The Milwaukee Police Department has a hiring problem.

It can’t find enough recruits to offset retirements and the departure of others. 

Ald. Lamont Westmoreland, who represents the 5th District on the city’s Northwest Side, said residents are feeling the impact.

“Lack of police presence, long wait times on calls, all tied back to the lack of sworn officers that MPD has,” Westmoreland said.

Leon Todd, executive director of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, which has primary responsibility in the city for recruiting, testing and hiring new officers, agrees.

“Having more officers and growing the size of MPD will do a host of things to improve public safety,” he said. “Shorter response times, higher clearance rates, more proactive time for officers to do follow-up or investigative work and have greater visibility and engagement opportunities in the community all drive down crime in various ways.”

In 2023, the Milwaukee Fire and Police Academy graduated 101 new police officers, while the Milwaukee Police Department lost 112 officers to retirement, resignation or termination, Westmoreland said.

The pace of recruitment is slow again this year, with departures of officers once again outpacing new police cadets.

The city also risks missing mandates that require beefing up the number of police officers in the city as part of the Act 12 Wisconsin funding law or face millions in fines. Act 12 created avenues to implement local sales taxes as a way to pump more money into the budget and offset spiraling costs.

“I have no issue with the mandate because I do think that we need more officers on the streets,” Westmoreland said. “At the same time, you can’t force people to apply for the job.”

Recruitment challenges and efforts

Westmoreland said Milwaukee is among a number of urban cities that are facing similar hiring challenges, including competition from better-paying suburban police departments with less dangerous work environments.

“We can’t use that as a crutch,” Westmoreland said. “We’ve got to be creative with the approach of recruitment.”

Todd said the Fire and Police Commission has made several adjustments over the past few years to find new police, including hiring two staff members dedicated to recruitment, participating in more community events and job fairs and ramping up marketing efforts to city residents.

“One of the things we’ve tried to do is highlight the stories of officers to let residents know that they are people that care about the community and want to help make it safer,” Todd said.

The commission also now accepts applications year-round instead of shorter windows of a few months. It also changed the testing process to allow for online entrance exams, eliminating additional barriers for applicants. 

Changes since pandemic and civil unrest

Kristine Rodriguez, a deputy for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office who also supports recruitment efforts, said her organization faces similar challenges as MPD, especially since COVID and the George Floyd protests.

“Some of the things that happened during that time still resonate with people,” she said.

She said pay is also an issue, with suburban departments offering hiring bonuses and higher starting pays. They also work fewer hours sometimes, she said, as staffing shortages can result in mandatory overtime and fewer days off.

The current starting salary for recruits at MPD is $47,673.69 and increases to $63,564.75 upon graduation from the academy. Police officers can earn up to $84,743.87 while supervisors and other specialists can earn more.

‘Under a microscope’

Another possible deterrent, Rodriguez said, is the scrutiny officers face nowadays.

“You’re under a microscope 24/7 and that might scare some candidates away,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said that her department places a heavy emphasis on community engagement, cultural competency and mental health training and that its relationship with the community has improved. She said the job itself is extremely fulfilling.

“We know that our heart is in the right place, and that’s what makes the job the most rewarding is doing good for the community,” she said.

Others weigh in

Gregory Barachy, who’s worked for the Milwaukee Fire Department for 29 years, said he thinks that being a police officer is probably less desirable now because of the danger and the lack of accountability for those who commit crimes.

“Crime is insane here, car theft is an epidemic along with the driving that goes with it,” Barachy said. “And then if you happen to arrest someone, they are released without penalty to do it again. Why would someone want to risk their lives for that?”

Barachy, who recently began a position with the Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative, said the fire department has also experienced a huge reduction in applicants.

“We only had a list of 250 this time, while 20 years ago the list was 10,000,” he said.

Carla Jones, whose partner was mistaken as a suspect and arrested by Brookfield police in November 2023, said she believes fewer people want to become police officers because of a lack of support they receive.

“Some of the main reasons people are joining law enforcement less and less is the lack of morale or real support officers are given,” Jones said. “They’re not doing that because they’re working on a reactive mentality.” 

