The armed officers claim was made Dec. 19 by school safety advocate Ryan Petty in an interview about a mass shooting Dec. 16 at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin.
Petty’s daughter was killed in the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, school, which did.
Petty said the connection is “proven.” He didn’t cite research to Wisconsin Watch.
Whether arming school resource officers “leads to net harms or benefits … could be addressed with strong scientific research designs or observational studies,” RAND said.
A 2023 University at Albany-RAND study found school resource officers reduce some violence and increase weapon detection, “but do not prevent gun-related incidents.”
A 2021 U.S. DOJ-funded study said “data suggest no association” between armed officers and deterring mass shootings.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Madison, Wisconsin high school students march on the Capitol on Friday, Dec. 20 | Photo by Daphne Cooper
It was a brilliant, snowy Friday, the last day of school before winter break, as more than 100 students from high schools across Madison converged inside the Capitol. They gathered around the 30-foot balsam fir festooned with handmade ornaments, a model train chugging around the track at the base of the tree. At first it looked like a festive scene, but as the students poured into the first floor of the rotunda, then filled the second- and third-floor balconies, their shouting drowned out a group of Christmas carolers, who retreated, their songs giving way to chants of “No more silence! End gun violence!”
High school students protest gun violence in the Capitol | Photo by Ruth Conniff
The Madison teens showed up to express their grief and outrage over the deaths this week of a 14-year-old student, her teacher and a gun-wielding 15-year-old girl who opened fire Monday in a classroom at the small private Abundant Life Christian School on Madison’s east side. It was the city’s first school shooting but, incredibly, the 323rd in the nation this year.
Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children and teens in the U.S. Shouting, chanting, demanding to be heard, the crowd of children came to the Capitol Friday demanding that we wake up and do something about this appalling fact.
Our nation is an outlier, with a rate of gun violence that dwarfs other large, high-income countries. Firearm homicides here are 33 times higher than in Australia and 77 times higher than in Germany, according to a report from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington medical school. Not surprisingly, firearm injuries tend to be more frequent in places where people have easy access to firearms, according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
What other country in the world could live with the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, where 20 little children between 6 and 7 years old and six adult staff were gunned down, and respond by making no significant restrictions on firearms?
Danny Johnson | Photo by Ruth Conniff
“My parents constantly talk about how, when Sandy Hook happened, they thought that would be the end of it,” said Danny Johnson, a first-year student at Madison West High School who joined the 3-mile march to the Capitol on Friday, carrying a sign scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper that said, “Thoughts and prayers until it’s your own child.”
“To constantly have to go through it — we shouldn’t have to be here. We should be in school not having to worry about it at all,” Johnson added.
Hanging over balconies and leaning against marble pillars, teens held up handmade signs that said; “Enough!” “You write your policies on a carpet of our dead bodies,” and “Graduations not funerals.”
In Wisconsin, the rate of gun deaths increased 45% from 2013 to 2022, compared to a 36% increase nationwide, according to the Giffords Law Center.
Every year since he was elected in 2018, Gov. Tony Evers and Democrats in the state Legislature have tried in vain to get Republican cooperation on ending the state’s current exemption from background checks for private gun sales. A proposed “red flag” law that would allow police or family members to seek an extreme risk protection order in court to take guns from gun owners who are found to be a danger to themselves or others has also gone nowhere. Both of these measures are broadly popular with voters across the political spectrum. Somehow that doesn’t seem to matter.
After this week’s school shooting. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos released a statement saying, “Today’s tragedy is shocking, senseless and heartbreaking. My thoughts and prayers are with the students, parents and faculty who will have to live with the trauma and grief of this day for the rest of their lives.” But Vos stopped short of saying he would make any effort whatsoever to protect kids and teachers from being shot to death at school. That phrase “thoughts and prayers,” rightly derided by the students who protested at the Capitol on Friday, is a pathetic substitute for action.
“Last year it was 12 years since Sandy Hook, 25 years since Columbine, and all our politicians can say from their cushy seats is that they’re sending out their thoughts and prayers about the leading cause of death for children in America!” yelled Ian Malash, a senior at Vel Phillips Memorial High School in Madison, pacing around the tree in the center of the rotunda. “We’re showing them right now and we are going to continue to show them that we are done with thoughts and prayers. We will make change happen because our lives depend on it.”
Vos, apparently recovered from his heartbreak over Monday’s tragedy and back to his old snarky self by Wednesday, mounted a robust defense of the status quo on X, retweeting a post from Wisconsin Right Now that mocked Democrats who “politicize this tragedy with cheap talking points.” The post claimed that, since it’s already illegal for a 15-year-old to possess a handgun, it’s ridiculous to connect the recent shooting to any effort to change gun laws.
Sen. Kelda Roys speaks to high school students in the Capitol Rotunda | Photo by Ruth Conniff
But, as state Sen. Kelda Roys told the crowd on Friday, “We know that states that have passed gun safety laws like background checks, like red flag laws … they see gun deaths and firearm injuries go down. We can do that here in Wisconsin, too. We just need to change the minds or change the legislators — and the judges, too, by the way.”
“My generation and the people in this building have let you down,” Rick Abegglen, the parent of a West High School daughter who helped organize the protest, told the crowd in the Capitol. “I am so proud of each and every one of you for standing up for yourselves. A few moments ago I saw somebody close the doors of the Senate because they did not want to hear your voices. Think about it.”
As he spoke, the students yelled louder, their voices bouncing off the marble walls, becoming harder and harder to ignore.
The school shooting this week at Abundant Life Christian in Madison, Wisconsin, is tragic and senseless, but it’s not at all shocking. Deliberately planned school shootings happen multiple times every school year, mostly in smaller rural and suburban communities. The perpetrators of these attacks are almost always actively suicidal current or former students at the school they target.
Back in April, I wrote an article for the 25th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting. This trend line turned out to be sadly accurate. With the shooting at Abundant Life Christian, there have been five pre-planned attacks at schools this year.
(David Riedman)
Regardless of how you measure school shootings — guns fired, wounded, killed, active shooter, planned attacks, or near misses — the trend line is going up. While these planned school shootings have taken place since the 1960s, the frequency of the attacks is steadily increasing.
Like the other planned attacks this year in Perry, Iowa; Mount Horeb, Wisconsin; Apalachee, Georgia; and Palermo, California, these incidents have common patterns and connections to prior school shootings. The number of “near misses” where a school shooting almost happens are also going up.
