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Wisconsin Watch has documented the deadly toll of Wisconsin’s drinking culture, from liver disease and alcohol poisoning to crashes involving impaired drivers. 

But one alcohol-related danger receives far less attention — and it doesn’t end when someone hands over the car keys: walking while intoxicated.

Police reported suspected alcohol use among nearly 1 in 5 pedestrians killed in Wisconsin crashes between 2017 and 2025. Because pedestrians are not routinely tested, researchers say the true share may be higher.

The pattern is not unique to Wisconsin. Nationwide in 2024, 27% of pedestrians killed in traffic crashes were alcohol-impaired, compared with 15% of drivers involved in fatal pedestrian crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The figures do not make the danger of walking drunk comparable to driving drunk: An impaired driver controls a fast-moving vehicle and endangers others. But they underscore the risks intoxicated pedestrians face.

“We always hear somebody talking about having a safe plan home, have one sober driver. Maybe you should have a sober walker if you’re walking home,” said Vera Elle, a researcher at Wellbrook Recovery, a Brookfield-based alcohol and substance recovery rehabilitation center. She and her colleague Shimmy Stregosky wrote a series of reports on the topic and brought the issue to Wisconsin Watch’s attention.

Alcohol-related pedestrian crashes fall from 2019 peak

The number of annual crashes involving drunk pedestrians dropped from a 2019 peak of 126 to 101 in 2025. Annual deaths in those crashes plunged from 15 to five during the same period.

That trend coincided with lower reported binge drinking, defined as four or more drinks for women and five or more for men on a single occasion, said Maureen Busalacchi, director of the Wisconsin Alcohol Policy Project at the Medical College of Wisconsin. 

She cautioned that the data cannot establish that changing drinking habits caused fewer pedestrian crashes. Traffic volume, remote work and vehicle speeds also affect crash frequency. 

“The use of alcohol is going down, and then you start to see changes in perceived health effects. So more people are starting to see it as bad for health than they have in the past,” Busalacchi said.

Nationally, Gallup found that 54% of adults reported consuming alcohol in 2025, a record low in its polling. The share of adults ages 18 to 34 who considered moderate drinking harmful rose from 34% in 2018 to 66% in 2025.

In Wisconsin, the state’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System estimates a similar trend: The share of adults reporting binge drinking fell from 21.9% in 2019 to 19.1% in 2024.

Alcohol-related crashes span age groups

From 2017 through 2025, 16 pedestrians ages 35 to 39 were killed in Wisconsin crashes in which police suspected they consumed alcohol, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of Wisconsin Department of Transportation data. 

That was the highest death toll of any five-year age group. Pedestrians ages 30 to 34 had the second-highest total, with 11 deaths, followed by those ages 25 to 29 and 50 to 54, with 10 each. Overall, 78 of the 96 pedestrians killed were ages 20 to 59.

Across crashes of all injury severity, pedestrians in their 20s accounted for the most cases involving suspected alcohol use. The total was highest among those ages 20 to 24, followed by those ages 25 to 29. But the numbers remained relatively high across most age groups from 30 to 59. Most pedestrians in those crashes suffered injuries.

The data showed a stark difference in injury severity: 44.6% of pedestrians suspected of alcohol use were seriously or fatally injured, compared with 21.1% of those without suspected alcohol use. 

However, the connection does not establish that alcohol alone caused the difference. Nor can the data show how much more likely an intoxicated person is to be struck because no reliable count exists of how many intoxicated and sober people walk Wisconsin’s roads.

The figures are also likely to understate how many pedestrians involved in crashes had been drinking, said Richard Blomberg, vice president of the research firm Dunlap Research. 

His research found that police generally identified alcohol use reliably when they checked the “had been drinking” box on crash reports. But an unchecked box did not mean a pedestrian was sober because police were less likely to document alcohol use when signs were unclear.

Research shows alcohol’s role in pedestrian crashes

Adults who had been drinking, especially those doing so excessively, were heavily overrepresented among pedestrians struck by vehicles, Blomberg found in a study he designed in the 1970s. About half of the adult pedestrian victims had been drinking, and nearly one-quarter had a blood alcohol level of 0.20% or higher.

Blomberg also compared crash victims with a random sample of pedestrians walking on the street near the crash sites. The researchers assembled three control groups. Some pedestrians were sampled at the same locations, days and times as previous crashes, while others were sampled at 112 randomly selected locations across New Orleans. The comparisons allowed Blomberg to estimate the extent to which alcohol was overrepresented among crash victims.

Blomberg also found alcohol-involved victims were disproportionately middle-aged men and more likely to have arrest records. Their crashes clustered at night and on weekends. 

Blomberg cautioned that findings in one city did not represent the entire country, even if New Orleans was reasonably similar to other urban areas. Almost half a century later, he found the same demographic overrepresented in an analysis of crash data from five states from 2007 to 2017.

Later studies examined a related but different question: whether alcohol was associated with more severe injuries once a pedestrian was struck. In a study published in 1995, Dr. James Williams of Memorial Medical Center in Savannah, Georgia, reviewed autopsies of 223 pedestrian fatalities. He found that alcohol-involved pedestrians were more likely to suffer more severe injuries than sober pedestrians when struck by vehicles. Because the study included only fatalities, it did not measure whether intoxicated pedestrians were more likely to die after being struck.

