is to be considered for immediate adoption there are three resolutions to be presented for immediate adoption file number 120220 resolution directing the city controller to conduct an audit of the police department's crime reporting practices file number 120250 resolution approving final certified survey maps file number 120268 resolution approving an affidavit of correction relative to errors contained and documents for certified survey map number 8116 located on the north side of west milwaukee road and west south 36th street in the all rather an eighth automatic district the chair recognize alderman willie wade uh thank you mr president um is it a reason why file number one two zero two two um zero is immediate adoption and not going to a committee i can ask the sponsor of the legislation um thank you very much chair recognize ottoman that's it quite simply i believe that this is a time-sensitive issue um the answers that we may gain from this particular file might help us with regards to the budget coming later this year there is a 90-day window that this particular file has on it and again that would give us plenty of time to perhaps adjust our spending with regards to the milwaukee police department mr chair that's all please continue i i definitely agree with uh what is being proposed but i i i'm not agreeing with immediate adoption i i think it should go to a committee so could you list me as a no vote to that file number please that's an appropriate emotional that alderman way to reflect no vote item number one one two zero two two zero the chair recognizes i'm appointed thank you mr president uh record me as an opposition to file number one two zero two two zero uh the reason being is that i don't believe the city comptroller has the expertise to really do this audit i think there's going to be an outsource for them to do this especially giving the time restraints when we're talking about thousands and thousands of reports here i believe that the taxpayers of this city are going to feel a great impact as it pertains to the cost of this i agree with alderman wade this probably should go back to a committee and discussed at that point and see the police department right now is doing their own internal audit uh again we're jumping through hoops because somebody in the media said this was so how much weight do we put on what one reporter reported what was his resources how did he obtain these type of stats we don't know that and for us to just randomly start saying we should do our own individual audit without having the expertise of the people to do it and it's going to cost us does does not make any sense to me whatsoever so i will oppose this thank you let the regular effect ottoman one day's objection to island number one one two zero two two zero the chair recognized augmented ball thank you uh mr president uh mr president i am a co-sponsor of of the measure to seek an outside review and i do support uh the provision to actually move forward and conduct an audit albeit i do have concerns about moving forward here today i think that there are really two things that must come in into play and the first is the timeline i do not believe that 90 days would provide sufficient timeline to come back with an audit and the second is the scope i mean are we talking about looking at uh individual police reports that were outlined uh by the the newspaper are we talking about looking at a one-month time frame a two-month time frame a six month a three month i i truly think that those are things that that could and should be ironed out at committee with a potential report back even from the comptroller's office as to how much the potential time the cost and other things that that that that should be weighed into the entire equation to simply ram it through i don't think is appropriate i i do support doing this from an outside independent basis but i think that those other issues should come into factor and as opposed to actually not having this approved i think it would be more appropriate to refer the matter back to committee and i would be happy to move that at this time that's an appropriate motion it supersedes the motion that is before us um i know there are a number of lights that run i don't know if there was a desire to speak to the previous motion or the current motion but we're going to have to have discussion on the motion that's before us the motion proffered by alderman bull is to refer back to committee on that particular motion um are there any further is there other any discussions the chair recognizes all the woman cox thank you mr president i for one am all for transparency and accountability within the police department for the citizens of the city of milwaukee i have done several pieces of legislation myself to help that come about i do have a question based upon i'm going to support the motion because i do think that there is more discussion that needs to be had and that discussion is best had at committee but even for what we will see at committee there's been some suggestion that the capabilities of the comptroller's office may not be there to conduct this and that it may have to be outsourced i um to the sponsors if that is so seeing this without a fiscal note is a concern to me so even if this in itself is sent back to committee i would hope that some greater evaluation of the financial impact to do such a audit is attached to it so that we are well aware of any cost that may be incurred as a result of calling for this audit so there's a support to send back to committee again the motion before us is to refer back to committee on the motion to refer back to committee the chair recognizes alderman terry witkowski thank you mr president i agree that it would be poor public policy to uh pass anything like this without without adequate information uh we do have a communication file coming before public safety that will address the internal audit should give us six years worth of data data since the system was put in place so we can compare the extent