Columbine connection
The father of the 15-year-old Madison, Wisconsin, school shooter posted a Facebook photo of his daughter at a shooting range in August. His cover photo shows Natalie Rupnow, who went by the name Samantha.
Natalie can be seen wearing a black shirt with the name of the band KMFDM. The German industrial rock band’s lyrics were thrust into the dark subculture of school shooters by the students who carried out the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.
In the Columbine “basement tapes,” Dylan Klebold can be seen wearing the same shirt. It’s critical for parents to study prior school shooters, know their names and faces, and recognize symbols like KMFDM that represent idolization of prior attacks.
The Madison shooting follows the common patterns with planned attacks at schools. The perpetrator was a student (insider), committed a surprise attack during morning classes and died by suicide before police arrived.
(David Riedman)
Most school shootings are committed by current or former students who are “insiders” at the school and know the security plan/procedures.
(David Riedman)
Since an insider is someone who is allowed to be inside the school, most of these attacks are committed by current students.
“The public’s attention often focuses on the gender of the perpetrators. After the March 2023 mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, the shooter’s transgender identity was much discussed. After other school shootings, “toxic masculinity” has been highlighted, along with the well-documented fact that the majority of mass shootings are perpetrated by men and boys.
In our recently released K-12 school homicide database, which details 349 homicides committed at K-12 schools since 2020, only 12 (3%) of the perpetrators were female. There have been some notable cases involving female school shooters. In 1988, a female babysitter walked into a second-grade classroom in Winnetka, Illinois, and told the students she was there to teach them about guns; she opened fire, killing an 8-year-old boy and wounding five other students.
In Rigby, Idaho, in 2021, a 12-year-old girl plotted to kill 20 to 30 classmates. Armed with two handguns, she walked out of a bathroom and began firing in the hallway, wounding two students and the custodian. A teacher heard the shots, left the classroom and hugged the shooter to disarm her.
The earliest case in our records was in 1979, when a 16-year-old girl opened fire at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, killing two and injuring nine. This was when the American public was first introduced to a female school shooter. Her infamous explanation for her actions — “I just don’t like Mondays” — is etched in pop culture. But it was less about a flippant attitude and more about despair. At a parole hearing years later, the shooter admitted the truth: “I wanted to die.” She saw her attack as a way to be killed by police.
Her story reflects what we now know: Most school shooters are suicidal, in crisis and driven by a mix of hopelessness and rage.
With each school shooting, we tend to concentrate on details: the rare female shooter, the high-profile massacre, the immediate response of authorities. But if we step back, we tend to see the same story repeated again and again. A student insider. In crisis. Suicidal.”
Inside during morning classes
Pre-planned school shootings usually take place during morning classes or at the start of the school day when the building is open before classes start.
(David Riedman)
Just like the shooting in Wisconsin this week, the most common outcome is the teenage student shooter commits suicide, surrenders or is subdued by students or staff before police intervene.
(David Riedman)
Begins and ends in the same room
While “active shooter training” videos produced by the Department of Homeland Security and ads by security tech vendors portray assailants roaming throughout a building while searching for every possible victim, most school shootings begin and end in the same room.
There isn’t much use for a ballistic chalkboard, drop bar lock on the door or panic button when the victims are all in close proximity to an armed assailant who is inside the same room with them.
(David Riedman)
Following this pattern, the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, took place in a classroom during study hall, and the victims were in the same age group. The teenage shooter didn’t roam the building looking for the elementary school kids; she killed herself before police arrived.
(David Riedman)
Police usually don’t stop these single shooter insider attacks because they are very short duration incidents that are usually over within the first two minutes.
During just these deliberately planned attacks over the last 60 years (these victim counts in the chart do not represent all shootings on school property), there have been roughly twice as many victims killed or wounded with handguns versus rifles.
This doesn’t mean that rifles aren’t as dangerous. At Apalachee High, a student committed an insider attack by sneaking an AR-15 into the building inside a posterboard. Until the last decade, AR-15s weren’t cheap and easily accessible. As there continue to be more school shootings involving rifles, this chart will likely even out over time (unless we take meaningful action to stop these attacks).
Preventing the next school shooting
I spoke to NBC 5 Investigates on Monday afternoon right after the school shooting. I said that this shooting at Abundant Life Christian School followed a common pattern in that it was carried out by an “insider” — a student familiar with the school grounds.
“We need to understand the actual nature of this problem and apply solutions towards identifying the student who has a grievance, identifying a student who is talking about students and realizing that these are rarely random acts. All the opportunities to prevent it happen before they ever come to campus with a gun,” Riedman told NBC 5 Investigates.
Riedman said the focus should not be on fortifying schools with additional weapons detectors or metal detectors but focusing on the students’ behaviors that may help foretell a future incident — adding that there is a need to “dispel the myth that these school shootings are committed by scary outsiders,” when data shows that they are often committed by those who are familiar with the school and have a grievance that ends in violence.
“We will probably hear in the coming days about a series of missed warning signs, social media posts, a manifesto and so on,” he said.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, chief data officer at a global risk management firm and a tenure-track professor at Idaho State University. He originally published this story on his Substack: School Shooting Data Analysis and Reports.
Wisconsin Watch spoke with Bethany Highman, age 29, mother of a student who was unharmed in the shooting. She talked about how she heard about the incident, what she is feeling, and where she finds hope and comfort.
A 15-year-old student killed a teacher and another teenager with a handgun Monday at a Christian school in Wisconsin, terrifying classmates. A second-grade teacher made the 911 call that sent dozens of police officers rushing to the small school just a week before its Christmas break.
The female student, who was identified at a press conference Monday night, also wounded six others at a study hall at Abundant Life Christian School, including two students who were in critical condition, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said. A teacher and three students had been taken to a hospital with less serious injuries, and two of them had been released by Monday evening.
Emergency vehicles are parked outside the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., following a shooting, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (Morry Gash / Associated Press)
“Every child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever. … We need to figure out and try to piece together what exactly happened,” Barnes said.
Barbara Wiers, director of elementary and school relations for Abundant Life Christian School, said students “handled themselves magnificently.”
She said when the school practices safety routines, which it had done just before the school year, leaders always announce that it is a drill. That didn’t happen Monday.
“When they heard, ‘Lockdown, lockdown,’ they knew it was real,” she said.
Police said the shooter, identified as Natalie Rupnow, was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound when officers arrived and died en route to a hospital. Barnes declined to offer additional details about the shooter, partly out of respect for the family.
