Tonight's Budget Meeting: Defunding the OIM to Fund Police Body Cameras?

Tonight's Common Council meeting (with an early start at 5:30pm) is devoted to passing our operating and capital budgets for the next year. Budget amendments were discussed and voted on in Finance Committee over the last few weeks, but only one rather minor one is making its way to debate tonight.

It is also possible for alders to introduce budget amendments from the floor (unnoticed on the agenda) during the meeting. There is talk that a few alders may be introducing such an amendment tonight to 1) eliminate the Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM) and 2) transfer these funds to the Police Department for the purpose of implementing police body cams. I cannot support such an amendment.

To say the first few years of the OIM have not gone well would be an understatement. Public reports have not been timely, responses to FOIA requests have been delayed and the city is working to replace the director, who recently resigned. But I believe in the mission of the OIM and want to give it a chance to fulfill its purpose of providing transparency and police accountability. My predecessor, Marsha Rummel, led the charge last year to keep the OIM in this year's budget and I will do no less.

As for police body cams, I support the premise when implemented correctly. Footage from these cameras can exonerate the innocent, document police wrongdoing and overall provide transparency and accountability. However, implementation will carry a large price tag. The very task of logging hundreds of hours of footage each day, along with responding to civilian and media requests for clips is very time-consuming. I am absolutely not ready to increase MPD's budget by $400,000 tonight without careful review of how such a program will operate, what safeguards will be in place and what the actual cost would be to do it correctly.

By the way, for anyone planning on attending or watching tonight's meeting, I will be attending via Zoom so that I can also attend in-person the concurrent joint MNA/SASY P&D meeting regarding a proposed six-story development on Winnebago and Merry Streets, to be held at Wil-Mar at 6:30pm.