of the problem from year to year i think questions on scope and the ability for a controller to audit can be addressed at that time as well as any input from the fire and police commission and the executive director i do support the motion to send this to the committee thank you chair recognizes alderman joe davis thank you mr president i'd like to be listed as a co-sponsor let the record reflect on and davis um desire to be a co-sponsor are there any objections by the current okay none so let the recommendation please continue and i think this this item is is very uh important for all of us to monitor i would hope that moore would jump on board to co-sponsor this piece of legislation and have their input put into once it arrives at committee so that a detailed audit could actually be spelt out i do support it being referred to committee based upon the the issues that surround what i consider a very negative image that milwaukee has gotten on some of these cases which have been an error to be reported so i would hope that my colleagues would support to move it to committee thank you thank you the chair recognizes alderman michael murphy i think mr president my colleagues i think it makes appropriate sense to send us back to committee i think all the women cogs raises a very uh salem point uh the scope of the contract will determine the cost of the audit we should have a debate on that i know and thanks to alderman duds that he shared with me a email he received from the comptroller which has a range from thirty five thousand to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars depending on the scope of services any in that letter to alderman desert the controller himself raises the issue whether he's capable even performing the audit so these are issues that should be discussed in committee in addition it's not like the milwaukee police department are sitting back and not doing anything they are the milwaukee police department working cooperatively with the fbi on an audit that audit is going to be released in the next 30 days in addition there's an internal audit we also hear the state wisconsin's looking at doing another outside audit and finally the milwaukee police department up front has acknowledged acknowledged they have a problem with the recording system for people's education it was uh in the budget in 2011 and 12 that we had appropriate over three hundred thousand dollars to look at upgrading the software for the recording system at that time the police department concluded that in fact that was not going to be sufficient that they acknowledged that there was a recording problem and in fact came back before this council on capital improvements committee which after an extensive re study indicating that they have to improve the whole system extensively which is nearly a 7.5 million dollar change into the system to be paid for over a three year period capital improvement committee rightfully took this up as a hearing and slowed down the process simply because they want to see if they can reduce the cost but i think it's important to acknowledge up front milwaukee police department knew they had a problem they were taking actions to correct it now that's that never got reported in the milwaukee journal sentinel which is very interesting and i'll just leave it at that but at the same time i think we should examine um any concerns that were raised in that store in those stories and take them legitimately at the the the as evidence that there is an issue we should be upfront about it more like a policeman acknowledged they have in fact recognized there is a problem with the quoting data as is with practically every police department in the state in the country and they're looking efforts to correct it i'm very open to making the tran having transparency and making sure we have the correct data because it plays a very important role in determining our allocation of resources but before we just simply make that determination i think it's important to look at the facts hear both sides of the story we have not heard from the police department other than through the media we haven't afforded them an opportunity to at least testify in those issues let's get to the facts first find out what the cost of the audit find out perhaps maybe this council may want to go on record calling for a state to do another to do that independent audit because quite honestly i think there'll be people who will look at the controllers on it and say that's that's another city uh department of auditing that's unfair that's you're you've got a conflict of interest maybe it does take a state independent audit and they can pay the 150 grand or 200 grand to do it so let's take a breath get the facts and move accordingly thank you thank you the chair recognized alderman bob thank you mr president i i think perhaps some of these questions that have been raised by my colleagues might be answered by aldermen dudseck so i would defer to him before you do that i do want to acknowledge the other ones and then if there's a desire to respond on a later date then i'll give you the uh i understand the process yes sir the chair recognizes alderman hamilton thank you mr president i think that i i i should probably wait until alderman does it speaks um that's fine if you'd like then yeah i i would defer okay thank you chair recognize ottoman call back and then alderman does it thank you president uh i i'm going to support this motion to refer back to committee i think for three main reasons one of which has already been stated well uh by old woman cogs and restated by chairman murphy that there is an unknown fiscal element that i think before we proceed we need to at least know what this is going to cost us to do the second big reason is before we spend any money we need to decide whether or not this is a redundant spending of money given that in advance of this newspaper article there was an internal audit going on well in advance of this newspaper article there's also a federal audit routine federal