good afternoon I'm here today to share with the community an update on the case involving the arrest of Jeffree ster on April 12th on April 13th the Milwaukee Police Department released a statement on the arrest that had occurred the previous evening in that statement the department represented its initial understanding of the events that preceded and resulted in the arrest of Jeffree ster now after the arrest we initiated a comprehensive use of Force review that review has not contradicted the main points in our initial statement now it's important to note that we initiated the review ourselves and in the seven days since the arrest we have conducted numerous interviews reviewed hours of video sources reviewed reports and made uh referrals to prosecutors in fact today the case against Mr ster was presented to the DA and has been pended over to a later date in May police officers have the lawful authority to use Force to effectuate an arrest and to secure compliance with lawful commands every time an officer uses force that use of force is subjected to several layers of Department review now the outcomes of these reviews can result in a determination that the use of force was appropriate it can result in a determination that the use of force was within policy or outside policy can result in a determination that retraining is necessary or that an internal investigation should be initiated what we know now is that during the booking process the only injuries Mr ster reported were scrapes to his knuckles and the tops of his hands these injuries were consistent with the initial reports that he had kept his hands under his body in an attempt to resist being handcuffed however we have also learned that during the booking Pro process Mr ster appears to have shown a desire to make a complaint against the police officer that complaint was not documented at the time therefore although we have completed our administrative review of the use of force in this case and H we have determined that additional investigations are required by our Internal Affairs division the internal investigation must focus on two specific issues one is the complaint by the suspect and secondarily whether or not administrative procedures were properly followed du during this arrest our work is not done we have to follow the facts that we have in our possession and the evidence in our possession now tonight and tomorrow night we will be recanvassing the Water Street area in an attempt to find any other witnesses to the events of April 12 but unless there is information in the hands of witnesses who have Yet to Come forward that contradicts our understanding of these events unless there is a clearer video that clearly contradicts our reviews of the videos that have been made available to us then what we currently know must remain unchanged and our initial determination stand now I note that we have received a multitud ude of Freedom of Information requests these requests have been for officers hard cards for their personnel files for their discipline histories some of them have pertained to the divorce records of some of our officers some have been pertaining to the medical histories of our officers now whatever people think they're going to find out from these various records the point remains they are not directly pertinent to whether or not we have any in evidence to contraindicate our review of the specific use of force to overcome the level of resistance to arrest that was encountered that night I'll say it again we have to follow the facts and the evidence now there are 1,800 officers in the field in this Police Department working every day under difficult circumstances and some of them are going to use Force it's been documented by the fire and police commission that in 1% of the arrests made by this Police Department in the last year fully evaluated force was used by a member of the department officers need to believe that when we investigate them we are following the facts that we can uncover and not simply responding to the glare of publicity now I'm happy to use you as we have during this last week if there are people there who have information that has not been made known to us then it must be made known but we do not have any information now that indicates that the 1.5 seconds of force employed to get this individual's hands behind him for handcuffing were on their face clearly beyond the policies and training that our officers have been subjected to now we are working hard in this department to be transparent we have robust Internal Affairs processes we have a history of fa fairly significant discipline being deployed to officers that we find are outside our values set and outside our policies we're going to continue to do that when we believe our officers have maintained themselves within policy we will so report and if we have evidence that shows that officers have exceeded their Authority or their training or their policy we will continue to take appropriate action having said that I invite your questions now during the booking how did Mr strer indicate he wanted to file a complaint and how was that responded to he made a verbal representation when asked if he had a complaint that he wanted to make a complaint and our initial understanding is the uh the time he was told that a complaint could be put in his personal property and that he could fill it out at a later date um that does not entirely comply with what we uh recommend our supervisors do was a use of force report filed before the YouTube video surface uh use of force reports are almost never filed the night of the incident use of force reports are filed by supervisory Personnel based on an evaluation of all of the circumstances this was a late night arrest it is not on all in common for us to only do the main arrest report the night of the arrest you'll notice one one of the issues we've been very attentive to is overtime we do not wait for every single report to be done that night and it is a matter of uh you know long standing in this department since the use of force reports are a supervisory function they are always filled out at a later date and not usually contemporaneous with the incident so you said no is that a no I mean what I just said okay we do those reports we do those reports at a later date they're not filed contemporaneously it is not at all routine so the fact