Police Department Botches $15 Million Grant Application

Mayor Cavalier Johnson (right) and Police Chief Jeffrey Norman address the media in November 2022. File photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The Milwaukee Police Department finds itself the source of a multi-million-dollar mistake that, at the very least, would have allowed the city to consider adding dozens of police officers over the next four years.

An MPD administrative employee failed to submit a $15 million federal grant application in time. A “technical error” was encountered just hours before the deadline. The funding, part of the COPS grant program, would have paid for approximately 50 officers for three years, with the city required to fund the positions for a fourth year.

Officials in MPD and Mayor Cavalier Johnson‘s administration have downplayed the error by noting that the city wasn’t guaranteed to receive the grant and that under Act 12, which enabled the forthcoming city sales tax, the city can’t count grant-funded positions towards its required minimum staffing levels and could have turned down the grant. But MPD sought the grant before Act 12 was negotiated and Johnson has, at several points in recent years, supported using COPS grants to hire officers.

Citing an ongoing personnel investigation into an unnamed administrative employee, MPD has declined to provide details on what exactly went wrong. “At the appropriate time, this information will be provided,” said Heather Hough, MPD chief of staff, to the Public Safety & Health Committee Thursday morning. She accepted responsibility for the issue, though she wasn’t the individual directly making the grant submission.

“I assure you that mechanisms have been put in place by the department to make sure this never happens again,” she told the committee. That includes moving the city’s internal deadline for any grant forward by five days.

But council members weren’t pleased that they didn’t learn about the May issue until radio host Mark Belling broke the news last week. The Mayor’s Office and Fire & Police Commission were previously informed of the issue.

“In this case, I did not communicate the incident to the council when it occurred. That was a judgment call I made,” said Hough. “This was not [Chief Jeffrey Norman]’s decision.”

The chief of staff, a former assistant city attorney, said the city thought the issue with its application “could be resolved” after the unspecified error was discovered that same day and was in contact with the U.S. Department of Justice. The city also relied on its federal congressional delegation to no avail.

The mayor and budget director Nik Kovac made no mention of the grant issue when briefing Urban Milwaukee on the budget last week. But they did discuss COPS grants.

“Act 12 does create a disincentive to apply for future COPS grants, which we are not doing in this year’s budget,” said Kovac, not mentioning that the city already had attempted to acquire a COPS grant for the budget.

“We applied for COPS grants in the past because, prior to Act 12 at least, it made sense for us to allow the federal government to cover the costs for three years or whatever it was, but now there is a disincentive to do that,” added Johnson. “I don’t want to leave money on the table at the federal government because of what’s happening with Act 12.”

Johnson said the city would be seeking changes to Act 12, including the grant-funding issue. But that issue at least appears less urgent now, given that the city didn’t even successfully apply for the grant. If the city had known the grant was a possibility it could have negotiated to make sure the state law supported it before it was passed.

But Johnson’s communications director Jeff Fleming, in an interview shortly after this article was first published, said that wasn’t likely. “We objected to that provision when it was put on the table,” said Fleming of the grant restriction and discussions with Republican legislators. “It was not discussed at any length.”

Milwaukee last received a new COPS grant in 2022, which Johnson touted as a key to maintaining police staffing. In 2020, Johnson, then council president, negotiated alongside then-alderman Ashanti Hamilton to ensure the council accepted a COPS grant when the legislative body initially voted to reject it.

Council members’ responses to the news varied.

“This was eventually going to come out, so the idea that we would wait several months to alert the council just doesn’t make sense,” said committee chair Alderman Scott Spiker.

“I will own the decision-making I did for the department,” said Hough.

“This is incredibly refreshing that someone actually takes accountability, and I thank you Heather for that. You’re a real person and that’s great,” said Ald. Mark Borkowski.

“You’re a kind guy. You’ve never been that kind to me on the floor,” said Ald. Khalif Rainey to Borkowski.

Under Johnson’s proposed 2024 budget, the MPD sworn strength will increase by 15 members, from 1,630 to 1,645, as part of a plan to run three 65-member recruiting classes. According to city officials, the recruiting classes are the largest the city could support.

“It was a significant error to not get the application in on time,” said Fleming. “It was one of those enormous disappointments that we don’t want to have repeated again anywhere in city government.”

But referencing the state funding restrictions and police academy size, Fleming said even if the city secured the grant it likely would have had to turn it down. “By circumstance, it did not have a significant consequence,” he said.

Fleming agreed with Hough’s statement that the council should have been told. “The focus immediately after the error was ‘can we pull this out of the fire?'”