OIPM Statement on PCOB Chair Arrest

The independent investigation for the Madison Police Department arrest of Ms. Pearson has been completed and at the appropriate time will be posted on the OIPM website.

I want to speak plainly about what this investigation means, not only for the individuals involved, but for this community.

This was not a traffic stop. A traffic stop requires an officer to initiate a stop of a moving vehicle based on an observed violation or reasonable suspicion. That did not happen here. Officers responded to a call for service at a location where the vehicle was already parked and the driver was outside of the vehicle when officers approached her. No one pulled this vehicle over. No traffic violation was observed. No stop was initiated.

If someone can call the police and the police do not seek the truth, then the most vulnerable among us bear the greatest risk. Being a passenger in a car is not a crime. Recording law enforcement is not a crime. Asking an officer to explain what they are doing, and why they are doing it, is not a crime.

And yet on December 19th, 2025, a woman who had done every one of those things, was pulled from a parked vehicle by multiple officers, taken to the ground, had a knee jabbed into her back, was transported face-down to an empty parking lot in the middle of the night without being told where she was going or why she was being arrested, and was charged with crimes that have no adequate lawful basis in this record. If being a passenger is a basis for arrest, we are all at risk. If recording officer conduct is treated as justification for force, we are all at risk. If asking questions of law enforcement is considered disorderly, we are all at risk.

Police discretion is essential. When officers exercise it equitably, with purpose, with procedural justice, with humanity, it is one of the most powerful tools for truly protecting and serving a community. At the same time, police discretion is one of the most dangerous tools police have, when it is used to assert power, to secure submission through use of force, or to cover the absence of legitimate legal authority with charges that were never meant to carry that weight.

Resisting and disorderly conduct are not tools for retroactive justification. Pretextual charging, and the use of high-discretion charges as a cover, will not go unexamined by this off ice. It will be named. Every time.

Just because some actions are within policy does not make them right. When OIPM identifies policies that allow harm, this off ice will work for policy change. MPD should be leading with kindness, with justice, with policies, practices and procedures that reflect the department it says it strives to be. The disorderly conduct on December 19th, the conduct that created a disturbance on a downtown Madison street, is documented in the report. It belongs to the encounter that off icers created, not to the women they arrested.

Read the full statement here