Families leave SSM Health, set up as a reunification center, following a shooting on Dec. 16, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (Morry Gash / Associated Press)
A family leaves SSM Health, set up as a reunification center, following a shooting on Dec. 16, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (Morry Gash / Associated Press)
He also warned people against sharing unconfirmed reports on social media about the shooter’s identity.
“What that does is it helps erode the trust in this process,” he said.
Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school — prekindergarten through high school — with approximately 420 students in Madison, the state capital.
Wiers said the school does not have metal detectors but uses other security measures including cameras.
Children and families were reunited at a medical building about a mile away. Parents pressed children against their chests while others squeezed hands and shoulders as they walked side by side. One girl was comforted with an adult-size coat around her shoulders as she moved to a parking lot teeming with police vehicles.
Students board a bus as they leave the shelter following a shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., on Dec. 16, 2024. (Morry Gash / Associated Press)
A motive for the shooting was not immediately known, but Barnes said they’re talking with the parents of the suspected shooter and they are cooperating. He also said he didn’t know if the people shot had been targeted.
“I don’t know why, and I feel like if we did know why, we could stop these things from happening,” he told reporters.
A search warrant had been issued Monday to a Madison home, he said.
Barnes said Tuesday the first 911 call to report an active shooter came in shortly before 11 a.m. from a second-grade teacher — not a second-grade student as he reported publicly Monday.
First responders who were in training just 3 miles away dashed to the school for an actual emergency, Barnes said. They arrived 3 minutes after the initial call and went into the building immediately.
A child is embraced at SSM Health, set up as a reunification center, following a shooting, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Classes had been taking place when the shooting happened, Barnes said.
Investigators believe the shooter used a 9mm pistol, a law enforcement official told the AP. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.
Police blocked off roads around the school, and federal agents were at the scene to assist local law enforcement. No shots were fired by police.
Abundant Life asked for prayers in a brief Facebook post.
Wiers said the school’s goal is to have staff get together early in the week and have community opportunities for students to reconnect before the winter break, but it’s still to be decided whether they will resume classes this week.
Husband and wife Bethany Highman, left, and Reynaldo LeBaron are shown near the scene of a shooting that left three dead at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., on Dec. 16, 2024. LeBaron says his daughter, along with six nieces and nephews, attended the school. The incident showed “this can happen anywhere,” he says. (Brad Horn for Wisconsin Watch)
Bethany Highman, the mother of a student, rushed to the school and learned over FaceTime that her daughter was OK.
“As soon as it happened, your world stops for a minute. Nothing else matters,” Highman said. “There’s nobody around you. You just bolt for the door and try to do everything you can as a parent to be with your kids.”
In a statement, President Joe Biden cited the tragedy in calling on Congress to pass universal background checks, a national red flag law and certain gun restrictions.
Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes speaks during a press conference at Fire Station 14 in Madison, Wis., following a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on Dec. 16, 2024. Barnes says three people, including the teenage shooter, a teacher and another student, were killed. (Brad Horn for Wisconsin Watch)
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway speaks during a press conference at Fire Station 14 in Madison, Wis., following a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on Dec. 16, 2024. She says it is important to meet the mental health needs for those affected by the violence. (Brad Horn for Wisconsin Watch)
“We can never accept senseless violence that traumatizes children, their families, and tears entire communities apart,” Biden said. He spoke with Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and offered his support.
Evers said it’s “unthinkable” that a child or teacher would go to school and never return home.
The episode was the 323rd shooting at a K-12 school campus thus far in 2024, according to researcher David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database. The database uses a broad definition of shooting that includes when a gun is brandished, fired or a bullet hits school property.
“This shooting follows the common patterns with planned attacks at schools. The perpetrator was a student (insider), committed a surprise attack during morning classes, and died by suicide before police arrived,” Riedman wrote Monday on his website.
Police stand outside of SSM Health, which served as the reunification area for families and students of Abundant Life Christian School following a shooting that left three dead at the Madison, Wis., school on Dec. 16, 2024. (Brad Horn for Wisconsin Watch)
The shootings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to doing active shooter drills in their classrooms. But school shootings have done little to move the needle on national gun laws.
Firearms were the leading cause of death among children in 2020 and 2021, according to KFF, a nonprofit that researches health care issues.
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the country needs to do more to prevent gun violence.
“I hoped that this day would never come to Madison,” she said.
Wisconsin Watch contributed information to this story.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
A new report tallies deaths in Wisconsin from gun violence, including murders and suicides, and makes recommendations for prevention. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation
Guns claimed the lives of 830 Wisconsin residents in 2022 according to Gun Death in Wisconsin, a new joint report by the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort (WAVE) Educational Fund, the state’s leading gun violence prevention organization, and the Violence Policy Center (VPC), a national research and advocacy organization working to stop gun death and injury.
The studywas released as part of the Emergency Gun Violence Summit being held Thursday at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. It analyzes data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on lethal gun violence in the state and compares Wisconsin firearm death data to other Great Lakes states.
The study offers year-over-year trend analyses by sex, age, race, and ethnicity for firearm suicide and firearm homicide.
It also examines gun suicide and homicide deaths in urban and rural areas and presents firearm criminal trace data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
The report also presents personal stories of Wisconsin residents affected by lethal gun violence.
“This report highlights the toll of gun violence on Wisconsin communities and the disparities that must be addressed,” said Nick Matuszewski, director of policy and program at WAVE Educational Fund. “WAVE is committed to advocating for necessary changes to protect every Wisconsinite. Research shows that policies like universal background checks and extreme risk laws effectively reduce gun violence. By prioritizing these measures, we can create safer environments and protect our communities from the impacts of gun-related incidents.”
“Effective public policy relies on comprehensive, reliable data not only to recognize public health threats but also identify effective solutions,” said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center. “This annual study is one more tool for advocates, organizations, and policymakers working to reduce gun violence in Wisconsin.”
Wisconsin gun death findings:
Guns claimed the lives of 830 Wisconsin residents in 2022, including 529 firearm suicides and 277 firearm homicides. In 2022, guns were used in 57.3% (529 of 924) of suicides and 84.7% (277 of 327) of homicides. For both suicides and homicides, the majority of victims were male. While the state’s overall suicide and firearm suicide rates were similar to national rates, both its homicide and firearm homicide rates were lower than national rates.