audit of these numbers and so certainly combined with those federal resources our internal resources and the resources of our local newspaper which based on following the money and how they devote money the only the two most important things in the state are the green bay packers and the milwaukee police department if you look at where they devote their resources uh and and i think one thing that the committee needs to consider in any audit of this information is not to just cherry-pick a few gotcha numbers which clearly is what i think the newspaper did a true contextualized report would have looked at that the past decade would have looked at previous police chiefs would have looked at the fact that this i.t system by the chief's own admission is not perfect and in fact one of the first things that chief did when he uh after he started the job was ask the private business community for help with it and there are well-known problems that this council is very familiar with with the way police keep track of numbers in the milwaukee police department in particular those problems aren't unique to the milwaukee police department but they certainly are not something we as a city are proud of so to the extent that these numbers are off we need to get them right but we also shouldn't panic because we knew the numbers were off we've been told year after year these numbers aren't right we need to fix this overall reporting system and so for me any audit needs to contextualize last year's numbers with previous years numbers going back several years to know whether the problem is getting better or worse because we know the problem is there we're not uh know the problem's there we want to fix it but we need to know are we are we fixing it are the numbers moving in the direction of more accuracy or are they getting less accurate and that is not something that we know from the newspaper report i hope it's something we're able to find out for ourselves whether the comptroller the police department or the fbi or the state or whoever is best able to answer that question or even the newspaper if they want to start asking real questions we would welcome that thank you the chair recognized ottoman that's it to be followed by all men down thank you very much um let me just put in perspective what the milwaukee police department thought of when it came to this particular ims system they did in fact ask for funding but in their list of things that they wanted to accomplish first and foremost was updates to the police administration building second was almost two and a half million dollars to upgrade the radio and communication system they put the repairs to the rms system right below the redesign of the restrooms in the 911 dispatch center so i'm not exactly sure how much emphasis they're looking for on this particular problem i guess if somebody's worried about the fact that we're hiring and out or outsourcing some uh audit expertise i think that that's a pretty common and alderman murphy can correct me if i'm wrong but i think that that's a pretty common or a a avenue that has been explored or used in the past with regards to our comptroller's office lastly one of the things that i i wanted to get this up and running as quickly as possible is because of the negative image we're going into a long hot summer and i think it's important that you know the citizens of the city milwaukee realize that their calls for service aren't being miscategorized for whatever reason and i truly do believe that the primary reason for the errors is probably more because of the tiburon system that we have as the chief has indicated in the past than anything else and i think that that image of the milwaukee police department misstating or misrepresenting crime stats is something that does this city no service whatsoever as far as the dollar amount if somebody wants to add an amendment that we don't exceed 150 000 which is what the top end of the email that i got from mr matson yesterday would indicate that's fine let's put a cap on it at 150 000 but i want to just remind you that we re we just a few minutes ago supported the idea of spending in excess of fifty thousand dollars for an unknown sculpture uh so i don't see this as being a real big big issue again we're talking about uh repairs to the uh rms system that over the next few years will cost in excess of seven and a half million dollars so i i appreciate those people that want to put a hold on this we do a lot of committee work at the council as anybody that was here from nine o'clock until 10 30. we'll understand but i think that this is something that should go forward sooner rather than later and that's why i put my name on it thank you thank you alderman chair recognizes alderman donovan and then we'll call alderman hamilton thank you mr president uh apparently it's the desire of the council to uh uh hold this or or i should say refer it back to committee and that's fine and i understand the arguments i will probably vote against that because i do feel it needs to go forward immediately a couple points that i want to make though this idea that somehow we've all known that these numbers are wrong is absurd up until a month ago i was chairman of the public safety committee for eight years and i was under the impression along with this entire community that crime is down crime is down crime is down so this idea that somehow we knew the number were wrong and yeah well then why the hell is the chief standing up there along with the mayor and everyone else let's get a grip here come on i commend the journal sentinel quite frankly and i will also say this mr president this is the god spoken truth some of us have been hearing concerns about these numbers for a long long time from police officers so whether this is held or whether it goes back to committee or moves forward now it is incumbent upon this council we make monumental decisions every year based on the information that this police department gives us staffing issues budget issues i know everyone