Thank you very much.
Glad to be here.
Hey, you and I have not seen each other since we did the Wisconsin and Black and White
Project.
Thank you for your service on that.
Oh, thank you.
It was really good.
Yeah.
And for a lot of folks that don't know, you're a former police chief.
You've been in law enforcement for, um, now 40 years.
40 years.
Wow.
And give me a little snapshot of what made you go into law enforcement.
What was it about law enforcement that made you say I'd like to commit my life to that?
Well, I originally started off into looking at being an attorney going into politics.
There's too much work.
Yeah, too much work.
And, you know, at UW Milwaukee, where I was going, they had a really good criminal justice
program.
And I just got really into, you know, protection, justice and understanding what those things
meant.
Yeah.
And just connect it with it.
Yeah.
And so you knew you wanted to climb that ladder to get to the chief mode of things or?
Well, about two years in after being a police officer said, if I leave this profession,
I want to leave it at a minimum as a mid manager.
And that in most departments is a lieutenant or above.
Yeah.
I love asking people things like, uh, if you had a mission statement for, you know, the
kind of work and the kind of, uh, philosophy you carry with yourself as you do your profession,
what would that be for you, you think?
My mission statement would be that, uh, we are here, here for people and criminal justice
and humanity are one and the same.
And how do we make that work?
Yeah.
And you've been retired now for how long?
I've been retired now for about 12, 13 years.
But I get the impression, you know, work just as much as you did when you were working.
Yes.
Well, why do you stay involved?
I stay involved because, um, it's, it's part of my belief system.
I've still believed that I can have an impact on helping, uh, people see what police officers
see.
I had a unique perspective, uh, not only a unique perspective as a police officer, but
a unique perspective as an African American male.
And also I've been very close to the community.
So bridging those two has been really, uh, really important in my life to ensure that
this continues.
Yeah.
And one of the reasons I think, uh, you and I are sitting here now is because I bumped
into you a few weeks ago, uh, when they opened up the, uh, the, the, the center, the
center, just just to get some context, we're at the, uh, the black business hub, um, here
on Madison, the south side.
And I know you probably have done all kinds of things in this building.
Absolutely.
Uh, on the board, um, also, uh, as, uh, as another member of another board, the Rennebaum
Foundation, we gave, uh, funds for this, for this building.
So this, this is important.
And I also worked as, uh, head of the, uh, Urban Lake as, uh, interim CEO and vice
assistant.
Yeah.
You don't sound retired to me, man.
No.
But one of the things that we were talking, uh, you were telling me about, uh, you, you
have a fellowship with the fellowship of law enforcement people, um, and I found it really
interesting when you talked a little bit about, uh, kind of what you guys do and what the
mission of that organization is.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah.
There's a fellowship that started two years ago and it was, it involved, uh, retired
law enforcement executives as well as people from the university community, as well as
current, uh, law enforcement professionals.
And what we wanted to do was to look ahead, see what policing was going to be in 2030
and 2050.
Cause there are a number of changes taken place.
One of the areas that we started to focus in on was the area of technology given that
it has had such a major impact in our lives in so many different ways, but specifically
in law enforcement.
So when we say technology, are we speaking specifically to like AI technology?
AI technology, it is impacting every aspect of policing, everything down to how police
reports are done, how surveillance is done, uh, things like body worn cameras, uh, facial
recognition to something as simple as if you've got this information, how do you go to court?
How do you explain this information in court?
Do you have the subject matter experts?
Where are you stored?
Who has access to it?
So this is, this is kind of a quiet revolution that we feel that needs to be discussed more
to make sure that the laws and justice are keeping up with the technology.
And mission wise, what would you say the mission here is is it just simply to educate people?
Our mission is to stimulate or be the catalyst for communities, both state, federal and local,
to start thinking about this in a way where they can kind of shape how, uh, balancing
on one side, public safety, and on another side, privacy, because there's some major privacy
concerns, major, uh, justice concerns.
So the, so our mission was to give guidance, start the conversation on guidance.
What does it look like when you have technology and maintaining trust with the community?
What does it look like when you, you, um, you have, uh, license plate readers, for example,
and do you, do you use that technology for everyone?
Do you use it on certain people?
Uh, do you predict through analysis and data where that's going to go?
Because there's always an impact to any time we do something.
And we also wanted to highlight the fact that even though a lot of this technology is not
only being used in policing, but anytime the government, anytime the government uses this
type of information, there are constitutional principles that must be upheld.