Black Wisconsin residents are disproportionately affected by lethal gun violence. While Black residents comprise only 6.3% of Wisconsin’s population, 75.5% of firearm homicide victims were Black, with the Black firearm homicide victimization rate more than doubling from 23.0 per 100,000 in 2019 to 55.9 per 100,000 in 2022. Black Wisconsin residents were almost 70 times more likely to die from firearm homicide than white residents. And while the white population in Wisconsin has historically had the highest rate of suicide by firearm in the state, the Black population surpassed this disturbing metric in 2022. Between 2018 and 2022 the firearm suicide rate for Black Wisconsin residents more than tripled — from 3.0 per 100,000 to 9.4 per 100,000.
Most gun deaths in rural Wisconsin are suicides, not homicides. Suicides increased from 81% of all rural gun deaths in 2018 to 91% of all rural gun deaths in 2022. For that same period, the rural firearm suicide rate increased from 8.1 per 100,000 to 11.4 per 100,000.
Since 2020, gun deaths have outpaced motor vehicle deaths across the state, a shocking fact recognizing most people’s daily exposure to motor vehicles as opposed to firearms.
For homicides in which the victim to offender relationship could be identified, 76.8% of Wisconsin homicide victims were killed by someone they knew (162 of 211).
For homicides in which the circumstances were known, 80% (184 out of 230) were not related to the commission of any other felony – 41.3% (76 homicides) involved an argument between the victim and offender.
According to ATF, in 2022 more than 8,000 firearms were recovered in Wisconsin and traced. Almost all of the guns recovered and traced were handguns – 79.8% were pistols and 6% were revolvers. In addition, the vast majority of firearms recovered in Wisconsin (84.5%) were originally sourced in-state.
The report also cites WAVE’s recommended gun violence prevention policies for the state as well as its recent policy successes.
The Violence Policy Center is a national educational organization working to stop gun death and injury.
Michael Bell Sr. has believed for years that Kenosha police officers victimized his family — first by killing his son in 2004 and then, he alleges, by covering up what really happened.
Bell initially accepted the police accounts of the shooting, then became skeptical and finally angry. He channeled that anger into action. He sued the city of Kenosha, its police department and four officers, resulting in a $1.75 million settlement, and took a leading role in passage of a state law that bars police departments from investigating themselves. This article was published in partnership with Wisconsin Public Radio.
But no one in the Kenosha department has admitted wrongdoing or, Bell says, adequately explained how his son ended up shot.
At the suggestion of the governor’s office, he filed a claim with the Wisconsin Crime Victims Rights Board in 2022 contending that he’s been the victim of a long-running official cover-up of his son’s killing. The board is a five-member agency that can issue public or private reprimands to public employees who violate the rights of crime victims.
The victims rights board ruled last November that if there was a cover-up, the victim wasn’t Bell, but rather the state of Wisconsin.
“The alleged conduct is against the government and its administration, not against individual persons,” said the decision, which didn’t detail how the state was victimized.
Jennifer Dunn, the board chair, declined to discuss the board’s decision. The ruling troubled some victims advocates, who termed it a departure from the intent of the victims’ rights movement.
“This is so counter to the purpose and the point of victims’ rights,” said Lenore Anderson, former prosecutor and author of “In Their Names: The Untold Story of Victims’ Rights, Mass Incarceration, and the Future of Public Safety.” She said she’d never seen a ruling that labeled the government a crime victim.
The victims’ rights movement started in the 1970s because crime victims felt invisible or ignored in the criminal process, she said. Crime victims won the right to information about cases, the right to speak at sentencing or parole hearings and other rights.
“It would be impossible to interpret any of those rights as applying to the state,” Anderson said.
Bell is appealing the board’s decision.
Bell’s appeal is unusual. Few crime victims appeal alleged violations because most lack resources, said Mariam El-menshawi, a professor at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law who specializes in victims’ rights.
In general, laws grant crime victims access to the criminal process but not control over prosecutorial decisions.
“Victims don’t get a veto,” El-menshawi said. “They can’t force an investigation.”
The Kenosha police declined comment for this story. So did Kenosha’s current district attorney and the state attorney general.
Shortly after 2 a.m. on Nov. 9, 2004, Kenosha police confronted 21-year-old Michael Bell Jr. after he parked in front of his house. Police said he was intoxicated and uncooperative. A struggle ensued in the yard and moved to the driveway. His mother and sister came outside in their bathrobes. Police shocked Bell with a Taser three times. As they held him down on the hood of a car, an officer screamed that Bell had grabbed his gun; another officer then shot Bell point-blank in the head.
It took two days for the police to declare the shooting justified. Then-District Attorney Robert Jambois followed suit 12 days later, placing the blame squarely on Bell.
He said the young man had been driving drunk, then failed to comply with the officers’ commands and chose to fight. His report described a life-and-death fight over an officer’s gun, with Bell trying to draw the weapon while the officer struggled to keep the gun in the holster.
The prosecutor concluded the police feared for their lives.
Bell Sr., a retired lieutenant colonel who piloted planes in three wars, trusted the judgment of the law enforcement agencies at first.
He wore an Air Force uniform for 24 years and was unabashedly pro-cop, he said, until he ran into what he calls a blue wall of lies and cover-up. “I was so pro-uniform there was no way that I could believe that somebody who wore a uniform could behave like that.”
Bell didn’t even believe his daughter or Michael’s mother, who watched their son get killed. But during months of family counseling, Bell grew skeptical of the police.
“When describing in detail what they saw, I realized they’re not making this up,” he said.
Bell sued Kenosha and its police department in 2005. The lawsuit pried out damaging evidence.
Police described an exhausting struggle over a gun, yet tests found no trace of Bell’s DNA on the weapon.
And the officers’ accounts contradicted a core fact: the bullet’s entrance and exit wounds in Bell Jr.’s head. The police said the struggle took place on the left side of a car in the driveway. One officer had his arms around Bell, pressing him against the hood. A second officer screamed that Bell had grabbed his gun. A third officer at the front of the car shot Bell point-blank in the left side of his head.
But the autopsy showed the bullet entered Bell’s skull just above his right ear, leaving soot and a muzzle burn, and exited on his left side, creating a bloody trail down the hood to where the officer said he was standing.
Bell said the evidence shows the shooting officer was standing between the other two officers when he fired.
“The matter of life and death goes away immediately when an officer steps between the suspect being held down and the officer claiming he has my gun,” Bell said. “You move the hand, you don’t kill the person.”