agrees with that we need to get to the bottom of this i believe it can and should move forward now thank you thank you almonds here guys ottoman hamilton thank you mr president um i wanted to to wait until i heard from from the sponsors about some of the questions raised by my colleagues here on the floor but i i guess the questions still remain and i think it's uh important to move forward in an orderly fashion and i think it's extremely important to pay attention to the fact that the current chairman of the public safety committee did has introduced a communication file to get the information from the internal audit i think that would give us a lot of information on the direction that we would need to go in and you know considering the fact that there may be some financial impacts on this and whether or not we do it internally with the comptroller's office or um consider an outside source outside of the city as um alderman murphy and all the older women kayaks brought up i think it's important for us to be able to have the information that's necessary in order to make that determination and not do it on the fly as we as as the as a resolution suggests but of of course i think we all agree with the spirit of the revolut of the resolution which is to get to the bottom of these numbers and i think all of us agree with that um just don't necessarily agree with actually having a immediate adoption file without having all the information necessary to make this judgment call so i would support sending it back to committee as well mr chair mr uh president thank you alderman um the chair recognizes aldermen both and aldermen called that mr president thank you i think one of the larger issues that has to be weighed at this point is i don't believe that unless this matters refer back to committee that it has the votes to pass for immediate adoption at which point you have no adoption at which point you have no audit being directed at which point there is nothing internal and independent so i mean you know we can we can look at this from a a prideful vantage point of i'm going down with the ship but the fact is the ship is sinking unless you want to take it in a more prudent and expeditious manner and actually lay out the scope lay out the costs and and at least that in that way see because i have to believe that that from the expressions that we're hearing here that that a number of additional members support moving forward with a with an independent audit but doing so in a manner that that is more outlined and more defined rather than just saying all or nothing so i mean it to me that that's why i think it's more prudent to send it back i do support having an in outside scope and i understand what comes internal i like alderman donovan states i've heard for years and i mean going back to almost day one issues of whether we want to talk about it being cooked the books um in the milwaukee police department when it comes to police records and and how police items are being outlined i really would like something that is independent but the fact is i think that it is more prudent to actually refer back to committee set that scope and actually have something that has a chance of passing than what i believe today simply would probably garner about five or six votes not meet the muster of two-thirds and fail that's a valid point because it does not expend any resources it would need 10 votes or two-thirds of the council in order to have it for immediate adoption with that the chair recognized arnold kovac thank you mr president i i want to address a couple of phrases that have been tossed around today like cooking books and fudging data and if that's really true if if any of these audits reveal that the vote's going to be 15-0 to not just investigate it but to fix it immediately to fix it yesterday i want to be clear about that what we're talking about here are inconsistencies in data and when i said we all knew this was there that's what i meant that there are inconsistencies in the data for which there is an acceptable margin of error and for which it's possible that these discrepancies are outside that margin of error we don't know yet there is as far as i know looking from the outside in there's three main reasons the police need to collect this data one is internal and perhaps most important and that was why the police chief when he reached out to the private business community demanded that he get some i.t experts in there who weren't just police officers but really understood computers that's because the data-driven style of policing that chief flynn flynn brought to this city which not just statistically but anecdotally has had an effect on crime in this city that that approach required real-time data it used to be they had pins in the wall and they had to wait a few weeks to be sure now they have real-time computerized data if that's data is not accurate the police can't do their own job okay they also need data needs to be reliable that they hand over the district attorney that is also incredibly vital that we the data the police reports etc is handed over so that criminals who are caught can be punished properly according to our criminal justice system there's another reason we need to collect data so we can turn it over to the feds so they can compare city to city and so we can have really good analysis done that's probably the third most important it's important it's not as important as the first two and i want to be clear when i say we need to contextualize these numbers before we start using phrases which the newspaper deliberately wanted to imply was the case before we start talking about fudging numbers or cooking books i don't know that for a fact of the be the case i sincerely hope it's not the case and i want to find out if it is but only looking at one year when we've had five years of crime drops and saying well look at this year and crime drop would have been a crime increase first of all it's possible that we had crime drop for four years and then go up for