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Woke cop-bashing queen story hour

Madison had two capitols!

Sometimes one CAN judge a book by its cover. According to the annual report of the city’s latest independent police monitor, Madison has not one but two capitol buildings, within blocks of each other. 

Sure, the monitor is only four months in town but might she have questioned the likelihood of two identical capitols? Did she even look at the damn thing (since scrubbed from its website)? Mizz Aeiramique Glass apologized (after a fashion), saying she didn’t account for “how much the skyline means to this community.” It’s not the skyline, dear lady, but credibility. She expressed wonderment that using artificial intelligence, which she blamed for the cover, “was a negative thing here in Madison.”

That’s got to rank right up there with George Costanza explaining to his boss that no one told him engaging in sexual intercourse with the cleaning lady on his office desk was against company policy at that particular workplace. “If I had known …”

Mizz Glass doth protest that the contents of the report should be taken seriously. But how likely is it that black kids (we do not capitalize) are 25 times more likely to be cited for disorderly conduct than white? Twenty-five times! Work out the math involved in that. If 100 white kids were cited for disorderly that equates to 2,500 black kids; or 100 black kids hit up 25 times each. At 7.2% of the city’s population! A-I could have done better.

Gobbledygook

However disordered, the real brains behind this enterprise is the office’s data cruncher, Greg Gelembiuk, aka Doctor Gobbledygook. (Seriously, listen to this guy some time serve up one of his Thousand Island word salads! Those of a certain age will recall Dr. Irwin Corey, the master of double-talk.) Being detained by police is hurtful to kids, says Dr. G, thereby capitalizing in bold print THE ANTI-COP BIAS of this entire enterprise. How about hurtful to public safety? Talk to the staff at Sennett middle school, bitten and punched by a 14-year-old kid 03-19-26. Or the 16 year old causing trouble and concealing a firearm on State Street. (No, we do not care to know the troubled kids’ race. Immaterial.)

The monitor and its Police Civilian Oversight Board were created during the Defund the Police madness after the George Floyd killing in 2020 and predicated by the police shooting of a violent drug abuser, Tony Robinson Jr., 03-05-15. 

Thanks to reporter Chris Rickert, we learn that — five years after its creation —  the monitor completed its first eight investigations. Blaska Policy Werkes has submitted a Freedom of Information request seeking those findings. Did they find Madison police racist or not? Presumably, Mizz Glass is still probing the arrest of her chairman, Maia Pearson, for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. (“The absurdity of the damn thing won’t stop.”)  

Of 20 alders only three, all black — Isadore Knox, Barbara Harrington McKinney, and Joann Pritchett — voted to defund this running joke. The monitor is now asking for an annual budget of $1.97 million — five times its current $405,964. (Not 25 times?)

Blaska’s Bottom Line: A report this slapdash and wrong-headed is only the latest argument for deputizing building security to hustle Mizz Glass and her sidekick, Dr. Gobbledygook, off the premises. Use their offices for storage.

When will Police Chief Patterson stand up for his officers?

Take me back home, Jeeves!

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11 responses to “Woke cop-bashing queen story hour”

  1. wm. tyroler Avatar
    wm. tyroler

    The OIPM announced yesterday, “The Office of the Independent Police Monitor has released its annual report for 2025-2026. This report covers the key activities, research findings and initiatives of the office over the last 12 months. … The 2025-2026 annual report can be found on the OIPM’s report page on its website.” And if you go to the linked site (https://www.cityofmadison.com/news/2026-03-17/oipm-press-briefing-2025-2026-annual-report), this is what you’ll find: “The 2025-2026 OIPM Annual Report is under review.”

    Reply
  2. Gary L. Kriewald Avatar
    Gary L. Kriewald

    Don’t you love it when one of the progressive elites who run this town shoots him/herself in the foot in a manner so egregious even the local media feel compelled to report on it? The account I heard (on Channel 15) said that city agencies are prohibited from using AI-generated material in their official publications, which means that it’s not just “a negative thing” but an actual offense. In addition to the hilarious image of the fabled Madison skyline with two–count ’em, two–capitol domes, the report was rife with spelling and grammatical errors (which, to be fair, could be the result of ebonics rather than AI). But, of course, since the offender in question is a black woman, nothing will be done and the local media can go back to reporting on their usual fare, e.g., the opening of the latest craft brewery or the groundbreaking for the latest luxury high-rise.

    Reply
  3. Alex Avatar
    Alex

    Dave, old sport, your math skills are showing, and not in a good way. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and the occasional long division will only take you so far. Had you taken 10th grade algebra instead of study hall, you might recognize a population-adjusted rate when you see one. As it stands, you are embarrassing yourself with a lack of critical thinking and a fundamental misunderstanding of basic math and statistics.

