Frederica Freyberg:

Young, Gifted and Black sponsored a rally Tuesday night to call attention to its reform agenda. The group protested in front of Madison City County building before moving inside to attend a public protection committee meeting where plans for a new $8 million jail were discussed. Madison’s police chief, Michael Koval, released a written response to the coalition’s requests, and he joins us now. Thanks for doing so, Chief.

Michael Koval:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

So among the things you responded to in your response was the demand for no interaction with police. Now the coalition subsequently says that they want to have the relationship with the police that most middle class white communities have, that is little or no police contact. Why do you think that’s not a good idea?

Michael Koval:

Well, I think that if you’re only concentrating your time and attention on thinking about how the police are interacting exclusively with an offender profile, there perhaps might be a lot of things that we could discuss above and beyond the police presence, and we should be talking about those things. But a lot of the calls that we go to in our neighborhoods are calls in response to victims and witnesses and complainants who all want the police to mediate and to preserve some quality of life issues in their neighborhoods. So I think that that misses sort of a number of demographics.

Frederica Freyberg:

And in fact you want to put more police out into neighborhoods.

Michael Koval:

Indeed I do. I think that some of our best policing, frankly, is done preemptively, proactively and in collaboration when we’re not responding to modes of crisis. When we can be relational we're at our best. And nowhere does that get done in earnest, more gratifying, than at the neighborhood level.

Frederica Freyberg:

You’ve obviously looked at this a lot and had concerns about it, but what are the reasons for the arrest rate disparities between black and non-black people in Madison?

Michael Koval:

Well, in Madison, having lived my entire life here, there’s a lot of moving parts for that, and they go beyond the socioeconomic issues and not solely and exclusively the police. Clearly, the police have a role to play, and we have to be accountable and we have to constantly be looking at those either intended or unconscious things that we might be doing that contribute to that concern. But joblessness, the sort of the calamities of crisis of our public school education and moreover the sort of growing gulf of the poverty that we see in Madison, the haves and the have-nots, and that puts additional stressors on those places where there’s affordable housing, and that more and more is concentrated in neighborhoods which are proliferating.

Frederica Freyberg:

You suggested, in your first response, that maybe the way the police interact with offenders has some room for improvement. Like what?

Michael Koval:

Well, in terms of looking at what is the paradigm of that call and response. Many times, or traditional, would be if you have been viewed in doing something that’s prohibited by law or ordinance, would there be a citation, would there be an arrest? Perhaps now we have to more than ever before look at alternatives to that default mechanism and seeing, where are there restorative court elements that we can use in looking at avoiding that brick and mortar end game?

Frederica Freyberg:

And these are some of the same kinds of recommendations that this coalition is talking about. Has there been face-to-face kind of dialogue?

Michael Koval:

Well, it’s been sort of counter face-to-face, quite frankly. We have attempted to facilitate the demonstrations, and I think that at the outset of my blog I attempted to create a platform where there’s a number of things where I think barriers, or institutional pervasive racial issues, could be explored and things that I would endorse. But when we get to the point of the quality of life in the neighborhoods, that’s sort of my nonnegotiable category. I feel that strongly about it.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, how do you think residents of a progressive city like Madison feel about this racial disparity in arrests and even incarceration? What is your message to the citizens of this city on that?

Michael Koval:

It is a very real, inescapable conclusion that’s been vetted by facts. So rather than argue about whose facts or criteria are different than others, this is the time to come together, coalesce and look at where are some creative options that we can do better. This is a community of talent, a community of generosity, a community of people who are guided by individual initiatives and looking towards humanity. Now we just have to find the mechanism to take those individual efforts and collectively come to the table and discuss how we can do better.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet this has been a longstanding issue, and people talk a lot about working together and bringing people together in this city to solve it.

Michael Koval:

Mm-hmm.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is there some impatience now?

Michael Koval:

I do think, and I think it’s exacerbated by what we see playing out as narratives on a national level. Regrettably, there isn’t probably a week that’s gone by since I've taken office where there hasn’t been some extremely put-offish sort of visual that we see police in other markets conducting, and it has a visceral reaction with all of us. And if that is the constant drum roll that we hear, it does sort of become sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy. And we need to shift that narrative to something more positive. And that’s created by action.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right, Chief. Thanks very much.

Michael Koval:

Thank you.