A Florida analysis published a year later, however, found that pedestrians classified by police as under the influence had four to five times the adjusted odds of dying from a collision as pedestrians not classified as such. Rebecca Miles-Doan, the analysis’ author, cautioned that the finding might overestimate the association because police tend to conduct more intensive investigations into fatal cases. 

Using more recent data from 2011 to 2016, University of Tennessee researchers found that alcohol was identified in about 7% of Tennessee pedestrian crashes but in 22% of pedestrian fatalities. The researchers pointed to limitations of their study: Few crashes had BAC readings, and alcohol classifications relied heavily on police judgment.

Experts point to public health solutions

Unlike impaired driving, walking while intoxicated generally is not a crime in Wisconsin. The Legislature eliminated the crime of public intoxication in 1973, which critics said created a “revolving door” through the criminal justice system for lower-income people and did little to improve rehabilitation — and sometimes worsened it.

Experts interviewed for this story also do not view criminalization as a principal solution. 

Cities elsewhere have experimented with less punitive measures to improve safety. Baltimore launched the “Walk Smart Baltimore” campaign at the turn of the century. Blomberg participated as a researcher. 

The campaign tested measures that did not depend entirely on intoxicated pedestrians making safe decisions. The city distributed reflective hats and used television, radio, billboards and flyers to warn pedestrians of dangers.

The evaluation reported fewer pedestrian crashes in the target area, although Blomberg said the program required resources that made it difficult for other communities to replicate.

“We can wrap them in cotton and potentially keep them from being injured in a crash or in a fall, but the health effects of that excess alcohol use are still there,” Blomberg said. “If we solve the underlying alcohol problem, everything else goes away.”

Addressing excessive alcohol use is the long-term goal, Blomberg said, but communities should not wait to reduce immediate risks through other efforts including safer vehicle designs, separating pedestrians from traffic or other measures. 

If a street redesign, safer ride home or other intervention reduces alcohol-involved pedestrian crashes by even 5% or 10%, he said, “then of course we should do it.”

DataWatch: The overlooked risks of walking while intoxicated 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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Illinoisans and Minnesotans are buying about the same amount of waterfront property in Wisconsin.

A long-running resentment in Wisconsin is how Illinois residents behave when visiting the Badger State. Another common belief is Illinoisans buy up all the vacation property in Wisconsin, particularly near water.

But that’s exaggerated.

Wisconsin Property Map, an independent project, posted an article examining state property transfer records for sales of waterfront property.

The article stated that from 2021 through mid-2026, Minnesotans bought 9.5% of Wisconsin waterfront property, compared with Illinoisans’ 9.4%.

Wisconsin Watch did its own analysis and found nearly the same figures, with Minnesota edging Illinois by no more than 1 percentage point. 

Illinoisans might gain resentment partly because of the type of property they buy. 

They bought 17.6% of every $1 million-plus lakefront sale during the period, according to the article.

This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Milwaukee Magazine: Where Did the Nickname ‘FIB’ Come From?
• Wisconsin Property Map: About Wisconsin Property Map
• Wisconsin Property Map: Are Illinois Residents Really Buying Up Wisconsin's Lakes? We Traced Every Deed
• Wisconsin Watch: Wisconsin home purchasing analysis

Are Illinois residents buying more Wisconsin waterfront property than Minnesota residents? 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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• 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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Wisconsinites breathed record-breaking levels of air pollution Thursday as wildfire smoke from northern Minnesota and Canada wafted across much of the Great Lakes region and the Northeast. Many monitoring stations across the state recorded pollution considered hazardous for the first time in at least 16 years — the span covered by most monitoring stations’ records.

As of 8 a.m. on Friday, Air Quality Index, or AQI, levels in Madison had peaked above 450 — far above the AQI’s 301 threshold for “hazardous” air quality, where everyone — not just sensitive groups — should take precautions to avoid breathing dangerous air. 

Milwaukee’s AQI reached 644 earlier on Thursday — more than twice the hazardous threshold. Air quality deteriorated even further in northwestern Wisconsin, with the index reaching 967 along the Minnesota border earlier in the day. 

Many Wisconsin communities, including Milwaukee, Waukesha, Odanah and Appleton, were still observing AQI over the 301 threshold Friday morning.

The index categories typically run only from zero to 500.

Thursday’s pollution surpassed levels once considered unprecedented. Before Canadian wildfire smoke pushed the AQI to record highs across Wisconsin in July 2023, cities including Madison, Milwaukee and Waukesha had not recorded an AQI above 200 since at least 2010, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of historical AQI data.

But wildfire smoke has elevated air pollution in Wisconsin each summer since 2023. Major cities have periodically recorded higher AQI readings around July, though Thursday’s levels were the first to surpass those recorded in 2023.

“This is a hazardous air quality episode that we have not experienced before,” Craig Czarnecki, air management outreach coordinator for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, said in an email.

DataWatch: Wisconsin air pollution reaches record highs as wildfire smoke engulfs the state 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.