Video release policy passed by Milwaukee FPC still in limbo

In Milwaukee, a new policy aimed at increasing transparency around officer-involved shootings remains frozen by litigation. A measure mandating the release of video within 15 days of such an incident was approved by the city’s Fire and Police Commission (FPC) a year ago on April 20. Local activists, who had spent months demanding the policy, praised the new rule, which requires that video be shown to a victim’s family within 48 hours of an incident, and to the public within 15 days. A year later, some of those same activists are asking FPC members whether the policy will ever be fully implemented.

“Please do not forget the families that have come here to share their stories and tears,” said Tiffany Stark during a Thursday meeting of the FPC. “Our community deserves accountability and better transparency with the police. If this doesn’t happen, our community will continue to suffer and things will get worse. Show the video — 48 hours and 15 days.”

Stark, a member of the Milwaukee Alliance for Racist and Political Repression, recalled the shooting of Dontre Hamilton by former Milwaukee police officer Christopher Manney in 2014. Hamilton, who struggled with homelessness and mental illness, was approached by Manney as he slept on a park bench in Red Arrow Park. The 31-year-old was shot and killed by Manney, who woke Hamilton after conducting an out-of-policy pat down. Although Manney was not  criminally charged for the shooting, he was fired from the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). The city’s decision to implement a body camera program for MPD was guided in part by the Hamilton shooting.

In 2020 and 2021, activist groups in Milwaukee County worked on a variety of local policy changes for law enforcement agencies, including a ban on the use of chokeholds, the end of no-knock warrants and the implementation of new body camera programs. The Milwaukee Alliance pushed for the policy change that would later become SOP-575 after a string of deaths in the Milwaukee County Jail. While MPD Chief Jeffrey Norman supported the FPC’s decision to approve the new video release policy, other law enforcement officials decried it as a danger to the integrity of ongoing investigations.

That opposition eventually culminated in a lawsuit by the Milwaukee Police Association, which argued that the FPC violated its collective bargaining agreement by approving the policy without consulting with the union. Besides being held up by the ongoing lawsuit, SOP-575 will also be fully suspended for the duration of the Republican National Convention.

During Thursday’s FPC meeting — which was preceded by a closed executive session with attorneys advising on the ongoing litigation – commissioners noted that on May 6, a status conference on the lawsuit is expected in court. After that conference, the FPC will hold a meeting to update the public on what is likely to come. When asked about delays in the case, FPC Executive Director Leon Todd said that a number of judges have been assigned to the case, partly due to a rotation which occurs in Milwaukee County courts.

“A lot of people still aren’t aware that the hard fought victory that we won was rescinded the very next day by the Milwaukee Police Association,” said activist Brian Verdin, who criticized  the power the police union has demonstrated by blocking the policy and other reforms since 2020.

Activists from the Milwaukee Alliance, who have also worked with the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to implement a similar policy, said the sheriff is waiting on the outcome of the Milwaukee case. In addition to  the families of people killed by police in Milwaukee, the Alliance has also worked with those who’ve lost loved ones in Milwaukee’s jail. Over a 14-month period, six people died in the jail from health complications and suicides. Cylvia Thyrion, a 20-year-old woman who died of alleged suicide in December 2022, was among them. Her mother, Kerrie Hirte, has called for greater transparency and accountability in the jail since her daughter’s death.

“The video, they say, is still under investigation,” Hirte told the FPC. She was only allowed to see video of her daughter’s death in a private setting with lawyers four months after it happened. “They’re holding on to all the materials. We’re trying to move forward with the case but we can’t even sometimes move forward with things because they have all the information. They say that it can interfere with the case, but I don’t think it can. I feel like it prolongs our pain as victims, because I have to continuously come back here and fight.”

Hirte, who lives over two hours away in Green Bay, traveled to Milwaukee Thursday evening to speak before the commission. She recalled the day investigators arrived at her home with word of her daughter’s death. By then, local news outlets had already begun reporting the details. Meanwhile Hirte, who’d been expecting to hear from her daughter, waited for a call that never came until detectives knocked on her door. “That’s why I’m here today,” Hirte said, fighting back tears. “To show that it really is important that everybody knows the truth about what is really happening.”