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Common Council

Body Cameras

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In the wake of Corey Ruiz's killing, I want to address comments I have seen on social media or in requests from news organizations regarding last year's budget amendment to move money from the independent monitor to the police budget in order to purchase cameras for the Madison Police Department.  I want to focus on last year's amendment vote, and I am not going to discuss Corey Ruiz's death, although I'll reiterate that it was unnecessary and tragic. I'm also not going to speak on votes that happened before April 2025, which was when I was first elected.

Body Cameras

I support getting police-worn body cameras (for MPD). Last year, former Alder Knox introduced a budget amendment to eliminate the operating budget for the Independent Monitor and move the money to the capital budget to purchase body worn cameras for the police. I was one of the 17 alders who voted against that budget amendment. The main reason I voted against that amendment is that buying the cameras is not the primary cost of using body cameras. The initial report from the pilot program estimated the price of body worn cameras for all of Madison's officers to be between $3-6 million. However, body worn camera footage requires storage space, software, and staff to manage open records requests and redact personal details from footage before releasing. Just the staff costs were estimated at $300,000 per year, which also does not take into account the annual software costs or the storage costs. None of those costs were accounted for in the operating budget that year. Purchasing cameras without a plan in place for redacting and releasing footage does nothing to help transparency, trust, or accountability.

Additionally, I think these costs are actually going to be higher than noted in the report. TV shows like Body Cam and On Patrol: Live inundate departments with open records requests in order to turn police interactions into entertainment. I find this disgusting and it hurts the work that real journalists do to uncover police misconduct.

Protecting the OIM

The budget amendment would have also completely eliminated the Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM). The office was created in the wake of police shootings by MPD in order to provide independent accountability and process review. While I was disappointed with the former monitor's lack of responsiveness, I also think this office could play an important role in shaping Madison policing. At the time we were voting on the budget, there was a position open for the interim monitor, and I wanted to make sure we had the opportunity for that to happen. I still think that changes are needed to sections 5.19 and 5.20 of Madison ordinances in order to clarify the OIM's office and mission, but the current monitor is doing her job by opening investigations and closing cases.

Upcoming Budget Cycle

Chief Patterson has put in a request for cameras in his capital budget request to the mayor, and he has a plan for including staffing and operational costs for police cameras in the operating budget. This plan is yet to be delivered. I will support these changes to start getting body worn cameras rolled out to MPD.

Budget Constraints

If you are not from Madison, or are from Madison and want to understand the budget constraints that we are operating under, please read these blog posts from the current and past budget cycles that discuss ERIP, the levy limit, and other state-level constraints that the city is operating under as we draft our budgets:

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Portrait of Alder Will Ochowicz

Alder Will Ochowicz

District 2
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