One of which that will probably talk about more and more is the impact on the Fourth Amendment.
Yeah, and the Fourth Amendment that deals with, um, help me out here.
Unreasonable searching.
That's right, searching.
Um, and, um, when I think about, you know, the evolution of technology, and especially
for a person like yourself who's spent 40 years in this industry, uh, it brings back,
you know, I think about the things that, you know, that I've seen just in, in my lifetime,
your lifetime.
Um, I just kind of took some notes here.
Uh, I've, I've seen things on, um, cuffing techniques.
Um, I've seen things on, um, you know, bulletproof vests, changing, uh, body cameras, uh, license
plate readers, um, facial recognition systems.
Uh, what stands out to you in terms of, well, when I started, things were a lot different,
uh, back then.
I mean, they're, uh, most police officers were using revolvers.
Uh, you had to take your time and put the, the round in, in the gun.
Um, uh, there were no, like a musket, are you talking like a, like a musket, like a musket?
You know, uh, bulletproof vests were just coming into their own.
Now what you see is, uh, you see, uh, vests that are worn on the exterior with all kinds
of different things on it, uh, from, from lights to maybe a second handgun to extra rounds
and things like that.
We didn't even have trauma plates and a trauma plate was really important because a trauma
plate is what is on a bulletproof vests that when the round hits the, uh, bulletproof vest
that it, it reduces the damage to the heart because that's a, that's a major impact.
We didn't even have those kind of things.
Of course we didn't have the great uniforms where we're wearing polyester.
Everyone had to wear, uh, you know, the three, uh, the, the, the police cap.
There were no baseball caps that was not allowed.
Um, and so it was, it almost, it's almost laughable now what we have available to us
than what we, what we do right now.
Yeah.
And those tools are really, every time something comes out, I guess the, the whole idea is
that it's, it makes law enforcement and enforcing the law is easier or is that the home?
The, the, the tools should make, uh, community safer, law enforcement easier, uh, but it
still comes down to even back then, the tools that you use the most was a pad of paper and
a pencil to get information.
The tool that you use the most was talking and engaging with citizens.
That is transcended.
That will never change.
I was going to say, and do you think we've moved too far away from that because of technology?
I think the risk is there.
And what I'm hoping is that we're starting to create awareness on that we don't lose
those things, things like building trust with community, things like, you know, are we operating
in a bias in non-transparent manner?
Are we listening to people when there are complaints?
Those are some of the things that I hope that we don't use, lose the empathy for people.
Um, when you have like think, like technology, one of the things that you lose at times with
technology is that it is an objective standard.
You know, you see the video, you see DNA, you see, you know, you see things that are there
and, but in policing, subjectivity, discretion, humility, empathy and trust, those are the
hallmarks that are in behind good policing in America.
So then when I, you think about some of the things that you see out there now, especially
with all the social media things that are out there and you'll see things that are very
easily manipulated, um, at almost the point where you look at something and you have to
ask yourself, is that real?
It seems like there needs to be and should be some sort of a balance between, you know,
the technology and the person that's managing that technology.
How do you see that?
This is something that I think communities, law enforcement need to get together on.
As well as the manufacturers of technology, you can have a video that will give a false
negative.
Still, we have not resolved this idea of women of color in small children showing a pretty
good high percentage of false positives when we're looking at surveillance video, facial
recognition.
So those are some things that we should always be concerned about.
What kind of thing would cause something like that to be happening, you think?
It is, it is, it is, it is the technology and when you talk to the experts in the field,
the ones that are not only the experts in the field but the ones that are producing this,
they have not resolved that.
However, one of the things that you always have to be mindful of is that even the manufacturers,
all human beings have implicit biases.
So sometimes those implicit biases can come through through the manufacturer's work.
Sometimes the implicit biases can come through through how the technology is deployed.
What's your, what's your simple way of how you would describe what an implicit bias is?
Because I think some people don't understand what that is sometimes.
This bias is a, is a bias that is, that is not overt, it is not necessarily animus.
It is those things that we do subconsciously, that we may not be aware of, but it adversely
affects our behavior.
It adversely affects how we do things, how we make judgments and how we perceive things.
So that's how it impacts police.
It's like a prejudgment kind of thing.
It's a prejudgment, it's a prejudge of what we do and what we see.
That person's overweight, so that person likes to eat a lot and it's not true and it's not
true.
Absolutely.
