A group out of San Francisco, called Matrix Consulting Group, has been studying the Milwaukee Police Department, to see how efficient it is, in servicing Milwaukee residents. In an update, questions were raised regarding how resources are distributed across neighborhoods in the city. Questions came up with some people demanding change after George Floyd’s death in May 2020. There was federal grant money for more police officers which the city decided to take. Some of the money was also used to fund this current study. Part of that mandate according to Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa, chair of the Public Safety and Health Committee, was “to look at the capacity and deployment options so that we could figure out how to increase department efficiency and improve safety”.
Part of what the study has found so far is there are too few officers in parts of the city where there are higher demands for emergency services. Members of the common council and Fire and Police Commission took in this information last week. Between this effort and two more, it will be decided how to handle future 911 calls for service. The city is under financial pressure which has caused cuts in service the past few years. They are looking at more help from the state, as things are expected to get worse. “It’s important to…have an open mind to this process and everything that is coming out right now so that we can make the best-informed choices after we are able to digest everything that comes out of all these studies,” said Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who was council president at the time the city launched the Matrix study and task force.
Certain districts are quite busy while others have lots of pro-active time to follow up on crime and others issues in the district. District 6, for instant, on the south side of the city has the highest amount of pro-active time. North side districts like 4, 5 and 7 have very little pro-active time. Officers in the busier districts also have a bigger chance of getting burned out because they are running from call to call most of their shift. The study also showed that in the busier districts wait times for calls for service could be up to four hours. Commissioner Bree Spencer, of the Fire and Police Commission, stated “sometimes in our community meetings people express a lot of frustration around that, especially when it translates to longer response times.”
The study recommended taking more calls over the phone and sending out some civilians to a few calls. When I was still working, we would take squads from one district that was not really busy and send them into another district to help with the backlog of calls. This helped to clear up those calls a little quicker. This became political as some people got upset asking “why are you taking our squads to work in another district?” It was a tough situation but hopefully they will find a solution to handling all these calls with summer right around the corner.