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A new guide from Johns Hopkins University recommends 10 policy changes to reduce gun violence in Wisconsin, including three identified as potentially especially helpful for communities such as Milwaukee, where gun violence has been prevalent.

“The recommendations are intended to have statewide impact,” wrote Ethan Bartlett, assistant research and policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and lead author of the guide, in an email to NNS.  

“That being said, research suggests some recommendations may have a larger impact in certain areas than others, depending on factors such as community culture, demographics, rurality and differences in implementation.”

The Wisconsin guide is the seventh state-specific policy road map published by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, following guides for Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Maryland and Maine.

Bartlett said researchers began by examining Wisconsin’s existing firearm laws to identify gaps.

“From there, we were guided by research evidence and identified evidence-based policies that would fill those gaps and ultimately work toward better outcomes for Wisconsin residents,” he said. 

Bartlett said the guide is intended to help policymakers, local governments and organizations identify legislative changes that could reduce firearm deaths and injuries.

“We view gun violence as an epidemic-level public health emergency and saw an opportunity to create a product with the potential to be part of the solution,” he said. 

Three recommendations he said may be especially significant for Milwaukee and other communities experiencing higher levels of interpersonal gun violence: establishing firearm purchaser licensing; licensing gun dealers; and providing sustainable funding for community violence intervention and prevention programs.

Current snapshot of Milwaukee gun violence

As of Oct. 8, Milwaukee had recorded 84 homicides and 325 nonfatal shootings, compared with 108 homicides and 425 nonfatal shootings during the same period in 2025, according to the Milwaukee Police Department’s crime dashboard. Both categories declined over 20% compared with the same period last year.

In 2025, the city recorded 142 homicides and 516 nonfatal shootings, compared with 132 homicides and 639 nonfatal shootings in 2024. 

Bartlett emphasized that firearm homicides represent only one aspect of gun violence.

“Firearm suicides represent the largest portion of firearm fatalities, and there are more firearm injuries annually than firearm homicides and suicides combined in Wisconsin,” he said.

In July, NNS reported firearms were involved in the majority of suicides in Milwaukee County in 2025. 

“All forms should be taken into consideration when discussing ways to mitigate gun violence,” Bartlett said. 

Here is a breakdown of the three strategies Bartlett highlighted for communities like Milwaukee.

Firearm purchaser licensing

The first recommendation calls for a requirement that prospective firearm buyers obtain a license before purchasing a gun.

Wisconsin does not require firearm purchasers to obtain a license, according to the guide.

Johns Hopkins recommends requiring prospective purchasers to complete firearm safety training, including live-fire instruction, submitting fingerprints, a comprehensive background check and an in-person application process.

The guide states that purchaser licensing laws were associated with an 11% reduction in firearm homicides in 136 large urban counties between 1984 and 2015. 

The requirements could strengthen background checks and help prevent firearms from reaching people legally prohibited from possessing them, according to the guide.

Milwaukee County Supervisor Justin Bielinski broadly supports the recommendations, but he raised concerns about purchaser licensing.

Bielinski said firearm purchaser licensing requirements could disproportionately affect lower-income residents and people of color, particularly those living in heavily policed communities.

Gun dealer licensing

Another recommendation is for Wisconsin to establish licensing requirements for firearm dealers – on top of existing federal requirements.

Wisconsin does not currently require a separate state firearm dealer license, according to the guide.  

Johns Hopkins recommends statewide licensing that includes recordkeeping, security measures and inspections to strengthen oversight of firearm sales.

The guide cites research finding that strong state firearm dealer regulations, including licensing and inspections, were associated with a 64% reduction in firearm trafficking within states.

The report highlighted federal data showing authorities recovered and traced 8,841 firearms in Wisconsin in 2023, including 3,781 in Milwaukee.

Bridget Whitaker is executive director of Safe & Sound, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit focused on community safety and violence prevention. She said the firearm purchaser licensing and gun dealer licensing speak to the accountability and responsible access to firearms.   

“I think there’s value in creating stronger safeguards to help prevent firearms from getting into the wrong hands,” Whitaker said. “This is so important when we consider how quickly a disagreement, an impulsive decision or an unresolved conflict can become a tragedy when a firearm is involved.” 

Sustainable funding of community violence intervention

Whitaker said the recommendation that resonates most with her is for sustainable investment in community violence intervention and prevention.

Milwaukee already has several local efforts, including Safe & Sound, the 414LIFE violence interruption program and other initiatives coordinated by the city’s Department of Community Wellness and Safety. 

Johns Hopkins researchers recommend sustained funding for anti-violence programs and a formal establishment of Wisconsin’s Office of Violence Prevention in state law, which could provide more stable state support for local violence prevention efforts.

“Too often – especially this year – nonprofits are charged to produce long-term outcomes with short-term funding,” Whitaker said. “We are asking organizations to build trust and maintain consistent relationships in neighborhoods while providing funding that may only last a year. Trust doesn’t operate on a grant cycle.”

Gov. Tony Evers’ actions

Bielinski said state lawmakers would need to push for most of the guide’s recommendations.

“Most of the reforms in the Hopkins report have to be initiated at the state level,” he said.

NNS reached out to Gov. Tony Evers about the three recommendations. Britt Cudaback, communications director for Evers, pointed to the governor’s previous budget proposals and calls for special legislative sessions and federal funding investments for violence prevention.

Evers created the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention – by way of an executive order in January 2025. The office was initially supported by $10 million in federal funding, and Evers proposed making the office permanent through his 2025-27 budget.

However, the proposal was not included in the final budget.

In 2022, the Evers administration directed $8.4 million in federal funding to Milwaukee’s violence prevention efforts.

He also has called for universal background checks and an extreme risk protection order law, which would allow courts to temporarily restrict access to firearms for people who pose a serious risk of harming themselves or others.

Bielinski questioned whether Milwaukee County could expand its violence prevention programs from a financial perspective.

“Funding-related measures, like hiring more violence interruptors, credible messengers, etc., are highly unrealistic given current budgetary circumstances,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Administration, which oversees the state’s Office of Violence Prevention, also emphasized the need for sustained funding.

“The greatest impact, from the (Office of Violence Prevention) perspective, is continued sustainable, reliable and flexible funding for violence prevention in Milwaukee and across the state,” the spokesperson said.

Whitaker said the guide’s recommendations “reflect something those of us working in neighborhoods have understood for a long time: Reducing violence requires a comprehensive approach.” 

More recommendations

The other recommendations in the Johns Hopkins guide are:

• Strengthening firearm storage requirements
• Strengthening protections against domestic violence involving firearms
• Establishing an extreme risk protection order law
• Expanding restrictions on firearm purchases and possession
• Prohibiting large-capacity ammunition magazines
• Strengthening requirements for carrying firearms in public
• Requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

New guide identifies policies that could reduce gun violence in Wisconsin 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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The Door County Jail is operating under emergency staffing rules, effective Oct. 8, with 16 employees currently working in the jail when 22 are needed to cover shifts safely and effectively, Sheriff Tammy Sternard said. 

Emergency staffing procedures will continue until enough staff are hired and trained to run the jail effectively, she said. 

The jail staffing shortage has been an ongoing issue before reaching the most recent point, and it contributed to heavy overtime costs and declining morale among jail staff, according to the Door County Deputy Sheriff’s Association. The association cited those problems, among other concerns unrelated to the jail, in its June vote of no confidence in Sternard. 

A vote of no confidence is a significant step for a union association, according to experts in labor relations. Such votes are often a last resort when efforts to address workplace concerns have failed, said Jim Palmer, president of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, which represents more than 300 law enforcement unions statewide.

Sternard disputed the association’s depiction of her leadership and said she and county administration have been trying to recruit more staff and reduce overtime and workload pressure in the jail.

The association’s resolution cited ongoing staffing shortages, a two-male minimum staffing policy, excessive overtime, and a general lack of support as conditions contributing to a general loss of trust in Sternard as sheriff.

How serious is the jail problem?

While 22 employees is the minimum number of filled positions needed for safe and effective jail operations, 24 employees in the jail are optimal for reducing overtime and workloads, Sternard stated in staffing reports from 2023 to 2025. 

The county has authorized 26 positions in the jail, including a jail lieutenant, three sergeants, 19 full-time deputies, two court security deputies and one administrative assistant. 

With the jail currently under emergency staffing rules, the sheriff is allowed to go outside the bargaining unit contract to make sure the jail is staffed adequately. This means she does not have to abide by specific rules in the contract regarding how overtime is assigned and other staffing procedures. 

During the week of Oct. 8, Sternard met with union and jail division representatives to discuss actions related to the emergency staffing situation, she said.

The temporary plan is to allow non-security deputies to work overtime shifts in the jail under specific conditions and operational needs during the declared emergency schedule, she said.

Chief Deputy Kyle Veeser, Sternard’s current second-in-command in the Sheriff’s Office, was the jail lieutenant from 2019 until previous Chief Deputy Pat McCarty retired in 2025. Veeser has worked for the Sheriff’s Office for about 20 years. The jail has not been fully staffed since 2019, but this is the worst shape it has been in, Veeser said. 

When there are staff or shift vacancies, existing jail deputies are given overtime. The highest overtime spending for all state employees is in corrections – 67% of all the overtime in the state was spent on the Department of Corrections in 2024. 

County jails collect data separately from the state system, and Door County shows high numbers of overtime hours and spending over the last few years. 

In Door County, from January 2023 to Sept. 30, 2026, there were 14,937.75 hours of jail staff overtime, totaling $737,192.35 in costs. 

The Door County Jail requires a minimum of four deputies working at all times, and the jail uses an 8-hour overlapping shift schedule, according to sheriff staffing reports. Due to current staffing levels, any time one individual is off for any reason, it creates overtime. 

Corrections jobs are hard to fill and to keep filled. Wisconsin state corrections facilities had an 11% turnover rate in 2024, according to Safe Inside, a national project focused on corrections research.

Twenty-nine security deputies either retired or resigned from the Door County Jail between January 2023 and Sept. 30, 2026, according to staffing reports. Of the 29, five retired. Of those who resigned, 12 cited overtime hours as the reason, and 13 cited working shift hours/time away from family. Resigning security deputies were allowed to choose more than one reason for leaving in exit surveys, according to the report.

Three of the resigning deputies cited a “negative work environment” as one of their reported reasons for leaving.

Not only have overtime needs increased, but changes in the jail environment have increased the workload, Sternard wrote in her 2025 report. Inmate mental health issues and alcohol and/or drug withdrawals are to blame, she said, as both scenarios require more one-on-one staff attention, leaving remaining staff to deal with a larger number of inmates than they should be.

The number of incarcerated people in Door County with mental health and/or substance use disorders has increased in the last decade, even as the number of incarcerated people overall has not significantly changed. 

In consultant interviews with jail deputies in 2019, 100% said they frequently interact with people with mental health concerns and with substance abuse concerns. 

By comparison, 85% of patrol deputies told consultants they frequently interact with people with mental health concerns, and 82% said the same for people with substance abuse concerns.

Another factor that contributes to high overtime and low morale, according to the vote of no-confidence resolution, is a two-male minimum policy in place at the Door County Jail. Male officers are required on every shift, regardless of overall staffing numbers, and vacancies or absences can lead to overtime just to reach the minimum. 

Wisconsin statute requires at least one person on duty of the same sex as incarcerated people who is responsible for the “custody, cleanliness, food and care” of inmates.

Door County has enforced a stricter local policy that there must be two male officers on duty at any given time, a measure to ensure better safety for jail employees and inmates, according to Sternard. Male inmates almost always substantially outnumber female inmates, she added.  

What has been tried, and what has not

The county has tried to solve its staffing shortage and excessive overtime with various approaches, according to County Corporation Counsel Sean Donohue. Some of them have been accepted by the association, while others have not. 

According to staffing reports, Sternard and county administration have made attempts to reduce the overtime burden and workload, including by adding one more authorized full-time deputy position last year and eliminating part-time positions as they became more difficult to fill.

Most recently, county leadership and Sternard implemented a rotating overtime system so it was not all falling on the deputies with less seniority, Donohue said.

More senior deputies had the ability to refuse overtime, he said, and it kept falling on the more junior members of the jail staff.

“They were receiving so much overtime, they were burning out,” according to Donohue.

Recommendations to move jail staff to a 12-hour shift schedule have been made several times over the years, according to staffing reports. A $40,000 staffing and operations analysis by McGrath Consulting Group was conducted in 2020. The study also recommended the 12-hour shift schedule. 

“It (would have) allowed for better staffing and work-life balance,” Donohue said. “It was not a big cost savings to the county, rather it was an expense. But the union did not want it.”

With a 12-hour schedule, called a Pitman Schedule, employees work two or three days and then have two or three days off. The schedule proposed for Door County would allow employees to have an average of 15 days off each month, versus eight days in a typical schedule. Currently, most Sheriff’s Office employees work a regular eight-hour shift schedule with six days on and three days off.