After this discrepancy was exposed in sworn pretrial testimony, the police came up with a different scenario to fit the bullet wound, and then a third. Both scenarios kept the shooter at the front of the car. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy called them “forensically impossible.”
In 2010, the city of Kenosha settled the case for $1.75 million. Bell plowed the money into activism. He put up billboards and bought full-page ads in The New York Times. He championed a 2014 law forbidding police from investigating themselves. In February of this year, he offered to donate $200,000 to a Kenosha charity if the city would let an independent ballistics expert examine the bullet; he withdrew the offer on Sept. 16 after the city declined. He helped sponsor a conference arguing that police shootings should be examined as the National Transportation Safety Board investigates plane crashes, to ascertain the facts to prevent future shootings.
After the settlement, Bell found an unlikely ally: Retired Detective Russell Beckman, who had served 28 years with the Kenosha Police. He called Bell, told him the police were acting shady and offered to volunteer with whatever Bell needed.
In 2012, Beckman put together compelling evidence that Bell Jr. never grabbed the officer’s gun. First, Bell’s DNA was not on the gun. But the key was the driver’s side mirror, which was broken and dangling from the car after the fight. Beckman said the officer caught his holstered gun on the mirror, which pulled his gun belt to the front of his body.
Jambois, the former prosecutor, said in a recent interview that the mirror may explain why the officer screamed that young Bell had his gun.
Regardless, Jambois said the shooting was still justified, whether or not Bell Jr. had his hand on the gun. The officers feared for their lives.
Michael Bell Sr. might very well feel like he’s a victim, Jambois said.
“Who cannot sympathize with a man who’s lost his son?” he said. “I can understand how he’d be so terribly, terribly unhappy and angry.”
November will mark the 20th anniversary of his son’s shooting. Bell never thought he would spend two decades seeking justice for his son while, he says, law enforcement investigated itself.
“It’s all about self-protection,” Bell said. “It’s like the NFL team owner and the referees are all on the same side.”
In July, a trial judge listened to arguments about Bell’s appeal of the Crime Victims Rights Board decision. He noted that no matter how he ruled, the case — and the question of who is truly the victim — is likely to go to the state court of appeals, and then to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
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The number of police-involved deaths in Wisconsin increased from 14 to 24 last year and is on pace to exceed that number this year. Through July the number was higher than in Illinois, which has twice the population.
The exact reason for the increase is unclear. Attorney General Josh Kaul and the state’s largest police union blame a rise in incidents involving armed suspects, even though violent crime is down since the pandemic and the percentage of incidents in which the suspect was armed is lower than in neighboring states. The share of cases involving someone with mental health issues is higher in Wisconsin than in neighboring states.
Police are almost always cleared of wrongdoing by local district attorneys when they cause someone’s death, but a few cases point to situations where police didn’t follow de-escalation protocols or relied on training not based on the latest science.
Deadly police encounters in Wisconsin were up last year and are on track this year to exceed the modern record of 26 deaths set in 2017.
The increase comes after Wisconsin Watch and The Badger Project reported two years ago that Wisconsin’s rate of police killings ranked among the lowest in the nation over the past decade. In the past two years the rate has risen, particularly compared with neighboring states.
There were at least 24 fatal encounters last year, up from 14 the previous year. So far the number of deaths this year is at least 19, according to a Wisconsin Watch review. That outpaces Illinois, which has more than twice the population. Experts cannot pinpoint one specific cause behind the increase.
Wisconsin Watch conducted its own count of fatal use-of-force incidents because the state Department of Justice’s tracking falls short and is updated only four times a year. The department’s use-of-force tally does not reflect police incidents involving restraints, “non-lethal” force and confrontations that ended in suicide.
Wisconsin Watch also found cases in which law enforcement violated its own de-escalation protocols and resorted to deadly force in ways that experts say contradict long-established best practices — all with little accountability.
In at least one death last year, authorities used a medically discredited condition that still appears in state training materials to justify forcibly restraining someone during a struggle.
Local district attorneys have determined virtually every police use-of-force case was justified. But the increased frequency of fatal encounters has prompted law enforcement accountability advocates to call for more state oversight.
“Oftentimes the DA looks at just that immediate piece where the officer felt their life was in danger,” said Amy Watson, a mental health researcher at Wayne State University who has studied fatal police encounters, “but doesn’t usually consider the steps before that created that situation.”
Russell Beckman, a retired Kenosha detective turned policing reform activist, said he fears police killings now carry less stigma and that the legal system allows officer safety to trump public safety.
“A shoot can be legal — justified — a legal justified shoot,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it was necessary.”
The state’s largest police union doesn’t dispute the rising death count but says police are mostly responding to people who are armed or thought to be armed — threatening officers or bystanders.
“I don’t think there is a good explanation,” said Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association.
“What we’ve seen over the last several years is an increased proportion of individuals that are involved in fatal police encounters that confront officers with a weapon — whether it’s a firearm, or a knife, or a sword or an edged weapon.”
Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul gave a similar response when asked about the recent increase, calling it “most significantly related to the number of incidents in which force needs to be used because of the circumstances.”
Wisconsin Watch’s count of at least 19 fatal encounters matches figures from Mapping Police Violence, a research collaborative that has tracked such data since 2013. Over that 11-year time frame about three in four fatal encounters in Wisconsin involved a subject with an alleged weapon, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of the collaborative’s data.
But since the pandemic the percentage of cases involving a weapon has been lower than in neighboring states, while the percentage involving a mental health crisis has increased, the analysis found.
The data include deaths DOJ has not tracked as caused by police use of force. Some subjects killed were unarmed, and some fatalities were not shootings, leading the coroner to classify the death as accidental, allowing police and first responders to escape deeper scrutiny.
“There’s been a lot of concern about medical examiners and coroners classifying deaths in custody as accidental and downplaying the potential role of the various interventions that were undertaken prior to the death,” said Dr. Paul Applebaum, Columbia University professor of psychiatry, medicine and law.
(Khushboo Rathore / Wisconsin Watch)
‘I’m in fear of my life’
When responding officers tased and then sat on a handcuffed 26-year-old Kaukauna man suspected of killing his wife last October, he told officers: “I’m in fear of my life.”
An officer then sat on his back for at least six minutes as others attended to the victim in the next room. Medics injected the powerful sedative ketamine with a syringe. His breathing became labored. Once loaded into the ambulance, he was declared unresponsive with no pulse. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Police and medics likely didn’t realize their actions risked killing Eric VanSyoc, said experts who examined reports and investigatory files Wisconsin Watch obtained through public records requests.