And the 800 pound gorilla in the United States is implicit bias based upon race.
That's the 800 pound gorilla.
That's what everyone focuses on.
But as you just mentioned, weight, age, language, height, all of those things, we prejudge.
And the one that we, we prejudge that we, we need to really get a handle on and as those
are the social economic factors, sometimes they cut across all of those categories.
When we see someone that is homeless, looks destitute, we, we in our, in the back of
our minds develop a detachment.
There are some telltale signs, some, some watchouts for implicit bias.
One is if you start to see a group of people and thinking all of them do something a certain
way or everyone does it this way.
Those are, those are things that you may want to do a self check because every human being
is different and when you start to include everyone and saying everyone does it a certain
way, that's when you become susceptible to treating people differently and prejudging.
It sounds dangerous to policing, is it?
It is dangerous.
And it is dangerous because you can prejudge, I remember as, as a, as a, as a rookie cop,
prejudging a situation where because it was a female involved, I assume that she did not
have a weapon, that she was not a threat.
But I have run into encounters where a female was involved and they had a weapon and they
were as just as much as a threat.
But I was prejudging the situation and that placed me at danger.
You have to evaluate the situation based upon what you have.
That is called individualized suspicion and making sure that you're calculating place,
size, manner, how the person departs himself, how they're looking at you and always more
importantly, where their hands are.
Yeah.
And when we talk about implicit bias in humans, is there such a thing when it comes to technology,
especially AI technology and how it's being facilitated?
Yes, in a number of different ways.
One, implicit bias can come through in how it's deployed.
Let me give you an example.
If I start off and I deploy, say, cameras in an area that are license plate readers and
I deploy that base upon, I've got information that there's a higher incidence of people
violating certain things.
That may be true at the beginning, but if I don't come back and check that, that camera
can start to produce a self-fulfilling prophecy because what will happen is that it will continue
to see the same people and that will continue even though it may have changed, that that's
not the highest area, the highest percentage of it, but because they're taking that information,
we're looking at saying, oh, this is the highest percentage.
The other way that it can become an implicit bias is how it is designed.
What is it designed to pick up on?
What are the features and what are the locations and what are the things that it is designed
to do?
That gets a bit complicated and I don't know if I can get into it in this particular moment,
but again, highlighting one of the telltale signs is any time there is like a predictive
analysis that takes place before it is deployed, that's when you should start taking a closer
look at is there a bias inherent because that's when discretion is used, human discretion.
This time is always opens up human error.
Yeah, I can't resist this, but you and I joked earlier before we kind of began this interview
about the red cup and I told you a story about me going to a badger game when I first moved
here and I had water in my red cup and the police officer made me put it out because
they assumed that it might be liquor in there.
Is that an implicit bias?
The fact that I have a red cup that there is something in there other than water?
That implicit bias can come in so many ways and I'll say the reason why it's complicated.
One is why did they select you to even ask you that question.
Just because a cup is red, there's no reason to believe, there's not 100% reason to believe
that.
But when if someone is operating on this principle that any and all people with red cups have
liquor in it, they have prejudged a situation.
That's what I felt.
So that leads to problematic policing.
And so what we would ask that police officer to do is review what they do, ask themselves
some questions, but for this person having the red cup, would I have contacted them?
What for believing that every person with a red cup has liquor in it?
Would I have done what I did and what I have contacted this person?
Those are the questions that we can do it.
They're good people.
All people have implicit biases.
They're good people.
The thing is we are bound to provide service in a fair and impartial manner.
So that's the difference between a police officer or someone in government and just
an everyday person, because I have the right to take away your freedom as a police officer,
because I can use force up to including, physical force up to including, unfortunately, the
potential of taking your life.
I have that constitutional, that burden of being, it's not a burden, it is what we take
that oath for to do it in a way where I'm a guardian of democracy and not trying to
get away with something or trying to be overbearing and tyrannical on those things.
It's an awesome power, but it's only awesome when it's used correctly.
Yeah.
And you talked about license plate readers, tools that are used to kind of gather information
during our pre-interview, you know, I learned about this technique called, is it the flocking?
What?
Explain what that is.
A flock camera is a camera that is deployed in certain parts of a particular geographic
area.
And what it does is it picks up information and it goes back to a certain point.
Many times it's a command center.
What it does is it reads license plates, it reads information about it.
And depending upon the technology, they're starting to be able to pick up and extract
more information from that.