the fifth year i mean i'd like crime to drop to zero but i i don't think that's ever going to happen maybe i'm a cynic for thinking crime will never be zero so we're never going to have reductions the reductions are not going to continue at infinite on forever at some point crime is going to go down so far that it comes back up if it's really true that the five-year trend isn't true i want to know that as fast as anybody else wants to know that but the data that we have in front of us indicates that just in the last year we were a few percentage points off which may or may not be within an acceptable margin of air compared to other cities compared to ourselves certainly we want to improve it and get that air margin lowest but just like crime is never going to be zero any police department that has hundreds of thousands of contacts with residents and with criminals during the during the course of any given year you're never going to have 100 accuracy of the data so we need to put this in the proper context thank you alderman that well said um do you recognize alderman davis thank you mr president um you know i i don't want to get off into this whole issue about the department purposely cooking the books because sometimes there are some who agitate and want to create this inflammatory rhetoric that ends up not being very productive the reason why i wanted to co-sponsor mr president was to make sure that as the governing body here in the city of milwaukee any report that we were put together would be referred directly to the fire and police commission that deals with personnel and policy matters on behalf of the milwaukee police department because in essence what we receive is communication file based on the performance of department but at the end of the day that relationship with the with the uh the commission and the performance of the commission that we've had discussions like this uh prior to is important because this is an issue that they're going to have to address if in fact personnel is properly trained properly deployed properly carrying out the policy with the department so i would hope that we would send this issue to committee so that we can get various inputs in order for us to make sure that we direct the outcomes of the audit so that they're very specific and defined thank you mr president thank you alderman chair recognized alderman perez thank you mr president uh i want to be recorded as uh in favor of sending this file back to committee and also cool sponsoring file let the record reflect alderman perez desire to co-sponsor to file any objection to those who are sponsoring it if not thank you um the chair recognizes alderman murphy to be followed by alderman wade no i'm not about really to argue with alderman kovac who's a mathematician with a degree from harvard on the methodology factors so i'm going to take them ahead um quite honestly he would be much more of an expert on sampling methodology than anyone here in council and quite honestly probably anyone over at the journal sentinel the reality is is every one of us have the same concern whether you're a sponsor of this legislation or not we want to get to the truth we want to get to the bottom line are these numbers reflective of a serious problem or is simply a methodology sampling error we have an obligation to get to the truth but we have an obligation also not to just jump every time a reporter calls we have a responsibility to the public to make sure what the scope and services of that independent audit should be we have responsibility to find out what the cost of that audit will be we have a responsibility to at least hear from the police department in the public hearing about some of the concerns they raise i've heard from them privately in which they question the methodology of this reporter and they provide some very interesting analysis which has never been made public which i think at least should be out there at least for hearing the other side so before we start voting allocation of up to 150 000 without even knowing what exactly we're asking for i think is irresponsible that's all we're saying is let's get to the bottom of this send it back to committee allow for an opportunity for the comptroller to at least say what is the concerns they have and how it can be done properly um and let us go from there thank you alderman chair recognize alden wait uh mr president i guess i opened up this can of worms so i guess i better close it close it um i have one other concern and my other concern i mean my concern is universal rest of my colleagues but my other my other concern is i sat on this council for a decent amount of time and for most of that time the crime numbers were going up and my concern is why didn't the journal sentinel question the smudging and the fixing of the numbers when it was when crime was increasing and now all of a sudden when crime is going in a positive direction they have resources and time and efforts to dispute that or to to question it at that time so i have a question for the local newspaper of exactly what their goals are by taking these steps because they could have taken these they could have took these same measures when the crimes was going up and they chose not to do so so that's a concern that i have also thank you no further comments at this point in time alderman bulls motion is to refer back to committee we're going to take a roll call vote on the motion to refer back to committee which supersedes the motion to immediately adopt with that madam chairman will you please call the role to refer file number one two zero two two zero back to committee alderman hamilton aye davis all right kobach all right excused murphy hi dad zeke no mr president aye thirteen eyes one no one excused 13 eyes one no one excused the motion carries are there any discussions relative to the other items for immediate adoption any discussion on the other items relative to immediate adoption if not alderman kovac moves for the adoption of these files will the city clerk please call