MILWAUKEE – Milwaukee Police Department officials said their working to make improvements on how they do their jobs based on direct feedback from the community.
At Villard Square Library Saturday MPD and their partners held their 14th community listening session to hear from people who live in each of the city's 15 aldermanic districts.
“To be honest, we would like more community participation,” Administration Bureau Assistant Chief Nicole Waldner said. “This one though today is amazing so this is probably the most community participation we’ve had."
At the event participants were asked a series of question around public safety and community values and were invited to anonymously submit their responses online before engaging an open discussion.
For participant and Community Impact Pastor with Bridge Builders William Olivier the priority was community-oriented policing.
“It looks like police who attend community events, police who are interacting with children. Police who are walking a beat and know neighbors by their first names,” Olivier explained. “It looks like police who aren’t only in the neighborhood when something negative or something bad happens.”
Walder said the event’s purpose was to take the feedback given and create a citywide community policing plan.
She also said MPD is relying on the expertise of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, a non-partisan research group to help them get it right.
She explained that a forum member has attended each of their meetings to take notes based on community member feedback to ultimately generate a report.
The research group will also take feedback from the event’s online survey, which some MPD officers participated in, to include in their report.
“A lot of those officers live in the city. I live in the city,” Waldner said. “My aldermanic listening session is next month so I want a voice because I’m a resident and there’s certain things that I want to feel safe too that they don’t have anything to do with the police.”
The last listening session will be held on October 28th but Walder said MPD’s efforts won’t end there. She said they will implement what they learn as they go but also will continue to seek feedback, particularly from younger people.
“I mean we’re not going to get everyone I’m not delusional,” she said, “but to get a good slice of the population and the make-up of the city we’re going to have continue these listening session with different groups for a while.”
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