Madison, Wisconsin Police Chief Is Just Another Racist Cop

Matthew Braunginn has the story at Madison365.com.

Writes Braunginn:

Chief Koval is not fit to be Madison’s police chief. Or anyone’s police chief.

I am a member of the Police Policy and Review Ad-Hoc committee, initiated by Madison’s elected Common Council to conduct a thorough review of the Madison Police Department. A police department that holds the largest arrest ratios, 11-1, in the nation between its black and white citizens, in a city that is among the best places to live if you are white, but one of the worst places to live if you are black.

Koval’s latest blog post shows him to believe that the Madison Police Department is beyond oversight, review, and criticisms, even though he likes to state it is the opposite.

What is it about cops today?

What Madison Can Learn from Baltimore

Undated family handout picture of Freddie Gray,
murdered by Baltimore Police (Baltimore Sun)

"Felony running" arrest of black man in Baltimore ends with near-severed spinal chord and death as noted by attorney Mary Koch, part of legal team representing the Freddie Gray family. I want know why"people think somehow it's not okay for a young man to run ... ." (Lawrence O'Donnell Show)

Baltimore — City officials suspended six police officers Monday as they investigate the death of a 25-year-old man who suffered a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody.

Freddie Gray had been hospitalized since his April 12 arrest and, according to his attorney, was in a coma when he died Sunday. On Monday, the mayor and police commissioner publicly pleaded for calm and promised a full accounting — an effort to keep Baltimore from becoming the latest flash point in disintegrating relations between police and communities across the country. (Hermann and Bui, Washington Post) ...

"It ain’t about being mad," Adrian Muldrow, vice president of the Baltimore City chapter of the NAACP, yelled to fire up the crowd. "It is about asking for

Baltimore? This is Madison, Wisconsin, with
an enlightened police force that Chief Mike
Koval described as "cordial" last week. In the
shot above just a bit more force and this
non-violent young protester could be the
recipient of police-inflicted fractured vertebrae.
Quite sure that would be good for a few
chuckles from Madison's finest.
Photo: Reproduced from video by
Leslie Amsterdam at SSWIDTMS.

justice."

The first thing Madison can learn from Baltimore and the Freddie Gray murder pertains to police: Madison police should do their killing of our citizenry behind closed doors with no on-lookers with cell phones.

Madison police officer Matt Kenny knows this lesson well, which is why—in part—we can expect no charges in Kenny's killing the unarmed Tony Robinson with five shots. (Ferguson, AP, The Grio)

I would reiterate that the greater Madison community cannot with any justice blame Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne when Ozanne clears killer Kenny in the coming weeks.

Ozanne can not fabricate evidence, and the evidence his office has by statute was gathered by the Wisconsin Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation led by an appointee of Republican Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, former district attorney of Waukesha County (R-White People). (Mal Contends)[Schimel was in the news again a couple of weeks ago for voting for an order banning the use of the words "climate change" in the offices of a Wisconsin state agency charged with state land management to the applause of a Scott Walker spokeswoman. (Roston, Bloomberg)]

As for the minority public anywhere, when you see the police: Take cover, run, and get near a trusted adult with a cell phone video. Mark Godsey posts other tips yesterday for innocent people to protect themselves from the police.

Godsey breaks down the non-legal, informal advice into six sections:

I. Have a Lawyer You Can Call

II. Don’t Talk to the Police

III. The Plea Bargain

IV. Be Ready for Trial

V. Shaken Baby/Child Abuse (Abusive Head Trauma)  [This requires special attention and treatment.]

VI. If You Are Wrongfully Convicted

As well, know the police have little to do with justice, though many police like to dispense their version of justice with deadly consequences, corrupt the judicial system, and for minor offenses determine a conviction. If you are harassed, consider yourself lucky. You were not killed.

In Tulsa, policing and killing blacks has become the new sport of wealthy campaign donors. (Love, The Grio)

That's the status of America, on a trajectory that ought to frighten every citizen.

