MILWAUKEE — When it comes to deadly pursuits, is the Milwaukee Police Department transparent enough?
For half a year, TMJ4 has been working to find out how MPD polices itself when it comes to one of the most dangerous things officers do.
Almost six months ago, TMJ4 submitted several open records requests asking for documents and video related to ten deadly police pursuits going back six years.
We’ve gotten some records back, but only paperwork. Those documents are reports MPD is required to complete after every pursuit.
MPD is holding back arguably the most important piece: dash and body camera video. The footage would show you exactly what happened.
One of those pursuits took the life of an officer. Fleeing drivers died in others. And in some cases, innocent bystanders were killed. The people who had nothing to do with the chase.
We want to see the tactics used in these pursuits. What did officers do or not do to try to get drivers to stop — and whether the video shows exactly what is written in the post-pursuit review.
Open records law says the custodian of public records must provide them as soon as practicable and without delay. Bill Lueders is the president of Wisconsin’s Freedom of Information Council. It’s a statewide volunteer group that seeks to safeguard public records and open meetings laws.
"Is it fair that we've been waiting 6 months to get our hands on this video?” TMJ4 reporter Ben Jordan asked.
"This video should have been provided already,” Lueders replied. “There's no reason it should take this long. I don't believe that the Milwaukee Police Department is in compliance with the requirements of the open records law in this circumstance, and they are probably subject to legal action for their failure to provide the records in a prompt manner."
While the visual evidence has yet to be seen, we know from the pursuit reports that in at least one of the deadly chases in 2020, an officer neglected to slow down at ‘controlled intersections’. That means at stop signs or stop lights.
The document shows the officer ‘failed to use due regard’ three times in the blocks leading up to when the fleeing driver crashed and killed someone.
“Police Officer Steinberg has had similar issues in the past,” the pursuit report states.
What we can’t see is whether action was taken against the officer beyond a policy review. That part was either left blank or it was redacted.
"This is information that the public has a right to know,” Lueders said. “ There's no reason that an officer should be protected from disclosure of the fact that he was counseled or disciplined, or exonerated in the conduct that led to somebody's death."
We’ve asked MPD several times why it’s taken so long to get video from these ten pursuits. TMJ4 has narrowed the requests to video from the main squad involved to show what happened from the officer’s point of view in each pursuit.
MPD’s communications team told us it would take more than 100 hours to redact that footage and it won’t provide an estimate of when we’ll get our requests back.
On Monday, we asked MPD if we could interview Chief Norman about all of this, but we’re told he wasn’t available.
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