A 12-hour schedule has become the norm in many jails, Veeser said. 

The union has consistently rejected a 12-hour shift schedule, including during the most recent collective bargaining process. Union representatives did not respond to requests for comment on this issue. 

The process for the 2025-27 contract between union members and the county went into mediation, conducted by James Daley, then-chairman of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. Each side had issues they wanted incorporated into the collective bargaining agreement that the other objected to, Donohue said. 

One of those issues was the 12-hour shift schedule, but it did not trigger the back-and-forth negotiations leading to mediation, he added, and the major issue was wages.

Lack of support?

Part of the union’s criticism of Sternard was an allegation that her response was dismissive of staff concerns about excessive overtime and declining morale. The resolution stated Sternard had responded to concerns raised in meetings by saying that morale was “their problem.”

Sternard said she doesn’t recall ever saying it’s “their problem,” and conversations she has about morale are more complex than a single comment. 

“We all get to choose what kind of attitude we want, and if we’re going to get stuck in other people’s drama,” she said during an Oct. 6 interview. “If coming here is bad everyday, then maybe it’s not for you, and that is part of a bigger discussion.”

“I believe morale is a shared responsibility,” she wrote in a follow-up email to Knock. “Each of us has to take responsibility for our own morale and attitude, as well as contribute to the morale of our team.” 

Sternard said she checks in with division leaders every week during meetings to ask about morale and concerns. If there are situations affecting morale, Sternard said she addresses them and works with her staff to find solutions.

A last resort

Although the Wisconsin Professional Police Association does not work directly with the Door County Sheriff Deputies’ Association, Palmer said votes of no-confidence come up frequently with unions. 

The organization has only actually endorsed a no-confidence effort on two occasions, Palmer said, because such a vote rarely achieves its goal — changing a leader’s conduct — unless it’s part of a broader strategy. 

A vote of no-confidence is often a tool of last resort for a union, when other attempts to raise issues have not been successful, he said. 

Votes of no-confidence are used to express a collective view that individual officers might not feel comfortable expressing, Palmer added. 

“Retaliation is one of the reasons an organization like ours exists,” he said.

Don Taylor is a department chair and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers and said there is a difference between public and private sector labor unions. 

“Police officers work in a very different environment and context than factory workers, nurses or teachers,” he said. “When faced with a group of workers who’s unhappy with a member of management, there are things that factory workers may do that are very different from what police may do. Police aren’t going to walk off the job or have a picket line.”

Local government employees are prohibited from striking by Wisconsin state law.

All regular full-time and part-time employees within the Sheriff’s Office are represented by the union, according to collective bargaining agreements. The sheriff, chief deputy, captains, lieutenants, confidential clerical, executive, managerial and supervisor employees, and general municipal employees do not receive union representation. 

That does not mean every member participates regularly in union activities or took part in the vote of no-confidence. Sheriff candidate Curt Vandertie has said he has not been active in the association for several years.  

Additionally there are no hard and fast rules governing how a union may take such a vote, according to Taylor and Palmer.

Knock reached out to the Deputies Association for information about how many members participated in the vote. The association’s legal counsel, Tom Sucevic, replied that the association is “not going to be speaking on the no confidence vote beyond what was published.” 

Responding to speculation that vote timing was intended to influence the sheriff race, Taylor said using a vote of no-confidence that way makes sense to him and the focus should still be the union’s concerns. 

“To dismiss it as electorally motivated leaves unanswered the question, ‘why?’” he said. 

“Maybe they’re just so mad about the workplace relationship that they’re not even thinking about the election,” Taylor said. “But I would be very surprised if it’s not at least a significant factor because that’s what public sector employees do. It’s an incredibly obvious route of address for public sector workers.”

One way to ensure a vote of no-confidence is successful, Palmer said, is to document prior efforts to change leadership conduct or the work environment. 

“Its not uncommon for a deputy to express a view to the chief or sheriff in passing, in the hallway,” Palmer said. “We try to remind groups, just like you have to build a record with your police work, you have to memorialize efforts to improve your work environment so you can point to it.” 

According to the results of Knock’s open records request to the Sheriff’s Office, there are no formal complaints or documentation of the issues cited by the union in its no-confidence resolution. 

Since the resolution was publicized, Sternard said, she and county administration have reached out to union leadership and offered communication and mediation, and the union rejected the overture. Association representatives did not respond to requests for comment on this issue. 

“We responded to try to work on things, and now they want to put it to rest,” she said.

Sternard also said her immediate priority and responsibility is to staff the jail.

“I’m going to do what I can right now from within. I’ll do what I can to help,” she said, referring to those efforts. “I remain hopeful for anyone who sits in this chair after November 3rd.”

A version of this story was originally published by Door County Knock, an independent, nonprofit news organization covering Door County, Wisconsin. Subscribe to its newsletters here.

Door County Jail declares staffing emergency as staff shortages drive overtime and low morale 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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This article was produced in partnership with the nonprofit journalism publication Bolts, which covers criminal justice and voting rights in local governments.

Click here to read highlights from the story

• Voters in Sauk and Winnebago counties will choose sheriffs who hold different views on local cooperation with ICE.
• Both Democratic candidates pledge to end their counties’ 287(g) agreements while their Republican opponents support continuing them in some form.
• In Sauk County, both candidates would maintain a contract allowing ICE to house detainees in the county jail, despite disagreeing over the financial and humanitarian implications.
• In Winnebago County, residents have also raised concerns about the law enforcement use of Flock license plate cameras.

Half an hour into a packed June candidate forum in Baraboo, the moderator turned to the issue looming over the race for Sauk County sheriff: immigration enforcement. 

“As chief law enforcement officer of Sauk County, how will you separate the demands of ICE from your duty to uphold the law and protect the residents of Sauk County?” Baraboo Optimist Club President Joseph Viney asked.  

The six candidates at the front of the public library conference room offered well-rehearsed responses.

Three months and a primary later, one Republican and one Democrat remain, with the question still central to the race ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

“People are fired up and they’re frustrated with ICE in general from a national perspective, and it does have local consequences,” Ryan Jesberger, the Democratic nominee, told Wisconsin Watch and Bolts.

ICE agents haven’t turned up in large numbers in the largely rural south-central Wisconsin county to check homes, jobsites and cars for undocumented immigrants. Unlike in neighboring Illinois and Minnesota, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has relied on jails and prisons to make most of its arrests in Wisconsin since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. 

Sauk County is no exception. ICE has recorded about 100 arrests in the county during that period, almost all through custody transfers at the local jail. An agreement between the sheriff’s office and federal authorities makes a small portion of those arrests possible by allowing county jail supervisors to play a limited role in immigration enforcement.

The Sauk County Sheriff’s Office is one of 20 county law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin that cooperate with ICE through 287(g) agreements: voluntary partnerships allowing designated local officers to carry out some immigration enforcement tasks. Voters in two of those counties — Sauk and Winnebago counties, 90 miles apart — will have a say in the future of their sheriffs’ ICE partnerships this fall. Trump won both counties by less than 5 percentage points in 2024.

The Trump administration has tapped local law enforcement agencies across the country for help in its immigration enforcement push, often in the form of 287(g) agreements. Those arrangements are drawing pushback from immigrant rights organizations and, in some cases, shaking up local elections.

Sheriffs are “the most important state(-level) race for immigration purposes,” said Hannah Schwarz, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Wisconsin. The civil liberties organization opposes local law enforcement cooperation with ICE. 

Sauk and Winnebago county voters will now choose between Republicans promising to stay the course and Democrats campaigning to dial back cooperation with immigration authorities. Both Democrats promise to quit the 287(g) program as soon as they take office.

But the partisan split conceals a more complicated policy landscape in Sauk County, where both candidates in the race favor keeping in place a contract that allows ICE to rent out space in the local jail to detain immigrants.

In Sauk, ICE cooperation takes multiple forms

Sauk County sits on the edge of Wisconsin’s Driftless Area, a region of sandstone bluffs and organic farms that has veered toward Republicans over the past three presidential elections after more than a decade of favoring Democrats. 

Baraboo, the county seat, peters out into cornfields within city limits. Wisconsin Dells, the Midwest’s waterpark capital, spills across the county’s northern boundary. The city’s resorts hire foreign workers on temporary visas ahead of the summer rush; other immigrants, many without visas, milk cows on the county’s dairy farms. 

Signed by Sheriff Richard “Chip” Meister in November 2025, Sauk County’s 287(g) agreement enables the county’s six jail supervisors to execute immigration warrants on people in county custody — a task ICE officers would otherwise perform. Executing an immigration warrant transfers them to ICE custody. 

The Sauk arrangement “streamline(s) our existing relationship with ICE,” Meister wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch and Bolts.

But Meister is set to retire this year after 16 years, leaving the future of this arrangement uncertain. He endorsed Capt. Matt Burch, a Republican, ahead of the August primary; Burch won the primary by a wide margin. 

He takes a position similar to Meister’s. 

“Our focus remains strictly on removing individuals who commit serious crimes rather than targeting members of our community solely based on their immigration status,” Burch wrote in an email. He does not, however, plan to extend the office’s partnership with ICE beyond the county jail. “Our authority applies exclusively to individuals who are already in our custody for violating local or state laws.” 

About half of people transferred from the Sauk County Jail to ICE during Trump’s second term had prior criminal convictions, a Wisconsin Watch and Bolts analysis shows; the other half had pending criminal charges. At least 8% of those transferred to ICE custody inside the jail had a prior conviction for driving while intoxicated — by far the most common conviction among Sauk County arrestees.

Jesberger, the Democratic candidate running against Burch and a University of Wisconsin-Madison police lieutenant, promises to end the county’s 287(g) agreement “on day one.”

“It’s not an anti-ICE or pro-ICE view,” he said. “We’re not talking (about) not doing any interaction,” he added, but instead about scaling back the county’s role. Jesberger also argues the 287(g) agreement sidesteps a contentious and unresolved question about the limits of local law enforcement’s arrest powers.

Law enforcement agencies with or without 287(g) agreements can choose to honor ICE “detainer” requests, which can entail holding people in jail up to 48 hours past their scheduled release to give immigration agents time to take them into custody.

The ACLU of Wisconsin petitioned the state Supreme Court in September 2025 to take up a lawsuit claiming five Wisconsin sheriffs’ offices — including Sauk County’s — violate state law by honoring the requests. The lawsuit argues that jailing someone beyond the person’s scheduled release date on an ICE detainer qualifies as an arrest and that state law does not authorize law enforcement to make arrests solely on the agency’s administrative warrants. 

The lawsuit is currently caught in a jurisdictional tug-of-war.

Jesberger shares the ACLU’s view on detainers, which he called “request(s) to take an action we are not authorized to take.” 

“It’s easy to say we should just hold onto someone,” he wrote in an email. “The problem is that under Wisconsin Law, there is no legal authority to conduct an arrest on this civil detainer.”

Jesberger would, however, honor warrants signed by a judge.

A 287(g) agreement enabling jail supervisors to serve immigration warrants is not the same as honoring ICE detainers, he added, but it still blurs jurisdictional lines. “Entering into the agreement to act as federal agents,” he said, “is going around state law.”

Jesberger also argues that even the county’s current agreement can strain sheriff’s office resources.

“Our deputies are busy enough doing things for the citizens of Sauk County,” he said, “so adding roles and responsibilities and, frankly, liability on top of all that is a concern of mine.”

Alongside its participation in the 287(g) program, Sauk County built on its partnership with ICE last year when it extended a long-standing agreement to hold federal detainees to include people held on immigration grounds. 

The county’s original agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service dates back more than two decades. The sheriff’s office modified that agreement in April 2025 to also include ICE. More than 200 ICE detainees have since passed through Sauk County, most of whom entered ICE custody either at the jail or in other Wisconsin correctional facilities.

ICE reimburses the county $106 per day for housing a person in removal proceedings, plus $38.45 per hour for staff time spent transporting ICE detainees. That contract yielded more than $150,000 for the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office between January and June – less than 1% of the office’s annual budget, and about 15% of what Burch calls its “flexible” budget, or the portion not already devoted to wages and benefits. 

“That money is important to us,” Burch said at the June forum.

Jesberger also promises to maintain the county’s contract to provide jail space for ICE detainees, though he pushes back on Burch’s focus on the revenue it yields, calling on law enforcement to “stop talking about human beings as numbers or revenue generation.” 

Instead, he sees the housing contract as a way to protect immigrants’ due process rights while they await rulings in their removal cases. 

Aside from offering Wisconsin-based attorneys easier access to their clients, Jesberger argues that a responsibly managed contract can ensure people in custody “are treated with respect and dignity, are not laying on a concrete floor with a foil blanket in overcrowded cells (and) are not being shipped out of state to detention facilities with inhumane conditions.”

