TOMAH, Wisc., (SPECTRUM NEWS) -- Five current law enforcement leaders in western and central Wisconsin spoke about the state of policing and their disagreement with some major reform proposals.
The “Back the Blue” police listening session was hosted by Republican Congressional candidate Jessi Ebben. Ebben is running to replace Ron Kind as Wisconsin’s Third District representative.
Sheriffs from Monroe, Grant, Dunn and Adams Counties participated, as did the Town of Wilton police chief. Ebben’s questions for them were written in advance.
This was a rare opportunity to hear directly from law enforcement in some of Wisconsin’s more rural counties as our nation debates the role of police in society.
Wesley Revels is the sheriff of Monroe County. He doesn’t believe systemic racism exists in policing in Wisconsin. Census data shows an overwhelming majority of Monroe County residents are white, about 96 percent of the county’s population. There are about 1,500 people in the county who identify as racial minorities. The largest minority group is Latinx.
Revels’ statement in full:
“The terminology that you hear so much of at the national level is systemic racism in policing. I don’t see that in Wisconsin. At all. And I certainly don’t see that in the third district, okay? We, I believe, have great police officers. They are not concerned about an individual’s race. They show up to work, they do their job in a respectful and professional manner with that full consideration of an individual’s constitutional rights. If there is systematic racism out there, or we have a political person that believes there is in the third district, show us where it’s at. Tell us where it’s at. And we’ll fix it. But I don’t believe that it’s there.”
Data from the U.S. Department of Justice shows Black men were more than five times more likely to be imprisoned than white men. Click here for the full report.
Grant County sheriff Nate Dreckman agreed with that sentiment.
“Is there racism within law enforcement? Yeah, there probably is. As a system? No, but with individual people, absolutely. And we need to take care of that. We can do that through training, we can do that through meetings like this, community meetings, meeting with the people that feel they are touched by what they perceive as racism within law enforcement," Dreckman says.
The group discussed the bill in Congress that would eliminate qualified immunity for law enforcement. Qualified immunity is the judicial standard that means government employees can’t be held personally liable for things like use of force on the job, as long as they’re not breaking the law.
“I think what you’re gonna create is a mass exit from law enforcement,” says Dunn County sheriff Kevin Bygd. “Those that can retire will retire. They’re not going to continue in the career when they have personal liability at stake when they’re trying to simply do their job and do the job that they were hired to do. … Recruitment is gonna be impossible.” And what we’re gonna have is people that wanna get into the line of work for the wrong reasons. Right now we have good law enforcement officers across the state of Wisconsin and across the nation. But they’re not gonna take that chance. They’re not gonna take the chance of losing their homes and losing their livelihoods because of frivolous lawsuits.”
“From a small municipality police department standpoint, we already operate on a tight budget,” says Town of Wilton police chief Jeremy Likely. “If we have to put liability insurance on everybody, the village is going to incur that cost. And we don’t know what that cost is gonna be.”
They talked about the defund the police movement, and what they think of the idea to shift some services to mental health professionals instead of law enforcement.
“If you take funds from my budget to fund social workers or mental health workers to take some of those calls, I have to cut deputies. But guess what? We still have to go to those calls to stabilize them,” Bygd says. “So now all of a sudden I’m short-staffed, I can’t send people to go stabilize those scenes so the social workers and mental health workers can do their work. Where does that leave them? In harm’s way. Like you said, it becomes this ripple effect that just filters out through the whole process that we do. Would I love to have social workers on staff for me to go on calls with my deputies? Absolutely … Give them to me on staff. Deputies will stabilize it; these other staff members come in and then they’ll handle it.”
Dane County sheriff and president of the National Sheriffs Association Dave Mahoney told Vice News in June that law enforcement shouldn’t handle calls when people just need mental health attention.
"Philosophically, using law enforcement authority to arrest someone as a means to seek mental healthcare is just simply wrong,” Mahoney tells Vice.
Likely was the only one to mention the murder of George Floyd.
“Obviously we all hurt for the situation that happened in Minneapolis,” he says. “Us as law enforcement officials we don’t ever want to see anything like that happen. It’s just an unfortunate circumstance … that person will be held accountable for what they did.”
They all said Wisconsin has great officers who just want to serve their communities.
“The men and women that get into this field do it because we’re called to do it,” says Dreckman. “We’re called to come to our communities to serve, protect, willing to lay our lives down for those people that we protect. Every one of us sitting here is willing to do that. We’ve all thought about it. We’ve talked it over with our family, with our spouses, our kids. Hey, this is a potential.”
“Are there bad eggs within our organization, absolutely. Do we try hard to get rid of them? Yes,” says Dreckman. “Because it taints the badge. And we all of us, every day, put that badge on, put the uniform on with the patches, take a lot of pride in that.”