A disquisition on the amazing Dr. G

the brainiac behind Madison’s police monitor.

The last thrilling episode of Madison’s favorite blogge limned the role played by the one constant in the revolving doors of Madison’s independent police monitors, he being Dr. Gregory Gelembiuk. Our favorite Madison morning newspaper quoted him as saying the merest contact with law enforcement is hurtful to the kiddies and that Madison police are picking on youngsters with darker skin 25 times more often than paler faces. Unstated in the latest police monitor’s report (far as we can ascertain) is whether they had it coming — the disprovable imputation being Madison police are spiritual descendants of Bull Connor, only more camera-friendly.

“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.

Alex Saloutos

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.

Your irascible host

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 frivolous complaint against Chief Koval, “That’s just how I roll.”

Alex Saloutos

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.

Your irascible host

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 Los Angeles-area policy boutique (OIR Group) 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, and 928 white kids instead of one thousand — 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. [Why, for one example, was Brandi Grayson never prosecuted for shutting down rush hour traffic?]

As for “not hounding officers,” once free of Madison, in an interview with Madison 365, former police chief Shon Barnes (a black man) accused the Office of 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.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: For all his mathematics, our intelligent interlocutor misses the story line. It was the mission of Jonas Salk to cure polio. St. Patrick devoted his life to convert the heathens to Christianity. Greg Gelembiuk has his holy grail: to convict Madison police of racism — or at the very least, to question their professionalism. How does one “investigate the disparity,” as Alex demands? Badge Number 15, what was in your mind when you cited young Javon for instigating that school cafeteria rumble?

It is not happenstance that the Office of Independent Monitor and its Police Civilian Oversight Board have been these five-plus years a lost Three Stooges episode. They were always the wrong people giving the wrong answers to the wrong questions. Your defense of them, Mr. Saloutos (no nicknames because you have our respect), excuses the real harm done to populations too long enfeebled by the Left’s insistence on treating them as hapless victims at the hands of an oppressive master race instead of agents of their own destiny. The accountability thing.

How about obeying the gawdamn law, kids?