“I suspect that their training was inadequate to warn them both about the dangers of prone restraint and about the risks associated with sedation with ketamine,” said EMS trainer Eric Jaeger, who has helped other states improve safety protocols.
Yet Outagamie County District Attorney Melinda Tempelis wrote that responding officers in Kaukauna used “an appropriate amount of force to prevent the imminent death or great bodily harm to themselves or others.”
A Kaukauna police statement on social media said VanSyoc experienced a “medical episode” but did not mention sedation or restraints that followed the tasing. The death, ruled accidental by the county coroner, does not appear in the state’s list of police use-of-force deaths.
‘You’re gonna get bit’
The majority of 2024 in-custody deaths involved shootings of suspects deemed threatening. In some cases prosecutors ruled such force justified even though officers disregarded de-escalation best practices.
The Rice Lake Police Department’s crisis intervention protocols call for attempts at de-escalation before resorting to deadly force. They instruct officers not to “argue, speak with a raised voice or use threats to obtain compliance.”
That’s not what happened last October when responding officers shot and killed Zachary Veitch, 50, in a public housing complex after fellow tenants reported he allegedly attacked one of them with a knife and then fled.
Medics had already treated the stabbing victim for injuries to her upper arm when police used a key to enter Veitch’s apartment. An officer had threatened Veitch with a barking police dog if he didn’t surrender.
“You need to come out or you’re gonna get bit!” an officer shouted from the hallway.
Veitch, who was living with a mental illness, refused and retreated into his bedroom.
“He thought he was a prophet. That’s how far into religion he was,” his father later told Wisconsin Watch.
Law enforcement officers broke down the bedroom door where 50-year-old Zachary Veitch was hiding after slashing at a fellow tenant with a knife and fleeing into his own apartment. The unnamed officers who killed him later admitted they had no reason to believe anyone else was in the apartment, raising questions why they rushed into the mentally ill man’s apartment, resulting in a deadly confrontation.
Thirty seconds after officers entered the apartment and released the police dog, they forced Veitch’s bedroom door open. He lunged with a knife, and officers shot him dead in his kitchen, bodycam footage shows.
A retired police officer who reviewed the redacted investigation questioned the rush to use deadly force against a man alone in his own apartment.
“I didn’t see that they attempted to establish any kind of a dialogue,” said John Wallschlaeger, who retired from the Appleton Police Department and has long trained Crisis Intervention Teams across Wisconsin.
Radio chatter captured on the bodycam indicates that sheriff’s deputies were bringing a riot shield to the apartment complex for the responding officers.
“They didn’t wait for the shield,” Wallschlaeger added. “Even though the shield was en route, they didn’t wait for it.”
The Rice Lake police chief and the Barron County sheriff later announced that an unnamed use-of-force panel “made up of various law enforcement professionals” concluded the actions of a deputy and officers involved fell within the sheriff’s “department policy and procedures.”
Its reasoning remains unclear. Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald told Wisconsin Watch their findings “were not in written form.”
Barron County District Attorney Brian Wright said police acted reasonably when they shot and killed 50-year-old Zachary Veitch, who had a knife in his hand when officers forced open his bedroom door. (Barron County District Attorney’s Office)
Barron County District Attorney Brian Wright ruled that officers acted reasonably and commended them for protecting themselves and other residents in the apartment complex.
“Officers were confronted with the urgency of taking Veitch into custody before he harmed anyone else,” he wrote. That contradicted the official report in which officers said they assumed he was alone in his apartment.
The suspect’s father, who surveyed his son’s blood-spattered apartment days later, said he can’t understand the officers’ tactics.
“I know he would have been able to be talked down,” Gary Veitch told Wisconsin Watch. “It may have taken a few minutes. But where were they going, you know? They had him.”
DOJ records Veitch’s death as related to use of force. But authorities have withheld the names of the police officers and sheriff’s deputy who fired their weapons. Investigators cited threats made by the dead man’s son against officers captured in recorded jailhouse phone calls following news of the fatal shooting.
Craig Futterman, a clinical professor of law at the University of Chicago and founder of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic, said de-escalation protocols matter only when enforced.
“Unless there are consequences for failing to de-escalate, a lot of the policies or practices or training may not be worth much,” he said.
In Wisconsin’s Lafayette County last February at 1 a.m., an agitated man in his underwear cursed and shouted “I’m on drugs!” and fought with officers who tried to subdue him in the street.
A police officer hit Gregg Marcotte with a Taser at least twice. A ground scuffle ensued. The 44-year-old man was later found to be unresponsive in the ambulance and declared dead at the hospital.
Whether use-of-force protocols were followed is unclear. State investigators heavily censored video footage of the melee with police, Marcotte’s cause of death and the treatment he received by paramedics.
The autopsy said Marcotte likely died from a mix of a heart attack, high blood pressure, drug use, blunt chest trauma and prone restraint exacerbated by his fight with police.
Wisconsin law enforcement officials withheld key details — including the cause of death — of 44-year-old Gregg Marcotte, who died Feb. 12, 2024, following a prolonged struggle with police officers and sheriff’s deputies on a public street in downtown Shullsburg, Wisconsin, where he lived.
“The ruling is this was an unfortunate accident,” wrote Lafayette County Coroner Linda Gebhardt.
Dr. Victor Weedn, a forensic pathologist with expertise in arrest-related deaths, questioned that conclusion, saying it overly emphasized the methamphetamine in Marcotte’s system.
“I believe this is probably a prone restraint cardiac arrest / metabolic acidosis death, and I would rule the death a homicide,” wrote Weedn, a former chief medical examiner for the state of Maryland.
He reviewed the state Division of Criminal Investigation’s investigation and medical examiner’s reports at Wisconsin Watch’s request. He cautioned that he would need additional information, specifically the decedent’s heart rhythm, to make a more definitive ruling.
Wisconsin Department of Justice officials completely blurred out images of 44-year-old Gregg Marcotte during his fatal Feb. 12, 2024, confrontation with police in downtown Shullsburg, Wisconsin, citing privacy concerns. The editing makes it impossible to see whether use-of-force protocols were followed in the lead-up to the man’s death. (Wisconsin Department of Justice)
Wisconsin a regional leader in fatal encounters
Kaul, the state’s elected top law enforcement officer, asked about the increase in fatal police encounters during a June appearance at the Appleton Police Department, said officers are operating in a state whose lax gun laws make weapons easily available.