But it can pick up by reading a plate, does this person have a violation that has this
person been previously, I mean, does this person have warrants out for their arrest?
All of that type of information is there.
So the question with flock cameras really comes down to this.
Are they there to be used after the fact when we say a crime was committed?
Then they come back and they look at it and says, yeah, this person was driving in this
area at this particular time, this is what a crime was committed.
I think people probably have a better feel for that.
It's just like the bombing incident in Boston with a marathon.
They went back and they started checking the cameras and they could start to push together
things.
I think most citizens understand that use.
Where it becomes a question is proactively how it is used.
So if I'm using this information and then I act on it, even if you have not committed
a crime right then and there, I go knock on your door and say, hey, you came through
this intersection at such and such a date and time.
This is a potential.
And based upon the information we have, you have a warrant for your arrest.
So people ask those questions or you were here and you're being surveilled now.
People complain about the issues of privacy.
Yeah.
And what's done with that information once it's gathered, what happens to it at that?
That's another issue.
In most states, information has been historically treated in their laws that govern.
How long you can maintain a record.
Where does the information go?
Who has access to it?
So one of the other concerns that communities need to wrestle with is that if a third party
has data and information and if the government has access to that, have they made that third
party become a de facto part of the government because they're accessing their information.
But where's that stored?
What information do they have on you?
Don't you have a right to know what your government has on you?
These are questions that communities really do need to wrestle with.
Yeah.
And we know that some law enforcement agencies, departments around the state have been moving
away from that system.
Why do you think it's so controversial and why would they?
Move away from it, you think?
I think, first of all, I think it was developed in many instances to improve public safety.
I'm not going to conclude that that was not the reason.
But I think that right now we're behind the curve.
We are behind the curve because we have not, as a community, provided what they should
be used for.
What are the standards?
What are the standards of privacy that that community accepts?
How should the police department use it?
Some communities have gone and what they've done is that they've pulled together stakeholders
and they've discussed from every branch.
They've pulled together people that are community members, civil liberties.
They've pulled together people that are subject matter experts, the manufacturers.
And they have come up with some broad guidelines.
And then the community starts to lay out for law enforcement.
Here's some policies.
Here are some procedures.
Here's some ordinances that we think would work.
And they all have to be constantly improved.
But right now, we're behind the eight ball because we have not done that.
And so we're reaching for this technology before we know it's total impact and we're
using it before we know the total impact.
One of the numbers I heard don't quote me, but I went to a seminar last summer and talked
about AI and how it was being used.
And I think at that time they were saying that it's only correct 80% of the time.
And so is it okay for something that's wrong 20% of the time?
Is it okay to use that as a tool?
So how do you weigh the value it brings in terms of what it brings to law enforcement
versus the problem that creates from it being used improperly by the humans that control
it?
It's a very complex question but a good one.
So I gave you an example of a fly camera.
If someone is wanted for murder, you want that person off the street.
You want that fly camera to be able to pick that up.
But let me give you an example that happens every day.
One, if you go on a cruise ship, your picture is taken, okay, and that could be used in
other ways.
Do you think most people assume and understand that that's happening wherever they go now?
No, they don't.
They don't.
I don't think they understand that the government can at times they can decide the subpoena
that private entity could decide to give it to them.
They don't know that.
But that to me can be more problematic.
However, in answering to your question, sometimes it's situational.
They do the same thing, many instances, if you get on a flight.
But because the risk of a person getting on that flight and that plane coming down, if
that person takes that plane down, you're willing to take more of a risk.
You're willing to give up more of your privacy if the risk is higher or if it's effective
and it's important to save lives.
If it's not doing those things, you're going, well, why am I giving up my privacy just
for this?
So, those are some of the things that we have to balance.
Are we just doing it because it's convenient for a particular industry or convenient for
police?
So that's one.
One of the things I do want to mention that I think really quickly is there is an economics
to this that is important for people to understand.
There are agencies now that are sending calls, sending drones to calls to assess the situation.
And then once they assess it, they may decide to deploy police or police officer or not.
It can be and all of these have very positive impacts.
That's why it needs that scrutiny.
However, you flip that over and do you start to say, well, it's cheaper to have the drone
do it than to have police officers who have to pay insurance, salary, benefits and all
those other things.
Now, those are major questions because we have grown accustomed to having human beings
and it should always be making decisions about arrest who gets the citation.
What are the mitigating circumstances?
I don't want to know which one is going to give me the best intelligence.
