Madison, WI PD Citizen Complaints
| Submitted | Aug. 9, 2017 |
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Communications
From: Alexander Cartwright and Jennifer Dirmeyer
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to Wisconsin's Open Records act, I hereby request the following records:
We are Economics Professors in the College of Business at Ferris State University, and are engaged in an empirical research project on police behavior and citizen complaints. This project requires us to request data from your department. If you have questions about this request or suggestions, we would be happy to discuss them with you.
1. What is the total number of citizen complaints (allegations of misconduct) made against your department’s officers annually for the last 10 years? If your department logs complaints in a database, spreadsheet, or other log, a copy of those logs is fine instead.
Please include the type of complaint (i.e., use of force, abuse language, unwarranted search) and the result of complaint (i.e., sustained, exonerated).
2. What is the total number of complaints police officers made against their peer officers in department annually for the last 10 years? If your department logs complaints in a database, spreadsheet, or other log, a copy of those logs is fine instead.
Please include the type of complaint (i.e., use of force, abuse language, unwarranted search) and the result of complaint (i.e., sustained, exonerated).
3. How many officer-involved-shootings were there per year for the last 10 years in your department? Any documentation or reports that detail the annual number of officer-involved shootings in your department for the past 10 years would be sufficient.
Please include documentation regarding how many of these officer-involved shootings involved disciplinary action. (Please list officer firearm discharge directed at a person separately from a shooting involving an animal and separately from accidental firearm discharges).
Please include the number of officer-involved shootings resulting in discipline.
4. Which of the above data are published publicly? Please provide a link to any and all publicly available reports containing the data above.
Collecting this information is very important to our research, so we would like to emphasize, if you have questions about my request or suggestions, we would be happy to discuss them with you.
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I would request your response within ten (10) business days.
Sincerely,
Alexander Cartwright and Jennifer Dirmeyer
From: MuckRock.com
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Aug. 9, 2017. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Radovan, John
Mr. Cartwright and Ms. Dirmeyer
I'm writing to advise that I did receive your records request for information regarding the number and type of citizen complaints and complaints by other officers against officers for the past 10 years, along with information regarding officer-involved shootings and resulting internal investigation results. I am processing your request but it will take some time to complete. I do not have access to MPD's complaint records and must go through our Professional Standards Unit (which is our internal affairs group) to obtain these records. Their response to me with this type of request is usually very quick but they have been involved in priorities that haven't given them the time to work on this. I am also tracking down the list of officer involved shootings from the past 10 years but the person who keeps that record has been out of the office. I expect to have this request completed by the end of next week. If you have any questions please contact me directly through this email or the telephone number below. Thanks.
Lieutenant John Radovan
Records Custodian
City of Madison Police Department
(608) 266-6068
From: Radovan, John
Ms. Dirmeyer and Mr. Cartwright,
I'm responding to the records request you made on August 9, 2017 to the Madison Police Department for records related to MPD complaints. The first two items you requested were in regards to the number of citizen complaints made against MPD officers for the past 10 years, along with the number of complaints police officers have made against their peers for the past 10 years. I am responding to those two requests with the two items which are attached. Combined they list all of the complaints made against officers since the year 2000. The document titled "AIM00-15.pdf" is a document that was released previously. Through 2015 MPD used a program called AIM to manage these files. The search function in that program which pulls out the indexed categories only put the results out in a PDF document and we are not able to get those records in spreadsheet form. In 2016 MPD moved to a program called IAPro to manage these files. Attached is a spreadsheet from that program with the complaints received from the beginning of 2016 to the present. Note that the "Origin" category of the pdf document only lists "Internal" or "External" complaint. Internal complaints would be any complaint originating within MPD. In the AIM program those internal complaints were not entered in with any greater detail than that, and without looking at each individual case number there is no way to know whether the complaint was from a supervisor or a co-worker. The IA Pro spreadsheet provides more specificity.
Request #3 asked for how many officer-involved-shootings there were per year for the last 10 years in our department. You also wanted to know the number of them which resulted in discipline. The number of officer involved shootings we have had in the last 10 years is as follows-
2007-1
2009-1
2012-1
2013-2
2014-2
2015-1
2016-1
None of these officer-involved-shootings resulted in sustained policy violations which resulted in discipline.
In regards to your request #4, I am not aware that this data is specifically available publicly.
With that I believe I have completed this records request and am closing it. Feel free to contact me with any questions.
Lieutenant John Radovan
Records Custodian
City of Madison Police Department
(608) 266-6068
-
IA Pro Complaints 2016-Present
From: Alexander Cartwright and Jennifer Dirmeyer
Hi,
Thanks so much for your help with this request! I really appreciate it.
Sincerely,
Alexander Cartwright and Jennifer Dirmeyer
From: Radovan, John
No problem.
From: Alexander Cartwright and Jennifer Dirmeyer
I am writing to follow up on my original request made on 8.9.17
Thank you very much for providing the information we requested. I am writing to ask for some clarification regarding the data on officer-involved shootings. We requested the total number of annual officer involved shootings each year for the past 10 years.
While you sent us data on officer complaints, the OIS data seems to have been overlooked. Could you please provide that data? If not, could you please clarify that your department does not collect OIS (officer involved shooting) data.
If you are able to provide the data, please define what constitutes an officer-involved shooting in your department. For example, some departments do not count misses while others count all discharges; some include shots at animals. Other departments include intentional and accidental shootings; others do not. Please explain to us how your department classifies the OIS included in the numbers you sent to us.
Respectfully, -Alex Cartwright
From: Madison Police Department
Alex,
Are you referring to question #3 from your request? I answered that and gave the list of the number of Officer Involved Shootings per year. If I misinterpreted your request and you’re looking for something else please give me a call at the number below.
Lieutenant John Radovan
Records Custodian
City of Madison Police Department
(608) 266-6068
From: Alexander Cartwright and Jennifer Dirmeyer
You did ! I apologize for getting my wires crossed. We are simply looking for some clarification about how Madison defines OIS:
What constitutes an officer-involved shooting in your department? For example, some departments do not count misses while others count all discharges; some include shots at animals. Other departments include intentional and accidental shootings; others do not. Some include all discharges and some exclude missed shots. Please explain to us how your department classifies the OIS included in the numbers you sent to us.
From: Madison Police Department
Alex,
No problem. We moved away from using OIS (Officer Involved Shooting) as an “official” phrase that we have procedures around some time ago. We now formally use the term Officer Involved Critical Incident (OICI), which is broader. It’s defined in our standard operating procedures (SOP) as “An event in which an officer is involved as a principal, a victim, or is the custodial officer, where significant injury likely to cause death occurs or when an officer intentionally dischargers his/her firearm at another person.” The SOP regarding OICI’s is called “Officer Involved Deaths and Other Critical Incidents” and can be found on this page of our website- http://www.cityofmadison.com/police/chief/standardoperatingprocedures.cfm.
For the purpose of your records request and the yearly numbers you asked for regarding officer involved shootings, the definition I used was when a MPD officer had shot somebody with their firearm in the line of duty.
Hopefully that clarifies things. Have a great 4th of July!
Lieutenant John Radovan
Records Custodian
City of Madison Police Department
(608) 266-6068
From: Alexander Cartwright and Jennifer Dirmeyer
Thank you very much!
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