“Somebody can literally sell a gun out of the trunk of their car to a perfect stranger,” Kaul said.
The increase in fatal police encounters does not correspond with an increase in violent crimes. An analysis of DOJ crime data shows that violent offenses were up in 2021 but have declined each year since.
Advocates for police reform have expressed alarm at the rising death toll and transparency gaps in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin remains below the per capita national average for fatal police encounters, according to Mapping Police Violence. Even so, the state over the past decade often exceeded the rates of its neighbors.
Illinois, with twice the population, has seen a sharp decrease in fatal police encounters with at least 16 so far this year compared with at least 19 in Wisconsin.
Advocates for police reform point to the Chicago model that in 2016 empowered the Civilian Office of Police Accountability to investigate misconduct complaints and in-custody and arrest-related deaths.
“When officers see fellow officers lose their jobs, lose money, lose pay over their failure or refusal to abide by core de-escalation policies — you change,” said Futterman, the University of Chicago law professor.
A 2021 Illinois law requires reviews of the totality of circumstances rather than the final seconds when police officers feel threatened and use deadly force.
Fatal police encounters remain a nationwide challenge with more than 1,350 deaths last year and 2024 on pace to match that amount.
A 2000 federal law requires in-custody deaths to be reported to the U.S. Department of Justice. But officials with the department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, which collects those figures, say inconsistent reporting leaves them with data too incomplete to publish frustrating efforts to fully grapple with the issue.
‘Excited delirium’ remains on the books
Official data are skewed in states like Wisconsin, where deadly encounters involving Tasers, restraints and other so-called non-deadly means are often not tallied as related to use of force.
For decades, forensic experts say, police and paramedics have cited “excited delirium” — a widely discredited diagnosis blamed for justifying excessive force in cases across the nation.
But even some de-escalation advocates continue to defend the concept behind it: that a subject’s death is inevitable without rapid intervention. It remains a key component in crisis training in Wisconsin.
“The dominoes are already falling, but we can’t see it,” said Wallschlaeger, the retired Appleton officer and crisis intervention team trainer. He described “medically significant situations” in which an agitated subject is fighting with police. “And so we have to err on the side of caution and activate EMS.”
That line of thinking can lead to responses including sedation and restraints, which if not applied properly can prove deadly.
Kaukauna police officers on Oct. 14, 2023, used Tasers and restraints and had medics sedate an agitated murder suspect with ketamine before he died. Officers and the DA later said he’d been suffering from “excited delirium,” a widely discredited pseudo-condition that remains a part of crisis intervention training in Wisconsin police manuals.
The conflation of force with emergency medical care frustrates other crisis intervention experts who see mixed messages in the training to respond to agitated and mentally ill subjects.
“On the one hand, you’re training officers to slow things down, use time, use distance,” said Watson, the Wayne State mental health researcher. “But then if someone’s really, really agitated, ‘Oh, you need to tackle them and have EMS sedate them.’ Folks with serious mental illness tend to be at higher risk of having bad responses to that type of sedation.”
That was likely a factor when officers responded to a welfare check for a missing woman and found a combative and delusional VanSyoc in his Kaukauna home in October 2023. The medical examiner found an acute mix of drug toxicity coupled with the restraints and use of the Taser contributed to his death.
Tempelis, the district attorney, cleared the police in his death, stating “it is clear VanSyoc was experiencing a state of excited delirium which in and of itself can cause acute distress and sudden death due to the methamphetamine and designer drugs he consumed prior to officers’ arrival.”
EMS trainer Jaeger reviewed the reports and was critical of the DA’s reasoning and conclusions.
“‘Excited delirium’ is very clearly a flawed concept that should be removed both the name and substance anywhere it appears,” he said.
State officials say they are working to remove the term “excited delirium” from law enforcement manuals. Yet even recently updated materials refer to a “freight train to death,” a similar concept that DOJ’s head of police training and standards said conveys the urgent need to attend medically to an agitated person.
Kaukauna Police Chief Jamie Graff defended his officers’ assessment and response in the VanSyoc incident.
“Our department training is consistent with the standards set forth by the Wisconsin Training and Standards Board,” he told Wisconsin Watch.
Jaeger, who helped update New Hampshire protocols that now prohibit sedating subjects lying on their stomachs, and another independent expert said a factor not mentioned in official documents may have contributed to the death: forcing VanSyoc to lie prone with an officer’s weight on his back even after he stopped struggling.
“It’s been well known for many decades that you’re not supposed to keep people lying on their stomach,” said Justin Feldman, a social epidemiologist at Harvard University and researcher with the Center for Policing Equity. “You’re supposed to, at minimum, put them on their side.”
The Wisconsin Department of Justice categorizes deaths as arrest-related — rather than from use of force — if suspects are restrained, shocked with Tasers or even sedated in ways medical experts consider potentially dangerous.
DOJ doesn’t publish stats on when mental illness was evident in an encounter, but Mapping Police Violence found that the deceased person exhibited signs of a crisis in at least 14 of Wisconsin’s at least 43 fatal police encounters since the beginning of 2023.
State public health officials referred questions to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which trains law enforcement in crisis intervention to improve public safety.
Emilie Smiley, program director of NAMI Wisconsin, said she couldn’t comment on specific incidents.
But she said broadly: “There are situations where law enforcement are not necessarily the best fit for responding to a mental health crisis,” but sometimes law enforcement is necessary.
(Khushboo Rathore / Wisconsin Watch)
DOJ oversight lacking
State law has since 2021 required the Department of Justice to publicly report in-custody, arrest-related and use-of-force deaths. But the department’s dataset — which relies on law enforcement agencies to report incidents — remains incomplete and often misleading, obscuring precise trends.
The online database tabulates reports by agency, meaning multiple entries could describe the same incident, depending on how many agencies responded.
The Fond du Lac Sheriff’s Office logged one fatal incident in which a suspect shot himself during a shootout with police as a use-of-force injury. But Fond du Lac city police reported it as an arrest-related death. Both appear separately in DOJ’s database.
Some fatal police shootings weren’t counted at all. On Sept. 13, 2022, Milwaukee police shot and killed 40-year-old Sherman D. Solomon after responding to a call of shots fired in a neighborhood.
The Milwaukee Police Department summarized the incident in a six-minute video, but it does not appear in the state’s tracker.
