Here & Now

Proposed Bill Would Not Have Changed What Happened in Mpls.

Frederica Freyberg:

The legislative bill that calls for making the primary duty of law enforcement to preserve the life of all individuals and that deadly force is to be used only as a last resort is being derided by the Republican state senator who is chair of the Public Safety Committee. Senator Van Wanggaard of Racine is a former police officer. He joins us now from Racine and thanks very much for being here.

Van Wanggaard:

Glad to be here, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

So why in your mind is it wrong to codify in statute the primary duty of law enforcement is to preserve the life of all individuals?

Van Wanggaard:

Well, actually, under Chapter 66 it’s already included in there and it requires each department to have policies in place, both under state and federal guidelines that restrict those officers to acting in accordance with state and federal laws. So just like what happened in Minnesota, this officer that stepped outside of his department’s policies, guidelines and training and did this horrific positioning of his knee on the suspect’s neck, that individual is outside of the policies and guidelines of the force continuum. And he’s been charged with second-degree murder. We have all kinds of criminal statutes on the books that apply to everybody. They apply to police officers, too, not just the people on the street that they police, but the police officers themselves. And those guidelines are already in place under Chapter 60 and under Chapter 62.13, which deals with police and fire commissions, et cetera. There are several layers that would be involved in the process if in fact an individual steps outside of those guidelines. And I’d just like to point out, I was a police and fire commissioner for ten years, also.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so you describe this proposal as being micromanaging of police departments, and you also say that it seems clear that whoever wrote this bill has never served with law enforcement. Why do you say that piece?

Van Wanggaard:

Well, I say that because no matter what is in this bill would not have changed what occurred in Minneapolis and I don’t believe it would have changed any of the officer-involved incidents that have occurred in my recent memory. We need to get at the root cause of why this is happening, and we need to look at specifically how can we address those issues. So we have a piece of legislation that we’ve been working on about two years. We’ve been working on it with Mr. Michael Bell. He lost his son to a police officer down in Kenosha a few years back, and he has been looking for change in how we address some of the officer-involved shootings and how can we train better so that maybe we can alleviate some of these issues happening. So we’ve been working on that piece of legislation, which would get to the root cause. It would look specifically, like the National Transportation Safety Board comes in when there’s a transportation crash in public transportation, something like that. They come in, they survey all of the information. There’s no place they can’t go. They can subpoena. They can do all those different things. Find out why it happened so we can make changes so we don’t have these failures. Whether or not a black man on the ground or a white man on the ground wouldn’t the have made any difference. What this officer did was just absolutely horrendous and he should be charged. So that wouldn’t have made any difference. We need to look at what happened here, where was the failure. And I think that the process, we will now have not only will they have an internal investigation, they’ll have their state Department of Justice in Minneapolis looking at it. I know the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice at the federal level and the state level in Minnesota will be looking at it. Just as we have happen here when there’s an officer-involved death. So I think we need to keep all of that in perspective.

Frederica Freyberg:

You talk about root causes of this kind of thing like happened in Minneapolis happening. Would that be training and accountability then?

Van Wanggaard:

I think training is a huge, huge part of it. We’re blessed here in Wisconsin. We’ve got a really good bureau of training and standards, and they work very closely with all of our departments. I guess I lean a little bit towards southeastern Wisconsin with Gateway Technology College and MATC. But they train our officers. They have two-year programs and they’re hands-on and they’re phenomenal. And then every officer in the state of Wisconsin is required to have 24 hours of continuing education to maintain their certifications. So they go through all of the other aspects of interaction with the community, which could be mental health issues, it could be DTAC training, defensive tactics for arrest. All those different things are trained over that minimum 24 hour period. We’re really fortunate to have that. They upgrade that training, so every year an officer has to have at least 24 hours of training for updating on current things that might change how they respond to the community.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Senator Wanggaard, we need to leave it there. Thanks very much.

Van Wanggaard:

You’re welcome.