    The 25x figure is not a raw count. It is a population-adjusted rate. That means for every 1,000 Black juveniles in Madison, versus every 1,000 white juveniles, the Black kids receive sole disorderly conduct citations at roughly 25 times the rate. Your hypothetical of 100 white kids equaling 2,500 Black kids treats it as a raw number comparison, which it is not. The 7.2% population figure does not debunk the finding. It is precisely why the finding is significant. A small population receiving citations at a dramatically higher per capita rate is the whole point. Your math actually proves Gelembiuk’s case while trying to disprove it.

    You are right that the AI cover was stupid and amateurish. No argument there. A monitor four months on the job, in a city that is apparently allergic to body cameras but somehow fluent in artificial intelligence, should have known better. Credibility is the only currency this office has, and spending it on a fake skyline is not a sound investment. Lesson learned, one hopes.

    Now, about Dr. Gobbledygook. When the data does not cooperate, one strategy is to attack the mathematician. “Mizz Glass” and “Dr. Gobbledygook” are fun nicknames, Dave, but they are not arguments. Neither is calling rigorous statistical analysis a thousand-island word salad. The man has a doctorate in Integrative Biology from the UW with a minor in statistics, four decades of experience in statistical modeling, papers published in peer-reviewed journals cited more than 1,400 times, and co-authored the City of Madison’s own 2019 MPD Policy and Procedure review. He is not serving up word salad. He is serving up rigorous statistical analysis of the Madison Police Department’s own data. MPD’s numbers. Not his. Theirs. If you want to dispute the findings, dispute the methodology. The ad hominem is beneath you.

    The cover was embarrassing. The findings are not, though perhaps not in the way you think.

    Reply
    1. richard V Lesiak Avatar
      richard V Lesiak

      There you go again putting facts in the way of fake outrage.

      Reply
    2. David Blaska Avatar
      David Blaska

      Alex, old fellow, somewhere in the vast stacks at the Dan Quayle Memorial Library here at Blaska Policy Werkes is a tome titled “How To Lie With Statistics.” My guess is Greg Gelembiuk has read it; he may even be cited.

      You present the good doctor as a rigorously disinterested, empirically data-driven social scientist. He is not. He was a founding member of the so-called Critical Response Team along with Amelia Royko Maurer, the oft-arrested Shadayra Kilfoy Flores, and violent drug abuser Tony Robinson Jr.’s vengeful grandmother. You have not had the mind-numbing privilege of witnessing, in person, Gelembiuk before the Madison Common Council reading off his laptop in support of hounding Madison police officers with imputations of raw racism. To which service he puts his statistics. Indeed, the entire raison d’être of the police monitor and oversight board rests on the premise that the Madison police department is institutionally racist. That remains an unproven construct.

      In your reading of his analysis you write: “That means for every 1,000 black juveniles in Madison, versus every 1,000 white juveniles, the black kids receive sole disorderly conduct citations at roughly 25 times the rate.”

      Please check my math, Dr. Saloutos: If, out of 1,000 white kids, 10 are cited and out of 12 black kids 3 are cited (or one is given 3 citations) that would indicate black kids are cited for disorderly conduct at 25 times the rate of white kids. How does THAT prove racism? Last I looked during my run for Madison school board six years ago, male students accounted for 59% of the disciplinary procedures in the Madison Metro school district yet account for only 49% of enrollment. Using the monitor’s logic, why is MMSD biased against boys? Or is it possible that boys commit more disciplinary violations?

      As for my snarky little nicknames, like Tony Robinson Jr.’s grandmother told the PFC in her friviolous complaint against Chief Koval, “That’s just how I roll.”

      Reply
      1. Gary L. Kriewald Avatar
        Gary L. Kriewald

        Doesn’t Alex know that seeing the latest snarky nicknames you’ve conjured up is one of the main reasons people, myself included, visit this site? Methinks he’s not troubled by the names themselves, only by whom you award them to. Alex is also a textbook example of someone so blinkered by the credentials of an “expert” (i.e., someone whose opinions/values align perfectly with his own) that he’s willing to grant him unquestioned omniscience. He also seems to be unaware of Mark Twain’s famous categorization of lies: “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

        Reply
      2. Alex Avatar
        Alex

        Dave, you have just made your best argument of the exchange, and you deserve a straight answer rather than a roundhouse.