DOJ spokesperson Gillian Drummond would not comment on the omission, nor would she say how the agency evaluates its use-of-force data or views the increasing trends.
“We’re following state statutes,” she said. “The data is online for the public to review.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which lobbied for the state use-of-force reporting law, said DOJ is falling short of its duty to accurately track police violence and publish accurate results.
“It’s really concerning when there are clearly incidents that would fall under the requirements of statutory reporting, and they don’t show up,” said Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director for ACLU Wisconsin.
“It just seems like part of the pattern of individual law enforcement agencies fighting efforts at transparency, as much as they can.”
Calls for more oversight
Retired Kenosha detective Russell Beckman, a police reform advocate, said he’s disturbed by the rise in deadly encounters involving police. He partly blames a police culture that relies on Tasers and firearms over negotiation. (Russell Beckman)
Advocates for more police oversight argue that today’s officers are too quick to fire a Taser or service weapon when feeling threatened.
Beckman, the retired Kenosha detective, said he faced many scenarios over 30 years that required using physical force to bring combative suspects under control.
“I think about all the times where I could have legally shot somebody — but I didn’t,” he told Wisconsin Watch. “Because I waited until the last possible instance. So I could try to resolve the situation and de-escalate it. And that’s the attitude of most cops.”
“Everyone makes their own political decisions, but man, it seems like a rough one to defend,” Larson said on the Senate floor.
Republicans publicly rebuked Larson the next day.
“His comments show that he has no understanding about what it is like to be in a position where you might have to take a life in self-defense,” Sen. Jesse James, R-Altoona, a former police officer, said in a press release.
Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, was rebuked by Republicans after suggesting during a May 14, 2024, floor debate that some senators sought to shield accountability of problematic police officers who are “quick to pull the trigger and quick to take a life.” (WisconsinEye)
The 2016 shooting of Sylville Smith sparked violent unrest across Milwaukee and resulted in the past decade’s only prosecution of a Wisconsin police officer due to on-duty use of deadly force, according to Mapping Police Violence data. A jury later acquitted ex-officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown of reckless homicide.
La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke, a veteran prosecutor, said he supports DOJ attorneys reviewing deadly force incidents rather than local prosecutors.
“It can put the DAs in a position where they’re having to make judgments on people that they know that they’ve worked with, they might have opinions about,” Gruenke told Wisconsin Watch.
Gruenke said he has investigated about five police shootings in his multi-decade career that he considered clear-cut with no charges warranted. He said he intends to send the next one he sees to a special prosecutor outside La Crosse.
“I have the option of asking DOJ — there’s no requirement that they take it,” Gruenke said. “Going forward I’ll probably have another DA’s office just look at the ones in my county.”
DOJ’s Drummond wouldn’t say whether her agency would accept responsibility for investigating and legally reviewing such incidents but noted that it would struggle to do so at current staffing levels.
“There would need to be resources in the form of additional assistant attorneys general to ensure that we were able to meet the demand,” she said.
(Khushboo Rathore / Wisconsin Watch)
Legislation sought panel to review police incidents
AB 112 — introduced by Wisconsin Republicans and Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, in 2021 — would have created a statewide panel to review deaths and serious injuries at the hands of police.
Gruenke likens it to the National Transportation Safety Board, which does not rule on culpability of serious crashes but dissects what happened and lessons learned.
“Even if the shooting was legally permissible, even if an officer does something exactly the way they were trained,” Gruenke said, “it’s still something that we should look at to say, ‘Well, are there ways that could have been avoided?’”
Some critics worried the committee’s findings could be used in federal civil or criminal proceedings in ways state lawmakers didn’t intend, said Scott Kelly, an aide to Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, who pushed the bill.
“It is not on our immediate agenda to introduce next session,” Kelly said.
Wisconsin Watch data reporter Khushboo Rathore contributed reporting.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
In two police shootings in the past year reviewed by Wisconsin Watch, state and local agencies used potential threats to involved officers as justification to indefinitely withhold the names of officers involved.
The identities of officers who shoot suspects are routinely released elsewhere, though they are not tracked by the state Department of Justice, which collects use-of-force reports.
In Rice Lake last year, police shot and killed 50-year-old Zachary Veitch in a public housing complex shortly after he was alleged to have stabbed a neighbor. Officers entered the man’s apartment and forced open his bedroom door, then shot him when he emerged with a knife.
A retired police officer who trains departments in crisis intervention reviewed the incident and noted responding officers failed to use de-escalation techniques that could have prevented the death.
But authorities have withheld the names of the police officer and sheriff’s deputy who fired their weapons. Investigators cited threats made by the dead man’s son against officers recorded in jailhouse phone calls following news of the fatal shooting.
Prosecutors declined to file charges against the dead man’s son. But they have agreed to indefinitely withhold the names of the law enforcement officials who killed Veitch, citing the threats.
In another deadly case in Neenah, rifle-wielding police and sheriff’s deputies stormed a gas station’s convenience store and shot a man dead after he allegedly sold drugs to a police informant.
Officers assigned to the Lake Winnebago Area Metropolitan Enforcement Group killed 37-year-old Nathan Briese in the presence of a store clerk after Briese reached for his pistol, video of the incident shows.
Knowing Briese was likely armed, officers — whose names were redacted in reports — disregarded their initial plan to carry out an open air arrest to minimize danger to passersby.
Investigators called in from the nearby Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Office withheld the name of the arrest team officer — identified only as “Officer 3,” who ordered the apprehension of Briese despite the presence of bystanders at the convenience store.
Using open source methods, Wisconsin Watch determined the identity of both law enforcement officers who shot Briese.
The Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department then confirmed that Deputy Justin Ross shot Briese.
“While we stand behind the decision to withhold his name after this incident due to previously cited reasons, we no longer feel it necessary to withhold this,” Outagamie Sheriff’s Lt. Nathan Borman told Wisconsin Watch.
But the Appleton police department more than a year later refuses to confirm the name of its officer who shot Briese, citing unspecified threats to the officer’s safety.
Wisconsin Watch requested the officer’s personnel file, which included a Police Star Medal for participation in the task force’s attempt to arrest Briese.
But the department said it had no use-of-force report on file for the Aug. 2, 2023, shooting, which occurred outside its jurisdiction. Wisconsin Watch is not naming the officer.
Neither agency released details on the nature of threats it used to justify withholding names.
“To my knowledge there was not a formal investigation into the potential threats against officers in this case,” Borman said. “It is not uncommon for officers to receive information about threats which are deemed credible.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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