Some Wisconsin immigration attorneys and immigrant rights advocates aren’t sold on that pitch. “Any amount of custody is an incentive for ICE to continue” its crackdown, said Aissa Olivarez of the Community Immigration Law Center in Madison.

Schwarz of the ACLU of Wisconsin agrees, saying that housing contracts like Sauk County’s make it easier — and cheaper — for the agency to scale up its operations.

Cooperating with ICE in any capacity has a “chilling effect” on immigrant communities, Milwaukee-based immigration attorney Marc Christopher said, and can make immigrants less likely to contact law enforcement in an emergency.

But Christopher also noted that Sauk County is far easier to reach than the larger detention facilities in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana and Texas where many Wisconsin arrestees land while awaiting outcomes in their removal cases. “I can meet with them in person,” he said. “Their families know where they are, and their families can meet with them.”

Jesberger and Burch have no debates scheduled ahead of Election Day, but a local coalition that opposes all cooperation with federal immigration authorities is planning an Oct. 3 event featuring the ACLU of Wisconsin and immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera. 

In Winnebago, sheriff candidates diverge amid a broader debate on surveillance

Eastern Wisconsin’s Winnebago County is more than twice as populous as Sauk County. Sheriff John Matz entered its 287(g) agreement — also a warrant service model — in March 2025. 

ICE has recorded roughly 25 arrests in the county since last January, almost all inside its jail. Capt. Darin Rice, the Republican running to replace the retiring Matz, says that low number is no reason to end the agreement. 

“I do believe that it needs to continue,” he told a packed audience in an Oshkosh City Hall conference room in September. Still, he underscored that he isn’t interested in “street-level enforcement” or renting jail beds to ICE.

Rice is running against his colleague, Patrol Officer Jason Rippl.

Rippl, the Democratic candidate, has broader 287(g) qualms than Jesberger. 

“I feel like the 287(g) agreement may open the door for additional involvement with (ICE),” he told Wisconsin Watch and Bolts, “and I think that by any modern law enforcement standards, we’ve seen pretty clearly that their tactics are sloppy.”

He promises to void the county’s 287(g) agreement on his first day in office, which he argues would free up time to “clean up our own backyard” by digging out of a backlog of warrants unrelated to immigration.

Rippl said he would honor warrants signed by a judge, but he doesn’t “feel it is the responsibility of local jails” to hold inmates beyond their release date based solely on a non-binding ICE request. 

Though Winnebago County isn’t named in the ACLU lawsuit, a ruling could affect any Wisconsin county’s ability to honor ICE detainer requests. Sheriffs could also refuse to honor detainers absent a court ruling, as some have done elsewhere.

The early attention on Winnebago County’s relationship with ICE may be shifting to law enforcement’s use of surveillance technology. Both Rice and Rippl said they had reservations about the handling of sensitive data from the license plate cameras, citing the well-documented recent history of the technology’s misuse.

The Winnebago County sheriff’s office decided in early September to suspend its partnership with Flock, the embattled tech company that has built up an extensive camera network nationwide and has drawn increasingly bipartisan backlash this year. 

Sauk County’s sheriff’s office continues to operate Flock cameras, introduced as part of a pilot project last year. Burch, the GOP nominee for sheriff, called the program a  “pet project” and credits the cameras for solving several high-stakes cases. Other law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin have, like Winnebago County, ended their contracts with Flock.

“We had a lot of pushback early on to the 287(g) program,” Rice told Wisconsin Watch and Bolts. “That’s now taken a back seat to Flock cameras.”

Rippl agreed that Flock is “certainly the more prevalent conversation topic” in his conversations with constituents, though he does not believe it has “overshadowed” the 287(g) debate.

Ongoing controversies over ICE’s use of Flock camera data link the two issues.

404 Media revealed last year that local law enforcement agencies across the country have queried data from Flock cameras on ICE’s behalf, including some in states with strict restrictions on local cooperation with ICE. Wisconsin has no such restrictions. 

The Sauk and Winnebago County sheriffs did not reply to a request for comment on how often their Flock cameras have been used for immigration enforcement. In Verona, a Madison suburb with a population roughly one tenth of Winnebago County’s, public records revealed hundreds of searches tied to ICE last year.

Correction: This story has been updated to note that Ryan Jesberger is a University of Wisconsin–Madison police lieutenant. A previous version incorrectly reported that he was a former lieutenant.

Two Wisconsin sheriff races test the future of local ICE cooperation 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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Brown County Judge Tammy Jo Hock said she doesn’t give her staff breaks, works them through lunch, makes them stay late. This was the only way cases could keep moving through court, Hock told the county’s Public Safety Committee on Sept. 9.

“It’s unreasonable what I do to my staff,” Hock said.

She pointed to the judicial system getting less than 2% of the 2025-27 state budget. “When you limit your resources like that, you’re not providing what the state needs,” Hock said. “And at some point, I hope they start addressing that.”

Warnings that underinvestment may be causing Wisconsin’s judiciary to fall short in delivering justice have mounted ahead of the Nov. 3 elections to decide the state Legislature, vested with budgetary powers, and the governor’s office. The politics in the budgeting process has left many in the judiciary frustrated at years of being under-resourced despite studies showing what’s needed. It has angered some county boards faced with the choice to locally fund gaps in the judicial system or not.

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Those within the system are burdened with the consequences.

Brown County has the largest deficit of judges and court commissioners of any Wisconsin county, short nearly six officials, according to the Wisconsin Judicial Needs Assessment Survey issued in April.

The finding adds to well-documented inadequacies elsewhere: short staffing in district attorney offices; low pay in public defense; struggles to recruit and retain lawyers; shortages in mental health treatment for those to stand trial.

Prosecutors face backlogs of cases in the thousands, slowing convictions. About half of all criminal cases needed more than six months to resolve in 2025. Some defendants have gone for months without an attorney, straining jails. Many judges feel pressure to move cases quickly, even when more time would improve their decision-making, according to the judicial needs assessment. Interest in law careers has dwindled, compounding staff shortages.

Outagamie County District Attorney Mindy Tempelis on Aug. 25, during the state’s first study committee into district attorney funding, said Wisconsin “was not meeting its obligation” and argued the state Legislature should invest in making a Wisconsin-specific judicial system that would not break down.

“People’s lives are on the line,” Tempelis said.

‘The entire system is broken’ with possible paths forward

In addition to the number of cases before them, judges face more time-consuming work than in the past, according to the 2025 Wisconsin Judicial Needs Assessment Study.

Digital evidence has mounted, become routine and taken much time to review, the assessment said. More litigants are self-representing and using artificial intelligence to create filings, which have made judges take more time to interpret “often lengthy, unclear, or legally inconsistent” files, according to the assessment. And judges are spending more time on cases before trial as evidence suppression and other pretrial motions have grown more popular.

For those making cases before judges, the workload has also grown more burdensome.

Tempelis told the state’s study committee that the current formula to calculate how many prosecutors each district attorney office needs has become outdated.

The formula assumes attorney work still revolves around paper files, faxed police reports, physical photos and evidence that could fit into a folder, Templis said in her presentation. There are now hours of footage from body cameras, which each county may use different versions of, and thousands of text messages to extract, she said.

Tempelis also said the mental health system is broken, with jail being the always-open alternative. She emphasized the attorney shortage in the state, the lack of lawyers interested in going to rural counties and inconsistency with which the Legislature decides to fund pay progression for prosecutors, leaving it entirely unfunded at times.

She pointed to the 1,400 cases that make up the backlog in her office.

“There are no prosecutor bodies, court bodies, or defense bodies to pick up that backlog anywhere in this state,” Tempelis said. “And that is a horrible realization for defendants and for victims and for our communities.”

Tempelis argued the Legislature could invest in finding data that would show the true workload of prosecutors, saying the studies should reflect work as close to real time as possible. She pushed for fully funding attorney pay progression and creating a prosecutor council, an agency that, in other states, advocates for and supports the work of attorneys.

She said she had no doubt the Wisconsin Legislature was not going to give the judiciary everything it wished for. She argued, though, that a sustainable system supported by data would prevent politically motivated decision-making.

Under the current system, Tempelis said that counties picking up the tab for the state’s responsibility was unfair. District attorneys, their assistants and public defenders are state employees.

She said she was lucky that the Outagamie County Board made it a priority to fund a prosecutor position in her office. However, “They are frustrated. They are angry and they don’t want to. But they’re trying to make a good decision for the people of Outagamie County; that’s their job. But funding us is not their job, because the state asked for it.”

Jennifer Bias, the state public defender, said, “The point has been made that the entire system is broken.”

Adding judges requires added support personnel

Judge Hock pressed the Brown County Public Safety Committee on Sept. 9 to endorse a resolution for the County Board to call on the state for two more circuit court judges.

Court dates were being pushed further out from a growing caseload. There were 3,755 pending criminal cases in the county in 2025, according to the resolution. Hock asks attorneys in the hallways if they will take cases as public defenders.

While she recognized the court assessment called for about six more judges, Hock said the director of state courts believes the Legislature will only have the stomach to fund two.

Plus, it’s not just as simple as electing two judges.

To accommodate two more judges, the county would need to provide enough support personnel to the tune of an additional $222,814, including two sheriff deputies, judicial assistants, court coordinators and a one-time staff setup charge. Accommodation for space has already been budgeted in the Brown County capital improvement plan, according to the resolution.

Brown County Board Chairman Patrick Buckley pointed to the county needing to shell out for support staff and court infrastructure as the state adds more judges, saying he didn’t think the county should have to pay for more prosecutors and wished to see more consolidated staffing “because throughout the county, as budgets get tighter, who do we cut? The sheriff’s office? 911?”

“I can’t address how the county and state share those expenses,” Hock replied. “All I can tell you is what the need is.”

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of five news outlets.

Judges warn that underfunded courts are falling behind 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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The Milwaukee Police Department told NNS it is looking to the future with its policy on generative artificial intelligence, or AI. The department is not currently using the technology, but that could change.

One potential law enforcement use of generative AI is helping officers write police reports. 

For example, Axon, the company that provides MPD’s body cameras, offers a product called Draft One, which uses body-camera audio to generate draft police reports. 

Some civil rights advocates and defense attorneys say using this type of emerging technology could create problems for Milwaukeeans accused of crimes.

“You have this risk of errors and hallucinations and bias that we see a lot of large language models have, whether it’s a transcription error or if it’s a bias that’s baked into the training data sets,” said Amanda Merkwae, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin.

MPD and generative AI

MPD released its policy governing generative AI in January.

Among other requirements are that AI-generated material should be considered a draft and reviewed for accuracy. 

Department members should also indicate in the final work product that AI was used.

An MPD spokesperson said its Generative Artificial Intelligence Committee has met to consider a variety of AI products but is still evaluating the utility, cost, accountability and effect that those products may have on the department’s work product.

“Any onboarding of an AI product is only in the consideration phase, so have we given it thought? Yes. Are we anywhere close to implementing that (technology)? No,” the spokesperson said.

What happens at the DA’s office?

Prosecutors in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office have considered what the use of AI technology could mean for criminal cases.

Jeffrey Altenburg, chief deputy district attorney for Milwaukee County, acknowledged risks associated with generative AI but said it could be useful with sufficient human oversight.

“It can be a helpful tool as long as it’s overseen and regulated by actual humans making actual observations and making sure that what is generated is consistent with what was intended to be,” he said.

Deputy District Attorney Matthew Torbenson said prosecutors are not expecting AI-generated reports to capture everything an officer observes. 

He gave the example of a child neglect investigation, during which observations — including what a home looks and smells like, whether there is a bug infestation, whether food is available — would have to come from police officers.

“All of that has to come from the impressions of the officers that are on scene,” Torbenson said.

The what ifs

Merkwae said there are concerns about the use of generative AI that should not be ignored. 

What happens, for example, if an officer’s testimony later conflicts with an AI-assisted police report? 

The error could stem from AI, she said, but it could also raise questions about an officer’s credibility. 

“If it was a human-written report and there’s that type of contradiction that can rise to the level of a potential dishonest statement — that could land a prosecutor putting a police officer on the Brady list,” Merkwae said. 

The Brady list refers to prosecutors’ records that identify law enforcement officers whose credibility issues may have to be disclosed to defendants.

Connor Romenesko, a forensic science practice coordinator with the Wisconsin State Public Defenders Office, said AI-generated reports could create serious problems without any malice or ill intent on the part of police or prosecutors.

There could be a situation, he said, where an officer is rushed at the end of a shift and fails to adequately review an AI-generated report, and a prosecutor uses that information to charge someone.

Milwaukee Police Department considers use of generative AI 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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Members of Milwaukee’s Community Collaborative Commission are looking to Baltimore as they work to give residents a greater voice in how policing is carried out in Milwaukee.