        On Gelembiuk the activist: Fair point, and I overstated the disinterested-scientist angle. He is an advocate. Has been for years. I know the history. But let’s be precise about what he has advocated for: transparency and accountability, not abolition, not defunding, not hounding officers. The distinction matters. And consider this: he co-authored the City’s own 2019 MPD Policy and Procedure review, commissioned by the City itself. Advocacy and methodology are separate questions, and you have not disputed the methodology. MPD’s own data go into that machine. If the machine is crooked, show the gears. Calling him Doctor Gobbledygook does not do that.

        On your math: You have just discovered why statisticians care about sample sizes. Your hypothetical — ten citations per thousand white kids, three citations for twelve black kids — gives you a 25x rate built on a denominator of twelve. Any first-year stats student would call that a parlor trick. The actual analysis uses Madison’s full juvenile population as the denominator. That is not a small number, and the confidence intervals are not the problem you are imagining. If you have the actual report, the denominator is in there. Read past the cover.

        Now, your boys-versus-girls argument. That is genuinely the sharpest thing you have written in this exchange, and I am not being sarcastic. You are right that raw disparity does not equal bias. Never did. The report documents a disparity and calls for an investigation. That is the appropriate response to a disparity — not automatic conviction, not automatic acquittal. The boys analogy cuts both ways, incidentally: researchers who study gender gaps in school discipline frequently do conclude there is bias operating. You may not like that finding either, but you cannot have it both ways.

        The cover was a gift to people who wanted to dismiss the report without reading it. You unwrapped it with enthusiasm. The disparity is still in there, waiting.

        Reply
        1. David Blaska Avatar
          David Blaska

          I am enjoying this.

          Your argument, Alex, again rests on the slippery slopes of disparity. Disparity is a condition of life. Some are rich, some are poor. Disparity does not equate to illegal bias — except to probably every Madison progressive. A surer measure of actual racial discrimination — that is to say, racial preference or disfavor — would be the number of Title VII prosecutions, EEOC decisions, etc. I don’t have a handle on that but if they are numerous they have escaped public attention.

          I do know that Madison Police were never under a DOJ Civil Rights consent decree, unlike, say, Chicago. In fact, DOJ had praised MPD well before 2019 MPD Policy and Procedure review, which was spurred by a Beverly Hills policy boutique (OIR) the city hired at a cost of $400,000, which was itself a reaction to the 2015 shooting by a white cop (much pilloried) of a violent black drug abuser. Really, a sop to the howling mob. The 2019 MPD Policy and Procedure Review recommended the police monitor/civilian review board. Also “Unpaid Ticket Resolution Days,” which sounds like a lot of fun, should it occur.

          As for the sample size, the Census Bureau likely has determined the exact percentage of black males aged 16 to 25 in the corporate limits of Madison WI but in general our black population of all ages amounts to 7.2 per one hundred. So, yes, you could well use the number 72 black kids instead of 12, for all the difference it makes. Chief Koval included race in MPD’s daily summary of notable crimes but his successors — sensible to the community’s Woke zeitgeist — have discontinued that practice.

          If Gelembiuk is a dispassionate number cruncher, as you attest, he sure runs with a strange wolf pack. Shadayra Kilfoy-Flores (at one time the chair of the civilian oversight board) et al are on record disparaging white people.

          It’s worth noting that four minority race alders objected to Gelembiuk’s appointment to the study committee. The ordinance creating the police monitor/civilian review board specified black membership but not white. Blaska brought suit in federal court and prevailed (if it’s discrimination you’re after.) There is some thought that between district attorney Ismael Ozanne and Dane County’s judiciary, extra slack is given to minority offenders.

          Once free of Madison, in an interview with Madison 365, former police chief Shon Barnes (a black man) accused the Police Monitor of:

          “Asking for data and fishing through research papers to find a methodology that you think will give you the answer that you want so that you can create some kind of sanction or punishment for the police department. You cannot say you’re the Office of the Independent Monitor, and yet you hire people who go on social media and give their opinions about the police, who are on record with how they feel about the police.”

          Now tell the class, Doctor Saloutos, how do you know Greg Gelembiuk? Neighbor, colleague, bowling team member?

  4. David Blaska Avatar
    David Blaska

    BTW: I have violated my own word limit. So sue me.

    Reply
  5. A disquisition on the amazing Dr. G – Blaska Policy Werkes

    […] “Woke Cop Bashing Story Hour” engendered a lively colloquy between platinum subscriber Alex Saloutos, a worthy city government gadfly, and your irascible host. We rescue it from the comment section to give it oxygen aboveground. It’s that good and (sorry) that lengthy. […]

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  6. No complaint too trivial – Blaska Policy Werkes

    […] a word about the 70-page annual report issued last week and then withdrawn due to the cover art depicting Madison with two state capitols. Aside from the art, produced via artificial stupidity, the body of the […]

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