated to reflect the correction.

Madison officials identify Corey Ruiz as man police shot and killed is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.