Police Chief with his Data

Tonight I went to a rally and March for two African American young men who were killed. One was by a police officer who woke up a person with a mental illness sleeping on a bench in a Public Park. The other was a young man who was killed by three white men who put him in a choke hole when they suspected he was robbing a store. The demonstration was sparked by the demand for justice in Ferguson shooting of unarmed African American male.

If discrimination against young African American males is to stop it must stop with holding persons that kill these men accountable under the law. As I mentioned last night in the posting, this protest against the authorities has been building up for awhile.

There were lots of demands by protesters for city officials but interesting enough not one of them was for police to invest in Crisis Intervention Team, CIP, training, which consists of specialized training in dealing with individuals experiencing a mental health crisis, is a fuel to the fire of racism. The incident at Red Arrow Park where we rallied today could have been avoided if the police officer has been trained to deal with men sleeping on public par benches. However, I doubt if people today even heard about CIP.

Learning from the past or even correcting information when the facts are known does not seem to be a high priority of politicians or police. A few years back, at my request Politicifact Wisconsin in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel checked out our Police Chief’s statement that 85 percent of shooting suspects and victims in Milwaukee have “extensive criminal record.” After research of the facts they determined this statement was Half True. Yet in Tuesday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the Police Chief is quoted as saying after some recent shootings: “It’s overwhelmingly committed by people with criminal records against other people with criminal records who don’t care how much jeopardy they put children of their neighborhood in while they commit their crimes. So the police chief has gone from 85% of victims of shootings have criminal records to “overwhelmingly” number of victims have criminal records The fact check saying his statement was only half truth did not seem to slow him down.

Although I love to do research, I do realize that “facts do not matter” when it comes to serious matters like shooting victims. What is really hard to understand is that our police chief prides himself in “data driven policing” while he ignores the facts.

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