MPD Temporarily Lost More Than 8,000 Citations

Did you get a speeding ticket between October 2020 and January 2021 that seemed to just disappear?

In recent months, this became a literal $1 million question within city government.

An audit of City of Milwaukee records found that more than 8,000 citations issued by the Milwaukee Police Department over a 16-month period never made it to the Municipal Court.

The Comptroller’s Office found that 7,820 of the traffic citations issued by MPD from Jan. 1, 2020 through April 30, 2021 never made it to the court system. Of those temporarily lost, 38% were for speeding, 21% for driver’s license issues and 12% for insurance issues.

In addition, 525 municipal citations for violations such as disorderly conduct (23%), assault and battery (15%) and vandalism (13%) also failed.

“This is horrendous,” said Alderwoman JoCasta Zamarripa after the Comptroller’s Office presented the findings to the Finance & Personnel Committee Wednesday. She noted the failure to follow through came at a time when the city is seeing a surge in violence and is attempting to get a handle on reckless driving.

A two-year statute of limitations gives the city the opportunity to reissue most of the citations. But 8% were past the two-year period by the time the issue was discovered. MPD chief of staff Nick DeSiato said another issue impedes the remaining 92%: the status of the officer. If an officer retired, they can’t reissue the ticket. He said that of the eligible citations, 99% of the traffic citations would be reissued and 95% of the municipal citations.

“This is exactly why we do audits,” said DeSiato.

No one present at Wednesday’s meeting could definitively explain why the issue occurred. “The reason we were told is there were disk space issues,” said audit manager Charles Roedel.

The system, as described, involves MPD uploading citations as individual files to a server, the City Attorney okaying them for prosecution and then the Municipal Court importing them. On certain days, though, not all of the files were downloaded because the municipal court representatives said they weren’t on the server. The worst was Jan. 7, 2021 when 1,251 traffic citations scheduled for transfer could not be reconciled. Ninety-seven percent of the missing traffic citations can be attributed to just 20 days.

The system was developed in-house by an MPD IT employee who is no longer with the department. Inspector Craig Sarnow referred to him as both a contractor and employee, but said the reason he is no longer employed by MPD was not related to the software system and he was not disciplined for any reason.

“I got a million questions now,” said Ald. Milele A. Coggs. That included one about money.

“I would anticipate that the judgment amounts related to the reissued citations will probably be around $1 million,” said Roedel, characterizing the figure as “back-of-the-envelope” math.

The audit was completed in February of this year. It was initiated at the request of chief court administrator Sheldyn Himle, who said she was inspired to have the process reviewed given the potential for human error. Roedel praised MPD for their cooperation in this process.

“We have put in a considerable number of measures to avoid this going forward,” said DeSiato. According to a document signed by Chief Jeffrey Norman, those measures include a daily report on the number of citations received by the court and cross-checked by MPD IT and a monthly meeting between the two entities.

The individuals that received one of the “missing” citations should expect to receive a new citation in the mail with a court date. According to the audit, citations sent by other departments including parking tickets, building code violations and health orders were “materially received” and the number of reconciling issues were “minimal.”

“It sounds like we don’t know exactly what happened, but now you have protocols in place to catch it,” said Ald. Scott Spiker in summarizing the citation issue.

Yes, but the audit found two other issues and city officials won’t even discuss one of them publicly.

Parking Ticket Payments

Nineteen individuals paid a parking ticket, but the contractor responsible for processing the payment failed to transmit the money to the Municipal Court and, as a result, those individuals were blocked from renewing their vehicle registration.

The Department of Public Works relies on Duncan Solutions, Inc. to process parking tickets, including notifying people of hearings. If the individual pays the ticket, Duncan transmits the payment and related information to the court, closing the ticket.

In 127 cases, Duncan took the money ($1,073) but never told the court. As a result, the payments were not applied and the court entered a default judgment of guilty against the unaware hearing no-shows. In 19 of the cases, the audit found, a judgment was still outstanding. After 100 days an open judgment results in the court using its intercept function to block vehicle registration renewal.

Himle said whenever an individual notified the court that they believed they had already paid the court froze taking further action to attempt to reconcile the issue. A software fix is being implemented to prevent the issue from recurring.

The court fired Duncan Solutions as its debt collector last year, leaving the company with only the parking contract.

Secret Finding

A third finding of the audit was redacted from the publicly-released documents. The committee went into closed session to discuss the matter.

What can be determined from the audit documents is that it was easier to describe than the others and that it involves the municipal court.

Roedel’s audit report explains whatever the redacted measure is in a half-page in length, while the other two findings take at least a full page. Norman, Himle and DPW operations director Danielle Rodriguez each submitted response plans to the audit, but only Himle’s municipal court response contains a redacted section.

The explicit reason for why the committee went into closed session indicates what wasn’t to be discussed. As allowed under state law, the committee went into closed session “for the purpose of considering strategy for crime detection or prevention.” Typically, committees enter closed session “for the purpose of conferring with the City Attorney who will render oral or written advice with respect to litigation in which the city is or is likely to become involved.”

The Comptroller’s Office is led by independently-elected Comptroller Aycha Sawa and functions, in part, as the city’s independent auditor. Sawa did not speak during the public session of Wednesday’s meeting.

A full copy of the redacted audit is available on Urban Milwaukee.