Community policing, a core focus of the commission’s work, calls for police and residents to work together to identify and respond to neighborhood problems.

Baltimore’s “Community Policing Plan” spells out who is responsible for that work, what it involves and how it can be put into practice.

“What works in Baltimore may or may not work in similar ways here,” said Tim Baack, president and CEO of Pathfinders, an organization that supports homeless and runaway children, and a member of the commission. “But there’s enough of the framework that it’s not like we have to start from scratch.”

In recent years, the commission has worked on police policy reform, community-oriented policing and oversight of other reforms. Its members include community activists and leaders of local nonprofits.

Earlier this summer, the group said it was in the late stages of completing a community policing plan for Milwaukee.

Community policing already happening, Milwaukee Police Department says

The Milwaukee Police Department says it has already implemented the framework for community policing in the city. 

The department has a community-oriented policing policy and has worked with the Community Collaborative Commission to gather community input and develop a plan.

“MPD has always been a part of the conversation with the (Community Collaborative Commission)” in developing the plan, a spokesperson for the department said.

MPD worked with the Community Collaborative Commission and Fire and Police Commission beginning in 2022 on community engagement sessions across the city, according to MPD’s 2025 Community and Problem Oriented Policing Review.

Here are four lessons from Baltimore and how they compare with what MPD is already doing.

1. Every officer is responsible for community policing

Baltimore’s plan states that “every officer is a community policing officer.”

In other words, community policing is not supposed to be limited to officers with specialized community-related duties.

“Community policing should shape everyday interactions/enforcement encounters/training and decision-making across the department,” said Bridget Whitaker, executive director of Safe & Sound and a member of the commission.

Safe & Sound is an organization that works to unite residents, youths and law enforcement.

MPD has an official policy that requires all department members to engage in community and problem-oriented policing daily.

The department is “committed to the principle that community policing is the responsibility of every officer,” a spokesperson for MPD said.

However, the Fire and Police Commission has questioned how fully that principle has been put into practice.

In a January memo to the Milwaukee Board of Fire and Police Commissioners and MPD command staff, the Fire and Police Commission argued that MPD relies too heavily on command staff and specialized community liaison officers for community engagement.

2. There’s a difference between engagement and being present

Baltimore’s plan distinguishes police simply being visible in a neighborhood from engaging with the people who live there. Officers are expected to have informal conversations with residents to help build relationships.

“Presence matters, but meaningful engagement requires interaction, listening, relationship building and collaboration,” Whitaker said.

MPD’s 2025 review similarly says community events alone do not amount to community-oriented policing.

However, the review says such events can still contribute to community policing by allowing residents and police to exchange information and develop solutions together.

The Fire and Police Commission memo makes a distinction between community involvement and collaboration.

With involvement, police largely identify problems and decide what to do. With collaboration, residents help identify problems, shape responses and determine whether they worked.

MPD says residents already participate in that process through district crime and safety meetings, community partnership units, community organizations and various other forums.

Ralikh Hayes, deputy director and co-founder of Baltimore-based Organizing Black, a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group, said his city’s residents still lack a formal way to ensure their input influences what the city actually does.

“There’s no formal mechanism of ‘we want this specifically,’ and then accountability if they see it or don’t,” Hayes said.

3. Focus on root causes

Problem-oriented policing focuses on the root causes of crime, rather than only enforcing laws or responding to individual incidents.

Baltimore uses a four-step process: identify the problem; analyze its causes; develop a response; and assess whether it worked.

MPD said it already uses the same approach, known as the SARA model.

Baack said Milwaukee will still have to adapt ideas from other cities to Milwaukee’s own circumstances.

“One thing we realized in looking at what works and sometimes what didn’t work in other communities — it’s never really an apples to apples,” he said.

Hayes said even different neighborhoods within Baltimore require different approaches.

“Baltimore is not a one-size-fits-all place,” he said. “Every neighborhood is different and has different issues.”

4. Reward officers for community policing work

Baltimore makes community policing part of how officers are evaluated, including annual performance reviews and promotions.

That stood out to Whitaker.

“Organizations ultimately demonstrate their priorities through what they measure, reward and hold people accountable for,” she said.

The Fire and Police Commission memo recommends problem-solving work should factor into performance evaluations, promotions and transfers.

Baack said the ultimate measure should be what residents think.

“The plan will be successful when the community says it’s successful,” he said.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

What Milwaukee can learn from Baltimore’s community policing plan 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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Several courthouses in north-central Wisconsin do not screen people coming into the building for weapons, an investigation by The Badger Project has found. A firearm discovered recently in one of them is highlighting that lack of security in public buildings in rural counties and local officials’ reluctance to pass the high costs of upgrades on to taxpayers.

A courthouse cleaner found a gun in the Langlade County Courthouse in Antigo just after 5 a.m. on Thursday, July 16, according to a criminal complaint from the Langlade County Sheriff’s Office. The firearm, stashed behind a toilet in the third-floor men’s bathroom, sat on top of a handwritten note containing the name of a jail inmate who’d recently testified in an attempted homicide trial. The day the gun was found, the Langlade County Sheriff’s Office arrested Harout Hosepian, who faces seven charges, including carrying a firearm in a public building and carrying a concealed knife.

Hosepian was seen on camera in the courthouse on July 15 and entered the bathroom, as well as the offices of the county clerk and district attorney, according to the complaint. That day, Hosepian carried a backpack and a cane. Authorities later discovered the cane concealed a serrated sword.

Hosepian remains in custody and is not yet represented by an attorney. He is a Chicago resident with multiple convictions, including aggravated battery and other felonies in 2016, according to the criminal complaint filed in Langlade County. In 2021, Hosepian was charged in Antigo with physically abusing a child, resisting an officer and disorderly conduct. That case is ongoing due, in part, to struggles finding an attorney. Hosepian is eligible for a public defender.

The criminal complaint says Hosepian told investigators that he had a personal connection to the attempted homicide trial, the one for which a witness’s name was found on the piece of paper under the gun in the courthouse.

The firearm discovery has spurred conversations among local leaders about how to improve security at public buildings. Langlade County’s courthouse, built in 1905, uses a single point of entry, but typically no one screens individuals entering the structure. A review by The Badger Project of other counties’ safety measures, which courthouse employees submitted to the county’s public safety committee, suggests Langlade County is not an outlier among rural counties. Neighboring Lincoln and Shawano counties also do not screen people who enter their courthouses. However, earlier this year, Shawano County approved spending up to $121 million to build a new courthouse and jail building.

Marathon County – with an estimated population of 139,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau – features the most intensive form of courthouse security in north central Wisconsin, including metal detectors and an X-ray machine. This system, installed in 2017, cost more than $300,000, along with additional employee costs to operate the station, according to the Wausau Pilot & Review.

The costs of security equipment, space, and staffing can be off-putting for local governments in rural municipalities like Langlade County, population 19,500. Residents like their taxes low, Circuit Court Judge John Rhode said during the Langlade County Public Safety Committee meeting on Sept. 10, and bolstering courthouse security would require “horrendous amounts of money.”

“If we do millions of dollars on upgrades to our security, it’s going to raise taxes,” Rhode said. “It’s not a popular thing. But I think we have to have the courage to say, we have to properly protect and care for our people and provide the services that we need. We can’t just keep wishing and hoping and being relieved that nothing bad is going to happen.”

Langlade County Sheriff Mark Westen told the committee he’d proposed security upgrades to the courthouse about eight years ago, but the county board scrapped the plans over the estimated costs. Westen suggested using a single point of entry with a screening checkpoint operated by two law enforcement officers. A machine to scan someone’s belongings will cost between $80,000 and $100,000, Westen said, and two full-time employees to operate the station will cost around $130,000 a year. The county may need to spend more to build a structure for the screening area so people are not waiting outside to enter the building.

The safety committee asked Westen for a written proposal to consider. The group’s next meeting is scheduled for Oct. 1. The county board, which is in control of budgeting, would have to make the final determination on any changes to courthouse security.

In 1988, a 19-year-old man walked into the City-County Building in Madison and shot multiple people, killing two. That led the city and Dane County to enhance security at the building.

The Badger Project is an independent, reader-supported newsroom in Wisconsin.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Many rural Wisconsin courthouses lack weapon screening. A hidden gun highlights the issue. 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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Although the Milwaukee Police Department halted its use of facial recognition technology in February, there are still cases being prosecuted in Milwaukee County in which the technology was used at some point in the investigation. 

This means concerns about the technology – and the potential errors it can introduce – still remain, community members told NNS.

Facial recognition technology uses artificial intelligence to identify someone by comparing a photo of an unknown face to a database of images of known faces.

“The reliability of these systems is certainly in question, and particularly the disproportionate risk of inaccuracy when identifying non-white faces,” said Amanda Merkwae, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin.

Questions also remain about whether defendants and their lawyers have always been told when facial recognition technology played a role in an investigation.

MPD and facial recognition

In April 2025, the Milwaukee Police Department acknowledged it had, for two to three years, used other agencies’ licenses to obtain facial recognition search results without having a written department policy governing the practice.

At the same time, MPD was considering expanding its access to facial recognition technology through an agreement with the company Biometrica.

The proposal provoked substantial opposition from residents and civil rights groups who raised concerns about misidentification, racial bias, surveillance and public trust.

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman announced in February that MPD would prohibit its members from using facial recognition technology and would not consider acquiring the technology until after the department develops a policy with the Fire and Police Commission.

However, the moratorium did not eliminate the technology from criminal cases in which it had already been used.

MPD did not respond to questions about its policies and practices relating to disclosing the use of facial recognition to the DA’s office. 

What happens at the DA’s office?

Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern said his office treats facial recognition technology as an investigative lead.

“It is not, in and of itself, probable cause,” Lovern said. “It’s not, in and of itself, the sole basis for gaining a search warrant.”

Lovern said information his office receives about the use of facial recognition in an investigation gets turned over to the defense as part of the case file. 

Deputy District Attorney Matthew Torbenson described a 2021 home invasion and sexual assault case prosecuted by the DA’s office in which another law enforcement agency used facial recognition technology to develop about five potential suspects from surveillance footage.

Investigators pursued these leads and focused on one person based on additional evidence, including an identification by his former spouse.

The five individuals who it came back with as a potential match were all turned over to the defense, Torbenson said.

Torbenson said the potential errors would be more concerning if just facial recognition were being used to directly identify a suspect.

“That is not at all how we’re using it,” he said.

Technology creates challenges

Connor Romenesko, a forensic science practice coordinator with the Wisconsin State Public Defenders Office, said defense attorneys can obtain the image submitted for a facial recognition search and some information about the software used but may not have the information needed to evaluate the system as a whole.

“The biggest concern I have with these services is that they’re provided by private companies who don’t necessarily provide information about how these systems are trained,” Romenesko said.

This can make challenging a facial recognition result “extremely difficult,” he said.

Federal research has found that facial recognition systems can have higher false-positive rates for some racial and ethnic groups, including Black, Asian and American Indian people. 

‘Still a big unknown’

Another question is whether prosecutors and defendants have always been told when MPD used facial recognition technology.

The ACLU of Wisconsin reviewed police reports from more than a dozen cases MPD had identified as examples of facial recognition use.

“In many of those cases, there was just no mention of (facial recognition technology) use at all,” Merkwae said. 

She said it still isn’t known how many total cases in recent years – or ever – MPD used facial recognition technology in any step of an investigation. 

“And of that total – was that information turned over to the defendant in discovery if that person was charged?” Merkwae asked. “I think that’s still a big unknown.”

Romenesko said facial recognition information is sometimes included in initial discovery but sometimes must be requested from law enforcement or prosecutors.

Public defenders are trained to spot vague language such as “investigative lead” that can indicate facial recognition technology was used, Romenesko said.

“Our lawyers are all trained, so that if they see that language, they’re going to go up to kind of alert to the fact that maybe this hasn’t been disclosed up front, which we also see in some cases,” he said. 

Jeffrey Altenburg, Milwaukee County’s chief deputy district attorney, said there are instances in which leads or suspects developed early in an investigation are not initially shared with prosecutors.

“However, once those leads are corroborated using standard investigative techniques, those details are included in the reports that are provided to our office and turned over to the defendant if they are criminally charged,” Altenburg said. 

Despite police department ban, facial recognition technology lingers in Milwaukee’s criminal justice system 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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• To build or not to build, that’s the question Wisconsin voters have about state prisons as they choose between Republican Tom Tiffany and Democrat David Crowley.
• Tiffany said this week he supports building new prison capacity, while Crowley said he would prefer reducing prison time for nonviolent offenders.
• Gov. Tony Evers and a bipartisan group of lawmakers has crafted a plan to expand the state’s prison capacity by 530 beds, close Green Bay Correctional Institution and implement other changes to address overcrowding.
• Follow the growth of Wisconsin’s prison population using the Wisconsin Watch prison population tracker.

