Supervisors Want Details on Progress Towards Racial Equity from County Departments
MILWAUKEE – The Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution condemning racial injustice in America and Milwaukee and requesting detailed reports from several major Milwaukee County departments about policies and practices to achieve racial equity.
The request for information, from Chairwoman Nicholson and co-sponsored by 11 supervisors, is seen as another building block in the process of evaluating Milwaukee County’s progress towards racial equity goals, in order to identify areas where policy change might be needed.
“We have a long way to go to achieve racial equity in Milwaukee County. In order to achieve our goals of making Milwaukee County the healthiest in the State of Wisconsin, we need to take a hard look at current policies and practices to identify what kinds of changes are necessary to dismantle institutional and structural racism,” said Chairwoman Nicholson.
The resolution calls upon the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to provide a report on policies and practices related to community policing, deputy training, including any training related to racial equity, community policing, Crisis Response Intervention, and appropriate use of deadly force, and a breakdown of budgetary spending on community policing and deputy training.
The resolution also requests a report from the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation on policies and procedures used to determine when bus service is paused or terminated including during times of civil unrest, including “specific data related to the shut-down of transit service during protests and demonstrations in May and June of 2020.”
Lastly, the resolution calls for a report from Milwaukee County Circuit Court provide on racial disparities in sentencing, diversion programs and their use, and combined operations with the Office of the Sheriff related to racial equity.
The reports are due to the Board of Supervisors in time for the July 2020 meeting cycle, and are expected to come before the new Audit Committee.
Milwaukee County adopted a racial equity ordinance in April, with the stated goal of “advancing the strategic priority of achieving racial equity to improve the health of the entire community by eliminating any racism in the County’s policies, procedures, practices, and power structures,” and declared racism a public health crisis in April 2019.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.
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