[Music] good afternoon thank you for coming I'm here with the district attorney we're here today to celebrate the survival and heroism of two of our police officers last night and to ask for help in keeping them and other officers safe last night officer Jose Vieira and officer Rachel goldbeck bicycle officers in our neighbor neighborhood task force confronted an armed and dangerous criminal our officers were here by Design last night they were here by plan they were here In Harm's Way to protect people from the armed criminals who hold this neighborhood hostage they confronted some suspicious individuals last night the confrontation result resulted in a running gun battle in which our officers were shot at nearly a dozen times mercifully this gun battle ended with a wounded captured a salent and it's a tribute to the professionalism courage and Restraint of our officers that no one else was injured in this gun battle I commend them and I offer my best wishes to their families who are with them now but I also want to take this as an opportunity to call upon Governor Walker to exhibit statesmanship and provide adult supervision over the chaotic legislative process that seems bent on inflicting a reckless and foolish concealed carry law on the the citizens of Wisconsin this is not a political talking points issue this is an officer safety issue this is the second time in less than a week my officers have been in a gun battle with armed Reckless assailants we cannot afford a reckless Bill the DI and I are both calling for a bill that has a strict permitting process that keeps criminals and substance abusers away from dangerous weapons and that makes it a felony crime to carry a weapon without a permit this is responsible Common Sense approach to the issue we need to make it a felony to straw purchase and we need to alter the mental calculation of our criminals 85% of our murder victims have extensive criminal records as do 95% of their as salance there's a reason for this and one is they've got access to handguns and they have no fear of the law because as the da well knows the misdemeanor with which they'll be charged carries a minimum sanction for a criminal it's more dangerous not to carry a gun than to carry one we've got to change that and so once again I am urging the governor and the strongest but most respectful words to be a Statesman and provide adult supervision over this chaotic and foolish legislation that's working its way through the state legislature only he's in a position to do it and he's got to decide just how many political points officer safety is worth thank you Mr da thank you very much Chief I support his comments 100% I was here last night as I respond to every critical incident I bring my investigators with me I can indicate that that investigation is ongoing however I am able to comment on the insights that I gained in talking to the officer shortly after this incident and three things stand out first and foremost you were dealing with tremendously experienced professional officers who had worked as a team for close to 9 years and in that time they had encountered thousands of cases of people engaged in criminal activity and had extensive experience identifying people that were using guns in an illegal way to further criminal activity secondly they themselves pointed out that the training that they had received from the Milwaukee Police Department from the DA's office from the Department of Justice in identifying the characteristics of armed Defenders was critical in their determination that they could take decisive and legal action last night when they encountered two individuals walking down this street with hoods over their head and exhibiting what they knew in their experience were the characteristics of armed Defenders third they had received training only a week ago on the effective deployment of non-lethal force a taser in fact the officer pointed out that he owed his life to the training he'd received only a week ago in the deployment of a taser and then quickly transitioning to a firearm if the that use of force was approp now in talking with them I can clearly indicate to you that we are going to move quickly from a use of force investigation to a criminal prosecution uh there is no question in my mind about that but several things come out of this incident and most importantly is that when experienced officers who are capable of articulating why they believe individuals are up to no good and are up to no good with Firearms with guns they ought to be allowed to intervene in those situations in an effective and a legal way in a way that they can take decisive action without second guessing themselves whether or not their actions are legally appropriate this current bill is as the chief indicated Reckless it is not a constitutional carry bill it is an unrestricted carry bill it carries no penalties for situations like this when officers would encounter a person they would be forced into the the the just untenable position of trying to figure out whether they had the legal justification to act or not and one thing that comes out of last night's incident is that except for the professionalism the experience and the extraordinary courage demonstrated by those officers if they had not taken decisive well-trained action um we know with certainty that they could have had lethal results for that officer or for civilians in this area and we can't put our officers we owe it to them we have an obligation everybody in this state can get what they want out of this proposed legislation people that want to carry concealed they can do so they can do so in a reasonable way they can do it in a way that protects your constitutional rights but these officers have an obligation to inter intercede they have to put their bodies between the armed Defender who's up to no good and potentially going to cause another tragedy later in the evening they have an obligation to intervene and we have an obligation to them to allow this department to train them in a way that they can intercede in an effective legal way but they can also take decisive action when they need to take decisive action and that's what they needed to do last night so we're calling on the governor we're talking on we're talking to the legislature and we've done this look this is not something that we're reacting to the Chief and I went to Madison about 18 months ago and laid out a very reasonable package to the legislature in a bipartisan way explaining our position and quite frankly begging them to come here and talk to the men and women of this fine Police Department that are putting their lives on the line every day talk to the prosecutors that prosecute these cases and we'll explain to you that we can do this in a legal way way we can do it in a way that protects citizens civil liberties but we can also protect people's safety we can't do it with this proposed bill it's going to endanger the safety of this community and it totally it's totally unnecessary so we're calling on the governor and the legislature to work with us in a reasonable fashion everybody can get what they want and quite frankly we can come out of this uh even in a better position this exact same circumstances if these officers had exact had conducted themselves in the exact same way and this offender had not decided to shoot it out with and had surrendered as as he should have done um quite frankly it would have been it would have been the perfect opportunity to hold him accountable with a felony offense and so that's what we're calling upon we don't want any ambiguity we don't want any hesitation with our police officers uh again we owe it to them to allow them to go back to their families when they're trying to take care of yours thank you thank you [Music]