As Wisconsin’s prison population hits record highs, Republican gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said he is open to expanding and building prison capacity to address the rising number of people behind bars without releasing those in custody. 

An Aug. 28 state Department of Corrections report showed 23,854 people were incarcerated in Wisconsin’s adult institutions, exceeding the previous record in 2019 by 28. The population grew to 23,870 as of Sept. 4. That was just over 6,000 beyond the capacity of the state’s facilities, which include the aging Green Bay Correctional Institution. 

“I will work with lawmakers, corrections officials, and law enforcement to determine where we need to expand and build prison capacity so we can safely close Green Bay without releasing violent criminals back into our communities,” Tiffany said in a statement to Wisconsin Watch. “Every decision will be made with the safety of our communities and our corrections officers at the forefront.” 

It has been 25 years since Wisconsin opened any new prisons. The medium-security Redgranite Correctional Institution and the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility, intended for probation and parole holds, both opened in 2001, according to DOC. 

Tiffany faces Democratic nominee and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in the open race for governor this November. When asked about Tiffany’s comments on expanding prison capacity, Crowley said in a statement that “violent criminals must be held accountable for breaking the law, but we have to give nonviolent offenders a second chance.”

“That means expanding mental health services, offering substance use treatment support, and providing job training and career readiness courses so we can save taxpayer dollars by providing a real pathway to rehabilitation,” he said. 

Crowley pointed to Milwaukee County initiatives under his tenure as county executive that he said have “focused on prevention, intervention, healing, housing stability, behavioral health services, and pathways to opportunity for our young people.” 

The candidates’ responses show a stark divide in how the next administration might approach criminal justice issues. Tiffany and Crowley recently clashed over allegations that a Milwaukee County inmate used a county-provided tablet to intimidate witnesses. 

Wisconsin’s governor appoints the head of the Department of Corrections, the agency that oversees the state’s prisons. The governor also has the constitutional authority to grant pardons and commutations. Gov. Tony Evers has issued more than 2,000 pardons during his two terms in office and signed executive orders earlier this year to reinstate commutations. 

Tiffany and Crowley have also taken opposing views on commutations. Tiffany previously told Wisconsin Watch he would rescind those executive orders and said he would “not release violent criminals early.” Crowley said he would also not commute the sentences of those convicted of murder — a break from criteria Evers laid out that bars applications only from those previously convicted of several categories of sex crimes or child abuse. Crowley expressed support for using the governor’s executive clemency powers as a “tool to correct past wrongs” but said cases should be handled in a way that respects victims and communities. 

The state’s next governor is likely to face prison problems that have gone unresolved during years of political gridlock at the Capitol between Evers and the Republican-led Legislature. 

Evers in 2025 proposed a series of projects at a cost of $325 million that included closing Green Bay Correctional Institute and converting Lincoln Hills into an adult facility. Republican lawmakers objected to any plans that would reduce the capacity of the state’s facilities. 

Republicans in the 2025-27 state budget approved just $15 million for Evers’ proposal and suggested a 2029 closure date for GBCI, but Evers partially vetoed the 2029 closure deadline without a detailed plan from the Legislature to do so. The state building commission in October signed off on releasing the $15 million to start the planning process for Evers’ proposed projects. 

Rep. Benjamin Franklin, R-De Pere, told the Allouez Village Board on Sept. 1 that state agencies, the governor’s office and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have been working on draft legislation that would incorporate parts of Evers’ plan to revamp state facilities, close GBCI by 2031 and raise the statewide capacity by 530 beds to 18,503. The Legislature could act on the bill if Evers called a special session, Franklin said. 

The estimated total cost of the projects in the legislation would be about $628.7 million, Franklin told the board members, but a “more solid number” is expected from the Department of Administration in the next 30 to 45 days, Franklin said. 

“People have asked me as I’ve knocked doors and talked to people, attended the events, ‘Well, what about building a new mega facility somewhere?’” Franklin said at the meeting. “That would cost the state, by the estimates, anywhere between $1 billion to $1.3 billion. So, by adopting this plan again, that allows us to literally cut this approximately in half.”

Wisconsin Watch asked the Tiffany campaign whether the congressman supports the elements in the plan Franklin described. The campaign reiterated that Tiffany supports closing GBCI. 

“As governor, he will work with corrections officials, law enforcement, legislators, and local communities to determine the best path forward. Closing Green Bay will require additional prison capacity, whether through new construction, expansion, or other options,” the campaign said in a statement. “Tom will pursue the solution that best protects taxpayers and public safety while ensuring violent criminals remain behind bars and capacity is not reduced.” 

Republican Tom Tiffany backs expanding Wisconsin prisons as population hits record high 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 UW-Madison police officer received a letter of reprimand after a student journalist in April 2025 brought to light allegations of inappropriate behavior.
• The behavior included late-night texts and flirtatious conversations with female students while on duty and relaying confidential police information to help students avoid consequences for underage drinking.
• The internal police investigation into the officer’s behavior included no interviews with students.
• Two students reported the officer’s behavior to Greek life officials in October 2024. Greek life discussed the concerns with the officer, but did not alert UWPD.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison police officer received a letter of reprimand last summer after a student journalist alerted UWPD about allegations of the officer’s inappropriate conduct with sorority and fraternity members. A follow-up Wisconsin Watch investigation has found UWPD interviewed no students as part of its internal review.

Additionally, six months before the student journalist alerted police, two former sorority executives reported the officer’s unsettling behavior to UW-Madison’s Greek life staff, who discussed the matter with the officer but did not forward the complaint to UWPD.

Wisconsin Watch first reported in July 2025 on allegations that UWPD Officer Diego Lema Hernandez had initiated late-night texting conversations, asked female students on coffee dates while on duty and relayed confidential police information to help students avoid consequences for underage drinking.

Wisconsin Watch is now naming Lema Hernandez because UWPD confirmed he received a letter of reprimand in June 2025. Lema Hernandez did not respond to requests for comment.

UWPD investigators found that Lema Hernandez failed to exercise good judgment in communicating with students about his knowledge of when Madison police would check bars for underage patrons.

Other allegations, which are fully redacted from the final report, were not sustained.

Lema Hernandez, who joined UWPD in 2017, remains a downtown community liaison officer for the department.

Student journalist prompts investigation 

UWPD learned of allegations against Lema Hernandez in April 2025 from a UW-Madison student journalist, who spoke with 11 students on the condition of anonymity.

“We took these concerns and allegations very seriously and launched an internal investigation based on the information provided to us,” UWPD spokesperson Marc Lovicott said in an email.

According to the internal investigative report obtained under the state’s public records law, UWPD conducted two interviews with Lema Hernandez and a five-minute phone call with a Madison police officer. Investigators also reviewed dozens of Lema Hernandez’s text conversations and identified 70 that related to bar checks, often followed by short phone calls.

Referred to as “raids” by students, bar checks are police inspections of drinking establishments for compliance with alcohol laws, including age and capacity restrictions.

In one February 2025 example, a student texted Lema Hernandez about whether Whiskey Jacks Saloon would be checked that night and if they should leave. Lema Hernandez responded that he could call in five minutes. They spoke for about a minute, and the student later thanked him on the way home.

In other texts when asked about bar checks, Lema Hernandez responded with phrases like “likelihood is high tonight,” “nothing for tonight that I know of,” and “yesterday and tonight run a good probability.”

When questioned, Lema Hernandez told investigators that he called students to tell them he did not have information about when or where bar checks would occur — and that even if he did, he would not share it.

Throughout UWPD interviews, Lema Hernandez recognized that a lot of the text messages “look bad” when it comes to sharing information about bar checks. He also acknowledged the optics of a male officer meeting with sorority members and said he does not want to put himself or UWPD “in that position.”

“Better judgement should have been used in the language to convey what information you do and don’t have in several areas,” UWPD Assistant Chief Kari Sasso wrote in Lema Hernandez’s June 2025 letter of discipline. “You know you should have been more direct in your text messages sharing that you do not have information on where and when bars will be checked.” 

“Your verbal and written communications must be clear to ensure there are no misunderstandings. You are a valued member of the department. You go above and beyond to be a resource for your community, providing safety tips, meeting with community members, and assuring students have a sounding board to guide them through tough situations.”

UWPD concluded its investigation before Wisconsin Watch published the student journalist’s report in July 2025. The department did not interview any of the students who made the allegations, according to the investigative report.

Lovicott said UWPD still has not received any formal complaints from any campus department or students about Lema Hernandez. He said UWPD could not interview students because the student journalist did not provide the sources’ identities. He did not respond to a question about whether police attempted to use the text message records to contact students.

“Based on the findings of our investigation, there was no new information in the article that warranted reopening the investigation,” he said in an email.

University policy unclear on reporting police complaints

After last year’s article was published, Wisconsin Watch spoke with two former student sorority executives who said they brought concerns about Lema Hernandez to staff at the UW-Madison Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL) in October 2024 — six months before UWPD learned about separate allegations from the student journalist.

Both requested anonymity because they feared potential consequences for speaking publicly about former colleagues. Neither was among the 11 anonymous sources who were interviewed for the Wisconsin Watch article.

“I really appreciate you all making a story about this, I think this officer has made so many women feel this way,” one of the women wrote to Wisconsin Watch in response to the article.

She said Lema Hernandez was openly flirtatious, calling her sweetheart in conversation and texting her late at night.

“I had gone back and forth so many times, wondering, ‘Am I overreacting? Am I in the wrong? Is this my fault?’” she said later in an interview. “It became more and more clear to me that he was creating a power dynamic and really stepping over the line of being a professional resource.”

Her friend, another sorority executive, recalled one incident when Lema Hernandez spent the entire day hanging out at the Fraternity and Sorority Life office. When arrests came up in conversation, Lema Hernandez offered to “arrest” her, she said. She agreed, thinking it was funny — but left the interaction “physically, mentally and emotionally” uncomfortable after he handcuffed her hands behind her back. Wisconsin Watch reviewed a copy of a photo of the incident.

The women reported Lema Hernandez’s behavior to FSL staff, and their concerns were escalated to director Maggie Hayes, who told them later that month that she would reach out to Lema Hernandez directly, the sorority executive said.

In an email, Hayes initially told Wisconsin Watch that the complaint was shared “with the UWPD team.” After UWPD said it was not contacted about the complaint, she clarified that the office called Lema Hernandez directly to discuss the complaint.

UW-Madison’s Office of Student Affairs said in a statement that the complaint did not meet Title IX reporting requirements for sexual harassment or rise to the level of notifying Lema Hernandez’s supervisors or UWPD.

UWPD policy creates a clear internal reporting process once a complaint reaches UWPD. UW-Madison’s university-wide reporting policies, however, do not appear to require employees to forward non-Title IX complaints about UWPD officer conduct to the department.

“The FSL team confirmed that the described behavior did not meet the criteria for mandatory staff reporting,” said Jenny Bernhardt, director of communications for the university’s Office of Student Affairs. “With the student’s consent, (FSL) addressed the general issue directly with Officer Lema Hernandez as concerns raised by a larger group of FSL student leaders.”

Bernhardt spoke on behalf of Hayes, who did not respond when asked why she initially said FSL spoke with the UWPD team. Bernhardt confirmed FSL did not further escalate the information after speaking with Lema Hernandez.

“In the FSL staff conversation with Lema Hernandez in October 2024, it was agreed that his future communications with FSL students would be related to safety, security, and event management only, conveyed through UW-Madison channels, and include FSL Office staff,” Bernhardt said. 

UWPD records show Lema Hernandez communicated with students about bar checks about two dozen times between the October 2024 conversation and when UWPD launched its internal investigation in April 2025.

‘Who do you hold responsible?’

Lema Hernandez often visited sorority houses to give presentations covering campus safety, medical amnesty and behavior-based policing.

The student journalist who wrote the original Wisconsin Watch article attended one of Lema Hernandez’s sorority presentations and recorded audio in which Lema Hernandez told freshmen and sophomores, “Every now and then I might hold whatever door I’m manning open for the three or four of you to leave without any real consequences — but don’t tell my boss that. I say that because I’ve actually done it.”

UWPD investigators did not review the recording itself, but asked Lema Hernandez about the student journalist’s account of it. He told investigators he probably said something like he would “rather hold the door” but it’s not something he can or would do.

He also told investigators that part of his role as an officer is to ensure the Greek life community is following the university approval process when hosting social events at bars. 

Sylvia Butters, another student journalist, interviewed Lema Hernandez for a class project in February 2025. In a recording Butters provided to Wisconsin Watch, Lema Hernandez described how students would alert him about planned social events at bars, which he would relay to Madison police. He said he would then personally monitor the events and tell Madison police not to worry about checking them.