A call to disinvest

Devin Anderson is membership and campaign director for the African American Roundtable, which launched the Liberate MKE campaign in 2019 to push for divestment in law enforcement and more investment in community programming.

“In order to build a more just Milwaukee, we have to be moving money away from police and policing,” Anderson said. “We’d rather see fully funded libraries.”

Anderson said that residents want more safety and that some view policing as the only way to achieve that. But, he said, creating a safer city requires addressing root causes of crime, which the police department doesn’t do.

“They respond after something happens,” Anderson said. “What people actually want is more investments in their neighborhood.”

Testing a challenge

Two years ago, Eddie Juarez-Perez saw an ad seeking new cadets for the Milwaukee Police Department.

“I decided to answer the call for service,” he said.

Juarez-Perez applied and passed the background check and written and physical exam. But he failed a psychological exam taken by all potential recruits.

“They said I was deemed not suitable for the position,” Juarez-Perez said.

He isn’t giving up.

“I look at being a police officer as being a public servant,” Juarez-Perez said. “I love my city and want to help people have a good quality of life here.”

Rodriguez said she’s been working to recruit more women involved in law enforcement. But some she said are unable to meet the physical requirements needed to join.

“I think that definitely is a barrier for a lot of women who don’t have upper body strength or have time to train,” she said.

MPD hosts fit camps and other support to help potential cadets meet physical and testing requirements to become an officer.

“We’re trying to give people the best opportunity to prepare and succeed,” Todd said.

For more information

The Fire and Police Commission is recruiting for its next academy cohort.

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

Help wanted: Can the Milwaukee Police Department fix its hiring problem? 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.

The Milwaukee Police Administration Building downtown. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)

Back in July, a lot happened while the Republican National Convention (RNC) was going on in downtown Milwaukee. Donald Trump accepted his party’s presidential nomination. Local residents protested the RNC. Out-of-state police killed an unhoused man in King Park, and the convention brought so much traffic to the gay and bisexual dating app Grindr that it crashed. Those events and more were probably followed by the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) using a new tool to scan, scrape and search online activity. 

In April, the MPD announced that it was seeking an open source intelligence tool ahead of the RNC. Basically, anything which can be openly seen and accessed online counts as open source intelligence. Using the tool, the MPD planned to augment its online monitoring capabilities. What would have taken hours just a few years ago could be reduced to minutes. By the end of May, MPD had settled on an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered software called Babel Street. The contract for Babel Street, which was not to exceed $43,673.50, was awarded on May 23.

A Request for Proposal (RFP) document, compiled by the Pewaukee-based technology brokerage company Abaxent, provides details on Babel Street. The document was obtained by Wisconsin Examiner through open records requests. Utilized by the U.S. Armed Forces, intelligence agencies and the federal government, Babel Street “empowers users to extend their search to the farthest corners of the globe, netting data beyond the traditional scope of [publicly available information] in a safe and secure environment,” the RFP document states. “It opens the door to enriched and standardized [publicly available information] data from over 220 countries.”

Not only can Babel Street search online content in over 200 languages, it also employs “sentiment scoring” in over 50 languages. A Babel Street glossary of terms webpage states that sentiment analysis involves determining “if a given text is expressing a positive, negative sentiment or no particular sentiment (neutral).” The RFP document also claims that Babel Street’s use of AI “accelerates investigations and uncovers connections.”  

An MPD spokesperson echoed that point, saying in an emailed statement to Wisconsin Examiner that the software has “increased the speed of investigations.” The spokesperson said that Babel Street is used by MPD’s Fusion Division. Social media investigations are a staple for Milwaukee’s Fusion Center, composed of both MPD’s Fusion Division and the Southeastern Threat Analysis Center (STAC). Originally created for homeland security, the Fusion Center serves a variety of roles today — whether that’s operating the city’s Shotspotter gunshot surveillance system, monitoring a camera network spanning Milwaukee County, conducting ballistic tests, accessing phones seized by officers, or processing information from cell towers. 