Police lie on their reports, on the stand in the courtroom, and in dealings with the public. And police kill.

The Police Killed Him

Updated - "Last week I was in Madison, Wisconsin, where I was informed of the killing of Tony Robinson by a police officer. Robinson was high on mushrooms. The police were summoned after he chased a car. The police killed him. A month earlier, I'd been thinking a lot about Anthony Hill, who was mentally ill. One day last month, Hill stripped off his clothes and started jumping off of his balcony. The police were called. They killed him. I can't see the image of Tamir Rice aimlessly kicking snow outside the Cleveland projects and think of how little we invest in occupying the minds of children. A bored Tamir Rice decided to occupy his time with a airsoft gun. He was killed."

So notes Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic in a piece in mid-April, commenting on the already 100s of killings by police in 2015. [Update: New day, new police killing: See Sherman, Kaltenbach and Campbell, the Baltimore Sun with video: "What we know is that while in police custody for committing no crime — for which they had no justification for making the arrest except he was a black man running — his spine was virtually severed, 80 percent severed, in the neck area," attorney Murphy said. He called Freddie Gray's injuries "catastrophic."] Cops broke a 25-year-old man's spine virtually into two, he was killed.

Madison police chief Mike Koval ought to consider what police killing is the next time Koval opens his mouth.

Asks Coates: "[I]n this time of heightened concern around the policing, a more essential question might be, 'Were we justified in sending them?' At some point, Americans decided that the best answer to every social ill lay in the power of the criminal-justice system. Vexing social problems—homelessness, drug use, the inability to support one's children, mental illness—are presently solved by sending in men and women who specialize in inspiring fear and ensuring compliance. Fear and compliance have their place, but it can't be every place."

I would not look to police for answers. As an institution, police tend to be anti-intellectual, careerist and authoritarian in their psychology. And duplicitous and tribal.

This is because police departments are self-selecting, attracting someone capable and inclined to kill people.

This does NOT appear be lost on the folks who knew Tony Robinson.

Unfortunately, for Madison this fact does escape the police chief branding himself as reformist, now openly attacking a protesting community objecting to the police killing Robinson.

Chief Koval, Madison Police Lose Credibility, In Full CYA Mode

Madison Police - "Professional, Cordial, and
Respectful," says Koval. Knees on the head on
this young man's head show respect? If this
is professional, cordial and respectful, one
must question the police standards in this
regard. Perhaps shooting Tony Robinson
to death in March is cordial.

Madison Police hit the PR circuit hard yesterday.

Police Chief Mike Koval now says the police violence captured on video shows no police violence, and anyone who says differently loses his/her "credibility." (Savidge, Wisconsin State Journal)

At right is a shot from the video by Leslie Amsterdam of the Madison Police acting "very professionally, cordially and respectfully," as described by Koval, with protestors at a peaceful demonstration on Tuesday.

It would appear Koval and the cops are subject matter experts on what constitutes peace and violence.

And perhaps Tony Robinson really wasn't really shot to death. Right.

"Preliminary autopsy results released [in mid-March] show Tony Robinson was shot multiple times by a Madison police officer. Robinson, 19, died from firearm-related trauma to the head, torso and right upper extremity, according to the Dane County medical examiner's office. The exact number of gunshot wounds was not released, though friends and family have said he was shot five times in the chest." (Luthern, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

Shot Five times. Wonder why police held that fact back. Clear now is why Tony Robinson's family said they have lost faith in the "investigation" last week. (Schneider, The Capital Times)

Anyone expecting candor from Koval and the Madison Police will be disappointed very soon.

Below is Leslie Amsterdam's video.

Professional, cordial and respectful?

This is what criminal law experts and law enforcement reformists call bullshit.

The State Journal ran a video this morning omitting nearly five minutes of another video featured on the YGB Ferguson To Madison site (Facebook) as Madison police up its propaganda efforts as the decision on whether to prosecute the killer cop approaches.