He mentioned a February 2024 fraternity event at 7 Iron Social, a since-closed sports bar on State Street. The event appears to match one where police found 106 of the 125 patrons were underage, according to an official city report on the incident.

“I (told the officers), from 9 to 11, there’s an event, it’s been checked. I will continue doing my checks. Essentially, don’t touch it until at least 11:30,” he told Butters.

Lema Hernandez told Butters that Madison police entered 7 Iron Social at 11:46 p.m. after an intoxicated individual “stumbled into a group of cops” who were planning to check a different bar. They found no one checking IDs or monitoring capacity at 7 Iron Social, he said.

“Who do you hold responsible?” Lema Hernandez told Butters. “For Officer Diego, like, y’all were good until 11:30 … Then, I have a conversation with the (fraternity), like, ‘I had you up until I couldn’t have you anymore.’”

“There’s a lot of things that I can do for people,” Lema Hernandez added. “I take, obviously, a big risk when I do it.”

Asked if Lema Hernandez was authorized to communicate with Madison police in the manner he described — including conveying when officers should or should not conduct a bar check — Lovicott said UWPD officers routinely work with Madison police.

“That is precisely what happened in this instance; information sharing helps our partners know about official events and where they’re located,” Lovicott wrote in an email. “It is purely information sharing, and has nothing to do with how MPD conducts patrols or enforcement actions.”

UW-Madison police disciplined an officer over student interactions. The investigation raises more questions. 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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All three of the Milwaukee Police Department’s automatic license plate reader systems will be subject to new security safeguards, department officials confirmed Wednesday.

The department’s confirmation follows Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s announcement regarding new restrictions aimed at preventing officer misuse and protecting privacy.

An MPD spokesperson said the changes will be incorporated into the department’s official policy. 

The mayor’s initial announcement focused on Flock Safety, one of three automated license plate reader systems used by MPD. NNS previously reported that the department also uses Genetec and Axon systems. 

All three systems automatically capture license plate information that can be searched later.

As of June, MPD had access to: 35 Flock cameras; 39 Genetec cameras; and Axon license plate readers installed in 80 patrol vehicles.

New limits

Only MPD supervisors will be allowed to access automatic license plate reader systems, Johnson said in his announcement.

Some MPD personnel have been accused of misusing Flock. MPD officer Josue Ayala was convicted in June of attempted misconduct in public office in connection with his use of Flock cameras.

Access to Milwaukee’s license plate reader systems will also be limited to MPD, excluding other law enforcement agencies. 

Supervisors may use the systems only to investigate Part I crimes, which include homicide, rape and aggravated assault, among others. They may also use the technology to investigate critical missing persons, drug trafficking organization and abductions.

A department said automatic license plate reader cameras will continue to passively capture data, but supervisors may access it only for appropriate investigations.

Transparency efforts

The mayor announced transparency measures as well. 

MPD will create a public dashboard detailing its use of license plate reader systems, and the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission will conduct semi-annual independent audits of use.

Johnson said the commission has already initiated an audit of Flock systems.

The announcement does not specify what information will appear on the dashboard or what metrics the audits will examine.

NNS asked the mayor’s office whether MPD will write the changes into its policies and for additional details about the dashboard and audits.

The mayor’s office referred the questions to MPD, confirming that the police chief has authority over department policy.

Risks and concerns

After Johnson’s announcement, Amanda Merkwae, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, said in a written statement the changes are “a step in the right direction” but that “Flock is still an incredibly invasive technology that has the power to indiscriminately surveil our communities on a mass scale.” 

Merkwae argued that using Flock should require a warrant based on probable cause. She also called for independent oversight and written policies for all MPD surveillance technologies use.

“We cannot only accept a solution where police are responsible for policing themselves,” Merkwae said.

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Milwaukee police: Flock restrictions will apply to other license plate reader systems 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 story has been updated with new information from the Milwaukee Police Department. 

Although Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson has announced new safeguards for the Milwaukee Police Department’s use of Flock Safety cameras, it remains unclear whether the rules will apply to all three of the city’s license plate reader systems or only to Flock.

Flock is one of three automated license plate reader systems used by MPD. NNS previously reported that the department also uses Genetec and Axon systems. 

All three systems automatically capture license plate information that can be searched later.

As of June, MPD had access to: 35 Flock cameras, 39 Genetec cameras and Axon license plate readers installed in 80 patrol vehicles.

New limits

According to Johnson’s announcement, only MPD supervisors will be allowed to access Flock. Officers and detectives will no longer have access.

Some MPD personnel have been accused of misusing Flock. Former MPD officer Josue Ayala, was convicted in June of attempted misconduct in public office in connection with his use of Flock cameras.

Access to Milwaukee’s Flock cameras will also be limited to MPD, excluding other law enforcement agencies. 

Supervisors will be allowed to use Flock cameras only for investigating Part I crimes, which include homicide, rape and aggravated assault, among others. They can also use the cameras in cases involving critical missing persons, drug trafficking organization investigations and abductions.

The mayor also announced transparency measures. 

MPD will create a public dashboard with information about its use of Flock, and the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission will conduct twice-annual independent audits of the department’s Flock use. 

Johnson said the commission has already begun an audit. 

The announcement does not specify what information will appear on the dashboard or what metrics the audits will examine.

NNS asked the mayor’s office whether the safeguards would extend to Genetec and Axon, whether the changes would be written into MPD policies and what the dashboard and audits would include. 

The mayor’s office referred the questions to MPD, saying that the police chief has authority over department policy.

MPD did not respond to questions from NNS.

Risks and concerns

After Johnson’s announcement, Amanda Merkwae, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, said in a written statement the changes are “a step in the right direction” but that “Flock is still an incredibly invasive technology that has the power to indiscriminately surveil our communities on a mass scale.” 

The use of Flock, Merkwae argued, should require a warrant based on probable cause. MPD should also face independent oversight and adopt written policies for all of the surveillance technologies it uses, she added.

“We cannot only accept a solution where police are responsible for policing themselves,” Merkwae said.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Milwaukee limits Flock cameras, leaving other license plate reader rules unclear 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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ICE arrests in Wisconsin hit a new peak. Follow what happens next. 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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The city of Sheboygan could be the latest Wisconsin community to cut ties with Flock Safety, the company behind a license plate reader camera system. 

Local officials in places like Oshkosh, Sturgeon Bay, Appleton, Verona and Dane County have already cut ties with the company. It comes as opponents of the technology have raised privacy concerns and worries about how the data can be accessed and shared. 

Sheboygan’s police chief and city administrator plan to ask the common council to terminate the police department’s contract with Flock Safety during an upcoming meeting, according to an Aug. 25 statement.

The statement said the police department has been using automated license plate reader technology for over 10 years, while 15 Flock Safety cameras have been used since 2024. 

“ALPR (automated license plate reader) technology and Flock-captured data have been successfully used to solve several serious criminal cases in the City,” the statement said.

The data from the license plate reader cameras can be accessed by other law enforcement agencies. And there has been a history of misuse of the technology by police officers in Wisconsin.

Last month, the police department “became aware of actions by Flock Safety believed to be inconsistent with the terms and expectations of the City’s contract and which undermine trust in the services provided,” according to the statement. 

“The Police Department confirmed the circumstances and will therefore ask the Common Council to terminate the contract,” the statement said. 

Sheboygan Police Chief Kurt Zempel said the use of technology “is an important part of our effectiveness in providing justice and safety for our community.”

“But as with any system that involves access to powerful technology or sensitive information, strong internal controls and community trust are vital,” Zempel said. “That trust must extend to the partners who provide those services.” 

The common council could vote to terminate the contract during a Sept. 8 meeting. Sheboygan Mayor Ryan Sorenson said public works staff have wrapped the cameras in plastic ahead of that meeting.

Sorenson said he supports the decision by the police chief and city administrator.

“Fundamentally, this is a bigger conversation that you’re seeing across the country,” Sorenson said. “And when you have powerful AI tools, we want to make sure that our community feels safe and trusted.”

Sorenson said the police chief has told him the technology has been used to help solve a few crimes. 

“The crux of the decision that we’re making on this primarily comes from an erosion of trust from Flock itself and how they were using our data,” Sorenson said.

Sheboygan Ald. Susie Boorse, the common council president, said she also has concerns around the data usage related to the technology. 

“I guess it boils down to the fact that we just can’t be too careful about how our data is being used,” Boorse said. “And in the end, while we obviously want public safety to be a priority, I think that we have to make those judgment calls about the way that we go about doing that, to the best of our capabilities.”

Flock cameras have been vandalized in more than 30 states, according to an NPR report. In Wisconsin, police in Waukesha recently reported a Flock camera there was damaged.

Meanwhile, Brookfield Ald. Catherine Kahler is asking the city to “review its use of automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology and participation in the Flock Safety network before our current agreement automatically renews in July 2027,” according to an Aug. 26 statement.

“I think we should understand how information collected through the system can be accessed and shared, what rights the vendor has regarding that information, how the technology and its capabilities are evolving, and whether our existing safeguards and oversight are sufficient,” Kahler said in the statement. “I also think it is appropriate to consider the implications of using public funds to participate in a privately operated system of this scale.” 

Letter from Milwaukee council members calls for further reforms

This week, members of the Milwaukee Common Council sent a letter to Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman and the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, or FPC, about the use of the camera system by the police department.

It comes after the department announced changes to department access to the system and changes to its audit process this year. Those changes were made after a former Milwaukee police officer was charged with using the system to check the location of the vehicle of the person he was dating and that person’s ex.  

The letter requested the commission look into more reforms related to the system and asked for a “complete history of all searches conducted by outside agencies using MPD camera data or conducted by MPD officers on behalf of outside agencies.” 

It also asked that a policy be adopted to suspend access to the Flock system, “when there is credible evidence of intentional personal or unauthorized use.” 

“This is an urgent moment, and a problem that will not correct itself,” the letter said. 

In response to that letter, a spokesperson for the department said MPD “respects and values the concerns and positions of our elected officials.”

“We will work with the FPC to address our Council members’ concerns and respond to the Council after we have carefully reviewed their request and can provide a factual and thoughtful response,” the statement said. “The exchange of information, positions and ideas between MPD and our elected officials is important as we both serve the same community. MPD is committed to transparency and engaging in important dialogue such as this.”

This story was originally published by WPR.

Flock Safety cameras in Sheboygan covered up by city 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’s prison population hit a record high this week, a new milestone for a system that has for decades held thousands more people than it was designed for. 

According to figures released Friday, the state’s Department of Corrections held 23,854 people in custody. That’s 28 above the record set in 2019 and nearly 6,000 beyond the prisons’ intended capacity. 

Wisconsin’s prisons have been severely over capacity for at least 20 years, prompting officials to add bunk beds and increase the number of people per cell. The three prisons that house only women are particularly overcrowded. There, staff have converted offices to dorms and, at times, set up beds in gyms.

Sarah Buckingham, who is incarcerated at Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center in Racine, told Wisconsin Watch in May that prison officials “just cram us in wherever they can.” That minimum-security women’s prison was designed to house 230 people. As of Friday, it held 495, more than twice its design capacity. The state’s other minimum-security women’s prison, the Milwaukee Women’s Center, was designed for 42 but now holds 104, making it Wisconsin’s  most crowded prison.

Contacted for comment, Department of Corrections spokesperson Kevin Hoffman said the department has “extremely limited statutory authority on its own to reduce the prison population.”

The new record comes years after Gov. Tony Evers vowed to ease prison crowding in a state that stands out nationally for disproportionately incarcerating Black residents. In a 2018 Democratic gubernatorial debate, Evers — who has spoken of “second chances” and “redemption” — called a goal by activists to cut Wisconsin’s prison population by half  “worth accomplishing.”

But the Republican-led Legislature has stymied such efforts, spokesperson Britt Cudaback said, pointing to the governor’s “eight years of budget requests to reform our state’s justice system.” 

The governor doesn’t choose who goes to prison or for how long, Cudaback added. In 1998, Wisconsin legislators adopted one of the country’s most punitive “truth-in-sentencing” laws, requiring most prisoners to spend their full sentence behind bars, without the possibility of parole. Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson signed the bipartisan legislation into law.

Policy changes such as reducing sentences or diverting more people to treatment would require action by judges or the Legislature, though the governor’s administration can singlehandedly address revocations, a common way people end up in prison. 

People on court-ordered supervision can end up back in prison if they allegedly violate the rules of their release, even without committing a new crime. In 2021, the Department of Corrections raised the threshold for revocations in certain circumstances, which corresponded with an initial dip in technical revocations.

Evers recently took another unilateral step that could reduce the prison population, though likely modestly. In April, he signed executive orders allowing eligible Wisconsin prisoners to apply to have their sentences shortened for the first time in 25 years. 