Within the Fusion Center, analysts assigned to the Virtual Investigations Unit monitor social media, investigating not only people but entire social ecosystems. Babel Street “pinpoints key online influencers, allowing investigators to explore networks from a powerful starting point,” the RFP document states. “Rapidly exposing and unlocking their web of relationships delivers crucial information in a matter of minutes.” All of that data then gets plugged into sophisticated visualizations such as maps, algorithmic scores, or graphs. “Visualized mapping unearths influencers who have the greatest impacts on organizations, senior leaders, and world events,” the document explains. “Advanced algorithms score and prioritize critical online entities to measure this influence, bringing to the forefront obscure identities that make up their network.” 

Babel Street can track the growth of online influence emanating from a person or group of interest to police. Investigators can also set real-time updates alerting them to new developments online, as well as “persistent” monitoring. “A persistent Document Search on an identified threat actor continuously monitors filtered topics the actor is publicly engaging in,” according to the RFP document. “By establishing a persistent collection via user-built filters/queries, users can not only increase their data access and insight, but they can also automate the rate aspects of analysis.”

Records from the City of Milwaukee Purchasing Division, obtained through open records requests.

Babel Street draws on a wealth of online information to gather intelligence for police. An aspect of the software known as “Synthesis” allows MPD “to understand the profile of key influencers based on attributes, such as person/organization, location, occupation, interests, areas of influence, and communication style, which are automatically tagged for millions of accounts using an AI model, while still giving the City the option of manual tagging.” Babel Street also allows MPD to pair keyword searches with geo-fencing, thus alerting the department to posts within a specific geographic area. MPD’s new open source intelligence tool also enables data to be extracted from the dark web — parts of the internet which are not indexed in search engines and require specialized internet browsers to locate.

The ability of law enforcement to map online connections between people worried privacy advocates leading up to the RNC. In early April, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned that using an open source intelligence tool, MPD could more effectively track and profile people who were exercising their constitutional rights. David Maass, director for investigations at the EFF, told Wisconsin Examiner that open source intelligence tools “are designed to produce ‘results’ even if there’s no evidence of a nefarious plot.” 

Many police reform activists in Milwaukee also remember the protests of 2020, when police departments heavily relied on social media to surveil protesters. All of that information, however, takes time to collect and sift, especially when a department may only have so many analysts on hand. “No longer are analysts manually checking multiple data sources to identify changes,” according to  the RFP document, “as Babel Street Insights persistently and automatically collects, ingests, and alerts users when new information is available, dramatically increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of each analyst.” 

All of that information, however, also needs to be vetted to ensure that it’s accurate. “Intelligence often requires vetting in order to determine whether it is reliable or not,” MPD’s spokesperson wrote in an email statement. “Additional investigation would be required with all intelligence.”

MPD said that it does not track Babel Street’s involvement in investigations, either during the RNC or after. There is also no standard operating procedure governing the software’s use by MPD, a spokesperson told Wisconsin Examiner. “This software is utilized to investigate crimes or to assist with mitigating threats to pre-planned large-scale events,” wrote the spokesperson in a statement. No decisions have been made yet about renewing the MPD’s one-year contract for Babel Street. 

Residents of a Milwaukee neighborhood about a mile from the Republican National Convention gather after a police shooting at King Park. Photo by Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner.

In 2023, grassroots activists led by the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Police Repression (MAARPR) succeeded in their long campaign to win the public release of footage of critical incidents involving police officers.  Almost immediately, Milwaukee Police Association (MPA) initiated a lawsuit against the policy, and a few months later, the Fire and Police Commission (FCP) suspended the policy for the duration of the Republican National Convention.  The police killing of Samuel “Jah” Sharpe during the RNC resulted in a quick release of body camera footage by the police. The next day, the MPA dropped its lawsuit. 

On May 30, 2021, the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (MAARPR) responded to a fatal officer-involved shooting on Milwaukee’s South Side. Roberto “Touch” Zielinski, age 49, was having a mental health crisis when Milwaukee police officers opened fire on him. As with other officer-involved shootings, Zielinski’s family and community members wanted to know what happened and why the police resorted to deadly force. Once the MAARPR met with Zielinski’s family, their demands became quite clear — they wanted the release of footage of the incident and the names of the officers involved. 