that it was a YouTube video or not a YouTube vi video is less relevant to the fact that we don't file them that night they're filed by supervisors at a later date offic still out on the streets Chief is he work on a regular shift no he's not working on the streets right now um I think what's important for us to recognize all of us whatever you believe you saw uh this officer is not going to be put in a position where he has to use powers of arrest or Force um he's under a great deal of scrutiny he knows that we know that I don't think it's uh necessarily safe for him to be in a position where he's looking over his shoulder at the same time expected to use law enforcement Powers you said you're looking for additional video did D dash cam not capture any of those well there you know as you know if you've seen the video this took place on the ground that's not where our dash cams are aiming um we uh checked the area out for whether or not there were any other videos in any of the buildings there weren't any uh we know there were a couple of three videos posted on YouTube We viewed them but none of them really show uh a significantly different view than than what was contained in the first video uh we still have you know one and a half seconds of activity uh and most of the video was after the initial stop the initial vehicle Pursuit you know there were a number of incidents that precipitated the car being pulled over it was reported to us that it was driving recklessly it was followed with its lights out it was chased into a parking lot the individual did not come out of his car for some 30 seconds after he was stopped I mean a lot there was a lot of commotion before this individual found himself on the ground we have not yet found documentation that refutes what has been reported to us and that's that's that's a challenge that uh you unless we can find something different we've G to have to stand by what we know what's the line between acceptable and exessive force well everything depends on circumstances there's a reasonable you know police officer standard here uh we expect sufficient force to be used to overcome resistance and to secure compliance you know I'm sure many of you have seen other videos of officers who are perceived to have behaved badly what we have in front of us are two strikes now the officer in that context to Ure compliance theoretically could have used a taser could theoretically could have used OC spray theoretically could have used the Baton point is they used two strikes and those those two there's no magic number it depends on the totality of the circumstances and the circumstances as we have in front of us now do not clearly show a violation of policy or of training but you say forces is used only in 1% of arrest what what about this arrest made it so unusual that it would be needed I really how you difficulty with your question okay the individual was not complying with commands to remove his hands from under his body and be handcuffed what Witnesses and both the the suspect arrested have told a different story saying that they saw another officer on his back with his hands behind him is that not true well if that person has got evidence that they've given to you we need to hear it so we'll be happy to follow up on that at a later date but that's not a person we've talked to that's not what we've heard question yeah Chief is there anything in the training policy that says no um focus strikes to the head when somebody's down on the ground face down well the point is that the idea is that we can use sufficient Force to overcome resistance all right I mean you know theoretically as I say could someone have used a taser yeah they could have in order to secure compliance to get the hands behind and be handcuffed so you know once you start to use Force the question is reasonableness and reasonable is measured by extension of injuries as well as the amount of force used we have no reports that serious injuries were sustained we do know that compliance was was was secured and so our challenge remains if we've got you know Witnesses out there telling you stuff they're not telling us we need to talk to them because that's not we has not had a chance yet Keith Mr ster went to the uh Hospital get tested out the next night were you guys given the medical uh the records from that evening and do they uh have more injuries than just the hands uh we know that he's made you know complaints about you know injuries to his jaw area I do not have his medical records available no State training uh procedures state that use of force should only be used when standing the fact of the matter remains that there are times when people are on the ground you're basically telling me that if we're in a wrestling match we don't use Force when you're on the ground with somebody trying to get them to comply with appropriate police commands and to be arrested if you're on the ground there's a whole class in ground fighting offered so I'm a little unclear as to what you're what you're what you're confronting me with for your department to go against what they're trained to do you know what that's not what happened here we don't have anybody going against what they were trained to do could you tell us about the uh the officer involved and the reports that he had had his gun taken from him and put on desk Duty due to some mental health issues you know we can spend a lot of time deconstructing our officer all right I would like the courtesy of treating my officers like common criminals which is not exp spending all of our time trying to find out what's wrong with them and not looking at the case in Chief we are investigating a very specific case which is a use of force I am reporting to you that we have not been presented with evidence that contradicts our understanding of the incident now I'm sure if you dig enough into anybody else's life you're going to find something bad about them that doesn't necessarily address the facts before us we have a supine suspect not complying with arrest procedures against whom two Focus strikes in 1.5 seconds were used which gained compliance if we have information that shows that he was in fact complying and was in fact helpless and our version of events is wrong I urge people to bring that information to us until then I am sharing with you the objective information at our disposal now [Music]