It’s unclear how many people might receive commutations or how much their sentences might be shortened. The Commutation Advisory Board heard testimony from a dozen applicants at its inaugural hearing on Aug. 21. A second hearing, featuring another dozen applicants, is scheduled for Sept. 18.

Not just tight quarters

Overcrowding stresses prisons in a variety of ways, increasing dangers and reducing quality of life for both prisoners and correctional officers. A higher prison population requires more officers, who can be tough to recruit and retain. In 2023, officials locked down Waupun Correctional Institution — canceling programs and confining prisoners to their cells for months — because they didn’t have enough officers to operate normally, Wisconsin Watch reporting revealed.

Today, the state’s adult prison system is short about 658 full-time correctional officers and sergeants, the latest DOC figures show. The system has 35 fewer people in those positions than it did in May, even as the prison population grew by about 250.

A higher prison population can increase competition for limited spots in treatment, education and work programs designed to prepare prisoners for release. 

Already, many prisoners wait months or years for those opportunities, and advocates say increased crowding could keep people in prison longer or contribute to their return — a cycle that could further pack prisons.

A prisoner at Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac told Wisconsin Watch that crowded conditions make it harder to offer a key type of counseling. Since 2019, the maximum-security women’s prison has allowed prisoners to meet with certified peer support specialists, fellow prisoners trained and paid by the Department of Corrections to share their own experiences and support others navigating challenges behind bars. 

Converting more spaces into dorms leaves fewer places for peer specialists to hold one-on-one meetings, said Natalie Murphy, who has worked as a peer specialist for seven years. Fewer than 10 peer specialists serve the 1,074-person facility, Murphy said. 

“There’s a huge waitlist, and we are trying to accommodate all of the people, because we want to help people,” Murphy said. “But one of the biggest problems is that we can’t hire anybody because we do not have physical space to work in.”

Solutions elusive

Policymakers and prisoner advocates disagree about how to ease crowding. In the major revamp he proposed last year, Evers called for, among other things:

• Closing the nearly 130-year-old Green Bay Correctional Institution.
• Transforming Waupun Correctional Institution into a “vocational village.” 
• Converting the troubled Lincoln Hills School from a juvenile prison to an adult prison.
• Converting John C. Burke Correctional Center in Waupun into a women’s prison.
• Expanding a program that allows some people incarcerated for nonviolent crimes to qualify for early release by completing substance use treatment. 

Together the changes would reduce the state’s prison capacity by 700, the governor’s office said. The plan drew criticism from Republican lawmakers, who pointed to the state’s crowded prisons as a sign that the state needs more space in its prisons, not less.

State Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, said the answer is “right-sizing” the population by “adding additional beds, reducing overcrowding and making facilities safer for not only our inmates, but for our staff,” WPR reported. 

Last October, the State of Wisconsin Building Commission released $15 million to plan for Evers’ proposed changes. 

“The governor’s corrections proposal would have paved the way for much-needed facilities upgrades and expanded programming to address many of the challenges we face today,” DOC spokesperson Hoffman said. “Unfortunately, the Legislature did not fully fund the plan and only provided $15 million for planning.”

Wisconsin spends about $1.06 billion a year on its prisons, or 5% of the state budget. State officials estimate it costs roughly $50,000 to incarcerate one person for a year in Wisconsin. By comparison, the state spends around $15,000 a year per student in the public K-12 school system. 

Meanwhile, some states have significantly reduced their prison populations in recent decades. New York has cut the number of people behind bars by half since 2008 as a result of various factors, including ending incarceration for most technical violations of supervision rules. Republican-led Texas has closed several prisons as a result of bipartisan criminal justice reforms, including a greater focus on substance abuse treatment and diversion. 

Brittany Carloni contributed reporting.

Wisconsin prisons hit record population as crowding strains staffing and programs 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 man who was being held at the Milwaukee County Jail is disputing the account from the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office about the events leading up to the in-custody death last week of Kourtney Edwards, a 45-year-old Milwaukee man.

Alex Williams, 33, said officials at the jail ignored initial pleas to help Edwards. 

He said he heard people in a nearby holding cell banging on the door and yelling through a slot that someone was vomiting, wasn’t doing well and needed help.

“Those calls went ignored for a while,” Williams said, estimating that they lasted several minutes.

Williams said officers eventually removed the man from the holding cell and began walking him toward the nurses’ station. He said Edwards made it about halfway there before appearing to have a seizure and collapsing. Williams said he was foaming at the mouth.

“He was not assessed by nurses until he was passed out on the ground,” Williams said. “I wouldn’t even call that an assessment. That was them trying to save his life.”

Williams said he arrived at the jail around 2 p.m. Monday, Aug. 17, and remained in the booking area until early Wednesday morning. He said he was still going through the booking process when Edwards became ill Tuesday morning.

Timeline from sheriff’s office

The account from the sheriff’s office previously reported by NNS stated that Edwards was brought to the jail the morning of Tuesday, Aug. 18, had been initially medically cleared and was awaiting a secondary screening when he reported vomiting and feeling ill shortly before 8:30 a.m.

Nurses then assessed him and determined he needed to be taken to a hospital. While an ambulance crew and two deputies prepared to transport the man to the hospital, he experienced a medical emergency. 

He lost his pulse and stopped breathing.

Emergency personnel attempted life-saving measures, but he was pronounced dead at 9:30 a.m.

A representative from the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office told NNS Tuesday that it would “be a while” before the cause and manner of Edwards’ death was determined.

Concerns about in-jail deaths

Alan Chavoya, treasurer and organizer for the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said Williams’ account reaffirms concerns he already had about Edwards’ death.

“It’s deeply upsetting and infuriating if he was able to be assisted sooner – if that would have saved his life,” Chavoya said. “Could this have been prevented? It seems like yes.”

The sheriff’s office told NNS Friday that it had no comment beyond saying that it is an active, ongoing investigation and that questions should be directed to the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office, which is conducting the investigation.

The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office has not responded to a request for comment.

Edwards’ death is at least the 10th of a person in Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office custody since June 2022, including six deaths during a 14-month period in 2022 and 2023 and three in 2025.

Other allegations

Williams also said the man’s death took place amid overcrowding, booking delays and repeated instances in which staff failed to promptly respond to requests for assistance.

He described the cells as hot, with little or no airflow, and said people repeatedly yelled through slots in the cell doors that they needed water or to use the bathroom.

“It was often ignored,” Williams said.

He said the jail was overcrowded. 

His holding cell was marked for 12 people but held between 13 and 20 people at different points, he said. Williams said the overcrowding made the toilet difficult to access because people were sleeping or standing around it.

Williams also described significant booking delays, made worse because there was no third-shift booking staff Monday night.

He said his bail was posted at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, but that he was not booked into the system until about 2:30 p.m. that day and was not released until around 1 a.m. Wednesday.

Nothing changed after death

Williams said he noticed no real changes after Edwards died during the time he spent in custody until he was released. He said officers still sometimes ignored pleas for assistance.

Williams believes the conditions at the jail contributed to the man’s death.

“They should take every call for help seriously,” he said.

Chavoya said the allegations from Williams fit what he sees as a broader pattern at the jail, including neglect and perhaps abuse “of the people who are supposed to be, as we’re reminded, under their care.”

Chavoya said he wants investigators to determine what happened and for the sheriff’s office to release video of the incident.

Last Friday, a spokesperson for the Office of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley told NNS in a written statement that the incident doesn’t raise concerns about medical care at the jail.

“The jail’s medical staff and Milwaukee Fire Department EMS performed lifesaving measures, but, despite best efforts, the individual died,” the spokesperson for Crowley’s office said. 

When NNS reached out with Williams’ account, a spokesperson for Crowley’s office said that the initial report from the sheriff’s office of the incident did not indicate cause for immediate concern.

“The matter is now under review by the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office,” the spokesperson said. 

Williams said he is worried about potential retaliation for speaking publicly about what he witnessed but believes coming forward is important.

He said he wants “to model morals, bravery and humanitarianism” for his family.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Eyewitness says Milwaukee jail officials initially ignored pleas to help man who died in custody 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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Local jail reform advocates say they have serious concerns about the death of a 45-year-old man in custody at the Milwaukee County Jail on Aug. 18.

Many of their concerns are not new.

“It’s a very painful sort of flashback of the different cases we’ve encountered where people are in for a bit, or for a duration of time … and assistance isn’t provided,” said Alan Chavoya, treasurer and organizer with the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

The alliance is a Black and brown-led grassroots organization that says it aims “to end police crimes, advance community control of policing, and build collective power.”

Last week’s death is at least the 10th death of a person in Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office custody since June 2022, including six deaths during a 14-month period in 2022 and 2023 and three in 2025.

According to the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, deputies picked up the man from the West Allis Police Department at 4:25 a.m. Aug. 18 and brought him to the Milwaukee County Jail.

During the booking process, Wellpath nursing staff medically cleared him, although a secondary medical screening remained pending. Shortly before 8:30 a.m., the man told jail staff he had vomited and did not feel good.

Nurses assessed him and determined he needed transportation to a hospital.

While an ambulance crew and two deputies prepared to transport him, the man experienced a medical emergency, lost his pulse and stopped breathing.

Emergency crews and Milwaukee Fire Department first responders attempted lifesaving measures, but officials pronounced him dead at 9:30 a.m.

“The timeline just seems very, very odd,” Chavoya said. “How is it that people are approved or like given the green light to be administered into the jail, and then less than a couple of hours later, the person is vomiting? Where was the failure there?”

Chavoya said the initial medical screening by Wellpath, the jail’s contracted health care provider, also raises questions.

“We’ve had our eye on Wellpath for quite some time, and it’s not just a Milwaukee issue – it’s a nationwide issue,” he said.

Robert Thibault, vice president of Prison Action Milwaukee, an advocacy and support group for people affected by the criminal justice system, and a member of the Sheriff’s Community Advisory Board, shared some of Chavoya’s concerns. 

“Did everybody do everything they possibly could have? Was everything done that could have possibly been done in a reasonable time?” Thibault asked. 

He pointed to an independent audit completed in 2024 that identified deficiencies in several areas, including mental health services, suicide prevention and staffing.

Thibault said he recently toured the jail and saw improvements compared with several years ago.

NNS contacted the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office but did not immediately receive a response.

County Executive David Crowley’s office responds

In a written statement to NNS, a spokesperson for the Office of County Executive David Crowley said the office is confident that everything possible was done for this man.

“The cause of death is still under review by the Medical Examiner’s Office, but this incident doesn’t raise concerns about medical care at the jail,” the statement read. “The jail’s medical staff and Milwaukee Fire Department EMS performed lifesaving measures, but despite best efforts, the individual died.”

Milwaukee County Supervisor Justin Bielinski, chair of the County Board’s Judiciary, Law Enforcement and General Services Committee, said he spoke with jail officials about the death, but the investigation will ultimately make clear what happened.

As the investigation proceeds, Chavoya said he wants accountability and concrete steps to prevent another death in custody. 

“Maybe you can’t give us everything, but, at least, get some public trust again by explaining what the steps you are taking to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” he said.

What happens next

Bielinski said he expects the investigation, being conducted by the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office, to take several months. Meanwhile, he said he is exploring changes that could identify medical emergencies sooner.

Bielinski said his focus after incidents like this is to figure out “how can we improve process.”

Specifically, Bielinski wants the county to explore providing wearable health monitors to people awaiting booking.

The devices could track measures such as pulse and blood oxygen levels and then alert staff to a medical emergency sooner. He said he asked Wellpath to explore a pilot program for the use of such devices.

“We just give ourselves the chance to get ahead of whatever medical emergency might be happening sooner,” Bielinski said.

Milwaukee jail death raises familiar concerns among reform advocates 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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This story is part of The uprising in Sherman Park: 10 years later, a Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service series examining resilience, collective action and ongoing efforts to address the inequities that sparked a pivotal moment in Milwaukee’s history.

Ten years after the Sherman Park uprising, many of the economic conditions residents and activists pointed to as problematic – even dangerous – in 2016 still remain, according to U.S. Census Bureau and local data analyzed by NNS.

Many residents at the time said the unrest on Aug. 13, 2016, was about more than the fatal police shooting of Sylville Smith by a Milwaukee police officer. They pointed to long-standing poverty, decades of disinvestment and a lack of opportunity as some of the conditions that fueled the uprising.

Today, even as some measures of economic progress have improved, many of those same challenges are still present in the Sherman Park neighborhood.

“Some good changes have happened,” said Vaun Mayes, a community organizer and one of the city’s violence interrupters. “But for the most part, Sherman Park is still basically the same and has the same general issues.”

What we looked at

To examine how Sherman Park has changed since the uprising, NNS analyzed U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey five-year estimates, comparing the 2016 and 2024 datasets, the most recent five-year data. 