From YGB Ferguson To Madison on Tuesday, April 14, 2015:

The culmination of a national day of action against police brutality was met, some might say ironically, with a further escalation of police violence when peaceful protesters were arrested on East Washington Avenue in front of East High School. If you pay attention to who they target first, you can see how the police set this up. What comes after is just people reacting to unprovoked police violence and then getting arrested. #Justice4Tony #BlackLivesMatter
Posted by YGB Ferguson To Madison on Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Violent Arrests by Madison Police

Anyone expecting justice and peace from the City of Madison is deluding herself.

Clearly, peace and justice are not why the police are in business.

As for Chief Mike Koval, just another careerist with a gun.

This is a shame, and the conclusion is inescapable that this is a betrayal to the community.

From YGB From Ferguson to Madison

Violent Police Arrest Peaceful Protestors

April 14, 2015 – Madison, WI

Between 6:30 and 7:30 pm on Tuesday April 14th, Madison Police officers at the intersection of East Washington and 4th Street arrested more than ten peaceful protestors.

Roughly 35 people, mostly youth remained in the intersection after a day-long protest, for which residents shut down East Washington for several hours to demand justice for Tony Robinson and as a part of a national action against police violence and mass incarceration.

As the young people continued to sit in the intersection, 30-40 officers approached the group from the west, spanning both sides of East Washington. The officers approached the youth telling them they had 5 minutes to leave before they would be arrested. While the youth deliberated as to whether they would take arrests, the police ambushed the group. Officers arrested three people initially, Jivonte Lee Davis, Mary Jo Walters and another protestor. They subsequently approached Leslie Amsterdam (Peterson), a member of the media, who was recording the arrests. They told her to move, and when she revealed herself as a member of the media, they destroyed her camera and forcibly arrested her. The remaining youth then decided that since they could not be in the street without being arrested, they would march legally in the crosswalks across East Washington during the light changes.

After roughly an hour, they were caught in the median during a light change. Two adults, Adeyemi Balogun and Brandi Grayson attempted to protect the youth from the police. “They grabbed Brandi and dragged her, so I grabbed her,” reported Balogun. “Then they jumped on me. They came up behind me and grabbed my neck. Then another cop grabbed me and they had me wrapped up. They just kept saying ‘stop resisting, stop resisting!’ But I wasn’t doing anything.”

Grayson was violently thrown to the ground and then drug along the ground before she was arrested. Balogun along with approximately six more people, including youth, were arrested at that time. Marnie Schroeder, another arrested person described the scene: “He [CJ Terrell] wasn’t talking, wasn’t doing anything and they slammed him to the ground. They had their knee on his neck and his face in the dirt. I tried to put my hand under his face to protect it, but then they arrested me.”

Community members are outraged but unsurprised by this gross display of state power by MPD. “This is a clear example of the state violence we have been talking about for months,” said Grayson. “They brutalized me, and they arrested our babies who were mourning and protesting against the police violence that led to the murder of their friend, Tony Robinson.” For more information, visit www.facebook.com/fergusontomadison or ygbcoalition.org.

March Was a Good Month for Killer Cops

Update: Madison Police Chief Mike Koval is attempting to "distance the [Tony Robinson investigation] outcome from the national narrative" of white cops killing unarmed young, black men. (Godar, The Capital Times).

One expects better from Koval who is playing public relations and CYA politics in outright denying the problem. For a reality-based assessment, I recommend the Young, Gifted and Black, From Ferguson to Madison site. (Facebook)
 ---
March was a very good month for killer cops: they racked up at least 111 bodies, the majority of them unarmed Black and brown men. "Any genuine movement for criminal justice ‘reform’ must aim to abolish the Mass Black Incarceration State, root and branch, by removing the ‘occupation’ army from Black areas and replacing it with a force of Black people’s own choosing."
- Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report