for Schlitz and giggles because you can’t kill it!
Beginning to think the only reason Madison’s Independent Police Monitor survives like Rasputin after being poisoned, stabbed, and drowned is because throwbacks like Blaska keep trashing it. (We earned our paranoia.)
But here comes Madison’s latest (we’ve lost count) police monitor hire, Aeiramique Glass Blake — a temp (for no more than 9 months, mind you) — for what amounts to $148,992 a year. Recently relieved from a similar job in black-majority Baltimore. Of course, the lady is suing the city and its mayor and its DEI bureaucracy: Baltimore’s Office of Equity and Civil Rights. All that equity and they couldn’t do right by a black woman who was only trying to tame the jack booted, slave-catching polizei?
Baltimore’s mayor is a black man who, as a city alder, helped reinstate its equivalent of police oversight. Also proposed cutting $22.4 million from the city’s $550 million police budget but, in his first budget as mayor, actually increased the police budget by $28 million. Sued gun makers he blamed for the city’s crime. Not exactly Milwaukee’s old police chief, Harold Breier, who from 1964 to 1984 kept Milwaukee one of America’s safest cities, according to one historian.
Pardon my RINO Republicanism, but Baltimore’s problem isn’t the police — it’s crime! City has the fourth-highest big-city rate of violent crime in the nation — behind only Memphis, Oakland, and Detroit. (Milwaukee post-Breier ranks 7th; Minneapolis is 10th.)
Ms. Glass Blake took over in Baltimore after her predecessor’s “sudden departure,” according to the Wisconsin State Journal. Sound familiar? After leaving San Diego where she described herself as a community organizer and restorative justice consultant. Claimed a local flood “wasn’t merely a natural catastrophe; it exemplified the routine mismanagement, neglect, and genuine disregard for communities of color.”
Too much oversight, not enough policing
That’s the other thing: Madison already had a police and fire commission with the power to investigate and penalize bad behavior. Baltimore did not. Madison’s independent monitor and its Police Civilian Review Board are redundant — and toothless.
Take the case of Tony Robinson Jr., the drugged up young man killed in self-defense by a police officer 10 years ago. Incident was investigated and reviewed by the Madison police department, by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, by the attorney general of the State of Wisconsin, and by the district attorney. What is the police monitor with a staff of 1½ going to add to all that?
More likely, the monitor will nibble on cases like Shadayra Kilfoy Flores (former chair of the Oversight Board), and Tony Robinson’s grandmother brought to the Police and Fire Commission against Mike Koval: that the police chief described the latter’s eccentric conduct with an unflattering (but accurate) adjective. I.E., he hurt her feelings.
Madison is a city that refuses to supply police with body-worn cameras that would provide the surest proof of professional conduct while simultaneously compelling that conduct. Likely, all this ankle biting and second-guessing discourages recruitment. We know the sheriff is having trouble finding deputies willing to serve an ungrateful public.
Three alders tried to zero out this monitor nonsense but were outvoted 17-3. Half the 20 alders are up for election in April but the cavalry ain’t coming to the rescue. Democrats, Progressive Dane, the teachers union, and AFSCME run this town and they’re all deep into Woke self-flagellation.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: The DEI bureaucracy doesn’t teach anyone to read (see Madison’s test scores). The Woke agenda makes nothing affordable. Equity czars don’t keep anyone safe. But they sure as hell keep the lawyers busy.
Why is Madison hiring a temp as monitor?
Why start all over again with yet another hire?
Who wrote the Book of Love?
Is Santa real?
5 responses to “We monitor the police monitor”
Great, yet another DEI hire. How anyone with a brain votes Democrat/progressive is beyond me.
Dementia Don’s entire cabinet are DEI hires. Can’t do math, makes nothing affordable and uo to their asses in lawyers.
Richard v Lesiak, FOCUS!
What does DD have to do with Madison’s independent monitor and the wasteful, incompetent, cop hating, racists of the police civilian oversight board, and the temporary hire who will undoubtedly sue the city when she doesn’t get permanently placed?
I wonder if this job is like department head jobs are? 5 year contract that can or not be renewed at the end.
The police monitor’s real job is to salve the tender sensibilities of Madison progressives by providing the kind of expensive window dressing that says to the world, “Look how sensitive we are to the needs of ‘marginalized’ communities.” It’s quintessential Madison, where image trumps reality every time.