Sheriff Ball Seeks Her Own Community Advisory Board

Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office vehicle in Sherman Park. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The Milwaukee County Sheriff‘s Office (MCSO) is on track to have two community boards. One controlled by the sheriff and another controlled by the Milwaukee County Board.

Neither body has been formally established yet. But both Sheriff Denita Ball and the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors are simultaneously moving to create some sort of community board focused on community engagement and issues related to the sheriff’s office. The sheriff is proposing an “advisory” board and the county board an “oversight” board.

Ball is proposing a board composed of 15 community residents, selected or appointed by the sheriff. The exact parameters of the county board’s oversight body will be established through the legislative process, but an amendment to the 2025 budget asked the county’s attorneys to prepare a feasibility report and use a Civilian Review Board created by the La Crosse County Board in 2024 as a model.

The MCSO recently held a town hall in response to the results of the shocking jail audit released last November. During the meeting Sheriff Ball mentioned she planned to create the new advisory board.

“We are launching our Sheriff’s Community Advisory Board, where you will have residents from Milwaukee County on that Board, and then we will have a better dialogue, better hold on what’s going on in the community, how we can help each other,” Ball said.

The board mentioned by Ball, and advertised on flyers at the town hall, appears similar to the sort of community oversight body the board moved to establish through the 2025 budget process. A representative of the sheriff’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Sup. Justin Bielinski, who sponsored the budget amendment for the county board’s community oversight body, told Urban Milwaukee he was not contacted by the MCSO or the sheriff about the Community Advisory Board.

“It’s good for any elected official, especially a sheriff, to to seek the feedback of community members… I have no problem with that,” Bielinski said of the sheriff’s advisory board. “It does seem like anything that is just a bunch of people that, one, would apply and, two, that she would choose, certainly isn’t a board that’s going to create any sort of oversight.”

A flyer passed out at the meeting invites residents to apply for the sheriff’s advisory board, though it does not provide an address, email or otherwise, for the applications that are due April 14. The majority of the board (nine members) would be selected by the sheriff from the applicants. The rest would be appointed by the sheriff.

Advisory board members must be 21 years or older and attend the MCSO’s Citizen’s Academy upon appointment. The flyer also suggests candidates for the board should have the ability to listen and engage positively with people of diverse backgrounds, ability to think independently and work collaboratively, be open-minded and inquisitive and capable of critical thinking, among other requirements.

The goal of the board, which will meet monthly, according to the flyer, would be to inform the sheriff of community concerns and offer suggestions for resolving them; offer advice for improving trust between law enforcement and the community; point out “blind spots that are evident to the community but not necessarily specific to law enforcement,” and “maintain confidentiality of all meetings and information acquired as a board member.”

The board has not prescribed any requirements for the Community Oversight Board under consideration. But it seeks an oversight board for Milwaukee County based on one established by La Crosse. It is a non-binding body that does not have any formal authority over law enforcement in La Crosse County, but would offer a formal venue for interaction between the community, elected officials and law enforcement. Candidates for the new board had to apply and interview for the job.

Any oversight board established by the county board will have no formal authority to change MCSO policy. The sheriff is an independent, elected office whose powers and authority are established by the state constitution and subsequent state statutes. The sheriff has unilateral authority over departmental policy, provided it remains within the bounds of state law. Act 12, the 2023 local government funding bill, gutted the authority of the city’s Fire & Police Commission, once one of the most powerful police oversight boards in the country.

Whether the two boards will have conflicting roles in providing community feedback remains to be seen, and will depend on who applies and is appointed to them, Bielinski said.

“I don’t want to prejudge something, but I do have my doubts,” Bielinski said.