Because the Census Bureau does not define Sherman Park as a neighborhood, NNS approximated the neighborhood using census tracts and a city neighborhood map. 

NNS examined:

• Population
• Race and ethnicity
• Poverty
• Employment
• Educational attainment
• Median household income
• Homeownership
• Housing vacancy
• Median gross rent

The comparison between indicators then and now shows a mixed picture.

Taken together, the findings suggest that although some measures associated with upward economic mobility improved, many of the economic outcomes often associated with those indicators, including higher incomes and greater housing stability, did not.

For example, the share of adults age 25 and older holding at least a bachelor’s degree increased from 7.2% to 8.9%, and the unemployment rate declined from 20.1% to 15.8%. However, poverty rose across every age group at the same time. 

Poverty increased most among elderly residents, increasing from 15.9% in 2016 to 33.0% in 2024. 

Similarly, median household income, adjusted for inflation, and homeownership declined: Roughly seven in 10 occupied housing units were renter-occupied in 2024, compared with roughly two-thirds in 2016.

Although incomes declined, the average cost of rent, adjusted for inflation, increased from $1,126 to $1,196. Population also declined in the area since 2016.

The neighborhood remained overwhelmingly Black, though it became slightly more racially diverse.

Public safety

Public safety trends also show a mixed bag.

Through Aug. 10, Milwaukee police recorded 97 aggravated assaults, 12 nonfatal shootings and three homicides in Sherman Park this year. All three types of crimes were up from the same point last year when police recorded 67 aggravated assaults, five nonfatal shootings and two homicides in that time span.

At the same time, robberies, thefts and carjackings were all below last year’s levels.

Specific types of violence in Sherman Park have fluctuated over the course of the past 10 years, according to data from the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission. 

The neighborhood recorded 35 shooting victims in 2016, including homicides and nonfatal shootings. That number rose to 47 in 2017 – the year following the uprising. 

The number of homicide and nonfatal shooting victims has fluctuated over the decade, rising sharply during the pandemic years before falling to 17 in 2024.

ShotSpotter data from MPD gives a sense of the frequency of gun shots throughout the neighborhood over the past few years. 

Sherman Park accounted for roughly 7% of gunfire calls citywide between 2021 and 2025.

Community response

“There’s still good people there that are working to improve things that are happening on the ground in that neighborhood,” Mayor Cavalier Johnson said.

Johnson pointed to the Sherman Park Community Association; Sherman Phoenix, a marketplace built on the grounds of a bank that was set ablaze during the unrest; the neighborhood’s new Business Improvement District; and his administration’s Year of Housing initiative as examples of continued investment in the neighborhood.

Karin Tyler, executive director of the city’s Department of Community Wellness and Safety, said the Sherman Park uprising was a defining moment for Milwaukee, one that exposed deep challenges but also sparked action, resilience and a stronger commitment to community-led public safety. 

From that moment came critical investments, she said, including Milwaukee’s Blueprint for Peace and Program the Parks, which created safe spaces and positive opportunities for young people.

“Sherman Park also has one of the strongest networks of block captains through the Alert Neighbor Program, a reflection of residents taking ownership of the safety and strength of their neighborhood,” Tyler said. “Local businesses throughout Sherman Park and the surrounding area have stepped up as well, investing in and working alongside the community.” 

Johnson said that Black homeownership has improved citywide, though those gains haven’t appeared yet in the Sherman Park data analyzed by NNS.

Despite the challenges, Mayes has also seen signs of progress.

“SPCA (Sherman Park Community Association) has become a stronger and more vocal and invested organization for the area and have taken up and advocated for more issues,” he said.

“But has housing changed? Has job access changed? Quality of life?” he asked. 

Mayes said he’s also noticed a gap between investment and outcomes in youth services. 

“Investment and grants focused on issues of youth have been prioritized. However, the impact from those investments could be more impactful and intentional,” he said.

Work to be done

While citing progress, Johnson also acknowledged work that still needs to occur in the neighborhood, especially given its recent past. 

“Certainly, there are challenges. There can be lagging things, especially when something traumatic like that happens,” Johnson said. “It is like a bomb going off in a place like that.” 

Johnson said the city needs to do more work on housing in Sherman Park.

He said his administration’s plans to focus on housing this year will eventually impact neighborhoods such as Sherman Park.

Though the changes will take time, Johnson said, some of the issues that have plagued Sherman Park and other neighborhoods for years have historic roots. He pointed to decades of deindustrialization that continues to affect Milwaukee.

“What it did is leave cities, communities like Milwaukee and the Upper Midwest … holding the bag, looking around like, ‘Where are the opportunities?’” he said. “That is not a city of Milwaukee issue, it’s more of a national and international sort of issue.”

Milwaukee Public Schools also recognizes the deep pain that sparked the unrest in Sherman Park, said Stephen Davis, the district’s media relations manager. He stressed the district’s commitment to serving students and families across every neighborhood in Milwaukee.

“Specifically, we are actively directing investments toward schools in historically disinvested communities,” Davis said, citing MPS’ investment of nearly $13 million in four schools on the North Side as well as a new districtwide literacy plan to address the “multigenerational literacy crisis.” 

The Milwaukee Police Department stressed its commitment to Sherman Park and other communities as well. 

The department remains committed to strengthening trust and partnership, a spokesperson for the department said. 

“We continue to enhance police-community relations and ensure our training, policies and risk-management practices align with nationally recognized best standards,” the spokesperson said.

Mayes said he’s seen some fruit of efforts to improve police-community relations, describing the relationship as “leaps better than back then.”

The city’s formal body that pays close attention to how the police and community are relating to each other is the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission. 

“The (Fire and Police Commission) is planning some more meetings out in the community, which is exciting,” said Commissioner Krissie Fung.

“I’m also looking forward to continuing to improve the complaint process with the new investigator that is coming on board,” she said. 

Fung acknowledged that the commission’s role in overseeing the Police Department has changed significantly over the past decade, particularly following the passage of Act 12, which shifted some crucial authority of the commission to the police chief.

At the time, both the chair and vice chair of the commission resigned in protest.

“Act 12 was a blow to the whole city,” Amanda Avalos, the commission’s former vice chair, previously told NNS. “It took away something that was a really positive thing that the city had. … It was a really unique form of community power.”

Fung said one high point for transparency was the adoption of Standard Operating Procedure 575 governing the public release of police video.

Police video of Sylville Smith’s shooting death wasn’t released until June 2017, when it was shown during the murder trial of Milwaukee Police Officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown. He was eventually acquitted of Smith’s killing but sentenced to prison on an unrelated sexual assault charge. 

Why these metrics?

The symptoms residents said helped give rise to the unrest in 2016 reflected what researchers describe as the social determinants of health — the economic and social conditions that shape people’s health and quality of life.

Those conditions include employment, education, income, housing stability and neighborhood conditions.

“Limited access to stable employment, economic opportunity and resources can contribute to the conditions that increase the risk of violence,” Tyler said. “Public safety cannot be separated from economic stability and opportunity.”

Tyler said improving conditions means investing in local leaders like Vaun Mayes and programs that support youth engagement, violence prevention, economic opportunity and community-centered public safety.  

Today, many Milwaukee leaders continue to describe violence prevention in those terms.

Michael Levas, a specialist in pediatrics and emergency medicine at Children’s Wisconsin, says that while parenting plays an important role in preventing violence, parents also need stable housing, economic opportunity and community support to help children succeed. 

In other words, economic conditions can increase the risk factors associated with violence.

Mayes said the data trends in Sherman Park since the uprising acknowledged the good, bad and yet to come:

“We have some great things and progress, yet there is still much work left to do.”

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Paul Kiefer of Wisconsin Watch contributed to this report.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

10 years after uprising, stubborn challenges persist in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood 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.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Click here to read highlights from the story

• 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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Click here to read highlights from the story

• Gov. Tony Evers reopened the commutations process in April – the first time in 25 years Wisconsin prisoners had the opportunity to request shorter sentences. 
• The Commutation Advisory Board will meet from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Friday. The virtual meeting is open to the public with no registration required. 
• It will stream at www.youtube.com/@GovCommutations and/or wiseye.org/live.
• Natalie Murphy, one of 12 people who will speak at the hearing, told Wisconsin Watch she spent two weeks reading through her application before submitting it.
• The ACLU of Wisconsin also released new polling this week that shows a majority of Wisconsinities favor some form of clemency for some individuals.

A dozen incarcerated Wisconsinites will publicly make their case for clemency on Friday.

Those individuals represent a fraction of the people who’ve applied for commutations since Gov. Tony Evers reopened the process in April, marking the first opportunity in 25 years for Wisconsin prisoners to request their sentences be shortened.

The Commutation Advisory Board, appointed by the governor, will recommend which applicants’ sentences Evers should commute. Initial announcements said the board would hold its first meeting in June, but it’s now scheduled for Friday, Aug. 21, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The meeting, which is virtual, is open to the public with no registration required. It will stream at www.youtube.com/@GovCommutations and/or wiseye.org/live, according to the governor’s office.

Among those addressing the committee Friday is Natalie Murphy, who was sentenced in 2016 to 20 years in prison and six and a half years of extended supervision for first-degree reckless homicide and second-degree recklessly endangering safety. Incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, she’s spent the last seven years working full time as a certified peer specialist, sharing her own experience and offering a listening ear to fellow prisoners for $1 an hour. 

“Being able to take the things that I have made mistakes in, or the pain that I have … and show people that there’s hope to get through that, is crucial to who I am at this point in my life,” Murphy said.

When she heard the governor’s commutations announcement, she filled out the 17-page application. For two weeks, she read through it every day.

“I’d start in the morning, like, ‘OK, does this reflect who I am as a person?’ And then I would tweak it,” Murphy said. When she was ready, she got it notarized and mailed it. 

At the end of July, she got a letter saying she’d been selected for a hearing.

“I was shaking quite a bit,” Murphy said. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

Murphy acknowledges that one purpose of the legal system is to punish people for their crimes by removing them from the rest of society. But she thinks the commutation process shows people that rehabilitation matters too.

“If we do not emphasize rehabilitation and second chances and putting faith back into people, it can create a really dangerous and toxic environment,” Murphy said.

Poll shows Wisconsinites favor clemency

The majority of Wisconsinites favor some form of clemency for at least some individuals, according to a new poll commissioned by the ACLU of Wisconsin. The poll, conducted in March by public opinion research firm GBAO, surveyed 800 registered voters in Wisconsin. 

Of those voters, 51% support ending or shortening the sentences of prisoners “who meet certain selected criteria” if courts determine they can “successfully and safely re-enter their communities.” Thirty-seven percent opposed the idea.

The poll found voters were more likely to support early release for incarcerated individuals who are on hospice or need extensive care in their old age, as well as for female prisoners who killed or attacked an alleged abuser, and for prisoners who have served 20 years or more for a crime they committed as a minor.

Respondents also support pardons for a variety of Wisconsinites who’ve served their sentences. Pardons, which Gov. Evers has issued throughout his tenure, officially forgive an offense and restore the person’s civil rights. In Wisconsin, pardons are currently available only to individuals who completed their full sentences, including any extended supervision, at least five years ago. Though these pardons don’t shorten sentences, they can make it easier to get a job, housing or a professional license.

Eighty percent of ACLU survey respondents said they support pardons for individuals convicted of nonviolent crimes, and 50% said they support pardons for those convicted of violent crimes.

Wisconsin’s next governor will determine whether Wisconsinites will continue to receive commutations after Evers leaves office in January. 

In April, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany’s gubernatorial campaign told Wisconsin Watch he would rescind Evers’ executive orders on commutations because they allow people convicted of murder to apply. 

Under Evers’ executive order only those previously convicted of sexual assault, physical abuse or sexual exploitation of a child, trafficking of a child, incest or soliciting a child for prostitution are ineligible for commutations. 

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who won the Democratic gubernatorial primary, told Wisconsin Watch in April he would work with the Legislature to “institutionalize” Evers’ commutations process but that he “would not allow commutations of murderers.”

For now, many Wisconsin prisoners are holding out hope that their applications will be granted before any potential changes to the process. 

On Friday, Murphy will read from the personal statement she was told to prepare, explaining why she’s in prison, what rehabilitation she’s done, what she’d do if she got out and why she thinks she deserves a commutation. 

Beyond that, she’s not sure what to expect. She doesn’t know when or how she’ll learn what the board and the governor decide. If she doesn’t receive a commutation, she’ll remain incarcerated until her scheduled release date in 2036. 

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s prison population is nearing a record high. As of Friday, Aug. 14, the system held 23,789 prisoners, just 37 shy of the record set in 2019. That’s nearly 6,000 people more than the system was designed for, according to the Department of Corrections.

Wisconsin Watch reporter Brittany Carloni contributed to this report.

Wisconsin to hold commutations hearing Friday 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.