Upon investigation into the policies regarding the public release of names of police officers and footage, the MAARPR discovered that Milwaukee had no formal policy requiring the release of that information. The MAARPR, which works closely with and includes the families of victims of the frequent police killings here, began advocating for a policy that would require the release of names within 24 hours and footage within 48. 

When the MAARPR launched that campaign, the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission (FPC), the oldest civilian police oversight group in the U.S., had policy-making power over the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). Once the path forward was clear, the MAARPR called for and facilitated meetings between the FPC and families of police crime victims. 

The campaign took more than two years. Finally, in April of 2023, the FPC voted to adopt Standard Operating Procedure 575, which mandates the public release of all footage related to officer-involved critical incidents within fifteen days. Moreover, the MAARPR was able to pressure the FPC to include a provision that would guarantee families access to the footage within 48 hours.

The adoption of SOP 575 was a rare victory for the movement against police crimes in Milwaukee, but it was short lived. The day after its adoption, the Milwaukee Police Association (MPA) filed a lawsuit against the city over the SOP. Then,  a month after the victory of this grassroots campaign, the FPC met and declared that SOP 575 would not be effective for the duration of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee in July, 2024. Rather than provide opportunity for public testimony, as is customary in FPC meetings, the FPC decided to vote on this suspension first. Not only did the decision go against the good faith efforts of community activists to engage with the FPC, but it also sent a message to the people of Milwaukee to anticipate little to no transparency during the RNC. 

In January 2024, the FPC lost its policy-making powers under a shared revenue bill passed by the state Legislature. The commission still has the power to hire and fire police and fire chiefs and advocate for the city’s residents, but civilian oversight was gutted by the state.

As many had feared and actively warned, the RNC brought with it police violence.  Over 4,500 additional police descended on the city, recruited from area officers working in the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team, and from around the country. Gov. Tony Evers declared Milwaukee to be in a state of emergency for the duration of the convention. On the second day of the convention, officers from Columbus, Ohio, shot and killed an unhoused Black man, Samuel “Jah” Sharpe Jr., from a block’s distance, while Sharpe was in an altercation with another person and holding a knife.  Almost immediately, the Columbus Police Department (CPD) released body camera footage, following it up with more extensive video two days later. 

That next day, members of the MAARPR received confirmation that the MPA had dropped its legal challenge to SOP 575. This timing wasn’t a coincidence. CPD’s decision to release the footage within hours of the critical incident contradicted the MPA’s claims and demonstrated the lack of merit in their arguments. Such a quick release of footage made it obvious to the MPA that their arguments would not hold up in court. 

Police body camera footage of the killing of Sharpe Jr. allowed the public to see the event for themselves, and gave Sharpe Jr.’s relatives traction to argue that this was an inappropriate use of fatal force. Against widespread condemnation of yet another unnecessary use of deadly force, Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman defended the police involved, saying that the video indicated that the officers had made difficult decisions quickly, and that there were no violations of police protocol.

But to many in the community, the footage of the killing of Sharpe Jr. clearly indicates that the police shot him from far away, neglecting to attempt to intervene in the situation in less violent ways. What the video does not show is that the Columbus police were a mile away from the convention they were supposedly in town to protect. Their presence in the neighborhood was an invasion that endangered its residents and public safety in general.  

Access to footage won’t put an end to police crimes, but it allows impacted communities to shape the narrative about these incidents and to organize against them. The end of police crimes will come when the community wields the power to have control over the police. Such power would ensure that out of town police aren’t allowed to patrol areas a mile away from the RNC. Samuel “Jah” Sharpe Jr. would be alive today if such resources were available to all.

The achievement of SOP 575 emerged out of the grief, rage, and demand for better from the relatives of those killed by police, and it highlights what diligent grassroots organizing against police crimes can accomplish. As the MAARPR reminds people, the struggle continues. The struggle for greater transparency and accountability from the police in Milwaukee is far from over, and SOP 575’s success marks an important step forward.