You may want to know who's going to give you the best intelligence and I believe it's
a police officer.
The technology will give you the information, but the police officer will add those things
that you can't ever add with that.
Yeah, but can a drone talk a person down from a hostage situation or whatever that circumstance
is?
There just has to be a human element.
There has to be a human element to be able to do those things.
There has to be a human element to understand the context, to understand that human being,
where they're coming from.
To understand a particular area, you can have someone, you can have people violating
park laws every night and that drone will pick up on it and they'll say, this is a problem
you're violating that.
What they may not know is that a store may have closed and this may be the only drug
store open at night and people are violating that just to get to that drug store.
You do need human beings to assess these things because just because something is wrong,
the criminal justice system may not always be the correct way to deal with it and it
takes judgment.
That's why justice is not blind.
Justice is blind folded.
That means that human beings have to do things to be able to make sure that justice is needed
out in an equal and fair way.
That's why Lady Justice has that.
That's why the balance is there.
You have to balance the scale with empathy.
You have to balance the scale with a whole host of issues that someone has surrounded
with.
These are things technology can't do.
I don't think that we want a world right now where technology is making those decisions,
just like no one wants a world that we're constantly being surveilled.
And speaking of the human influence on things, whose job is it to determine how these tools
are implemented, is it the law enforcement agency, is it the community, is it state officials,
whose job is it to say, you know, this is a good idea.
We should have a robot that decides that, hey, camera one, camera two, those guys might
do something suspicious in a month and we need to be ready for it.
Like whose job is it to choose where the, you know, that kind of, you know, superficial
technology has been used, I guess.
I think it is the stakeholders of the community.
Is that the people?
That is the people.
That is, that is the ones that are the manufacturers, there's the civil rights leaders, there's
government, government.
But the distinction here is that government has to lead on this one because we're talking
about government issues.
Well, some people are concerned about the government because they take the data and use
it in ways that some of them don't even know about.
When government undermines trust, when they're not using it in a way of honesty, character,
competence, when they don't have the competent in that using the right way, they've undermined
trust.
So, I can't speak, I'm not speaking to a government that is not working.
I am being aspirational, talk about if a government is working, they should take the lead.
They should bring people together.
They should bring all of the key stakeholders together and decide these key points of privacy,
of things like, you know, public safety, of trust, of all of this because all of those
things are right there, you know, the cost-benefit analysis of having a drone do it or a person
do it.
All of those things are key to providing public safety in this country.
Yeah, I want to get this question here before we wrap up.
I mentioned Big Brother earlier, you know, I think people understand that, you know,
we're always, there's a camera on us, on corners and grocery stores, elevators, you
name it, is that a good thing?
I don't think so, because for two reasons, one, and I know everyone has cameras, it's
not just government, but I don't think it's a good thing because it creates an environment
where we assume that people are wrong.
It creates a surveillance mentality that people have to prove themselves right.
One of the major principles of this country is that you are right until you are innocent
until proven guilty.
Under these circumstances, if you're constantly under surveillance and something comes up,
you have to prove yourself innocent.
If you show up as a false positive on a camera and you were there and you were false positive,
you're going to have to prove that you didn't do it.
And that turns the whole dynamic of some things that for 250 years was important to this country.
And that's shifting, that constant surveillance.
And I also want to ask you, what do you see as the biggest threat to policing?
And what do you see as the biggest threat to the community and how it's policed?
Biggest threat to policing is if somehow we cannot get the entire apparatus of government
to start working on these issues because the police will be left out there hanging
because the community will ask, I need for you to keep my community safe.
But then when they keep the community safe and they make a mistake,
then they're going to say, well, you're using technology too much.
So the police, as the ones that are delivering this service, that will be on their,
that will, they will carry the burden of having to deal with all of these issues.
So it's important that if you have a law enforcement agency in your jurisdiction that you help them
and you pull together these resources to do that, what was the second question again?
What's the biggest threat to the community that's being policed?
The biggest, biggest threat to the community that's being policed is that we lose our faith
in humanity, that we start to believe that we live in a society, that everyone is a criminal.
People commit crimes at a very low rate when it's all sitting down.
We should not design systems solely for the purpose of catching people.
We should design systems for keeping the community safe, albeit, which is very important.
But we should also design systems that do the right thing and help people
and help community stay safe while maintaining the public trust.
Yeah, and I'm going to get you to look into your crystal ball on this one.
What is the future, I consider we're here now, but what does the future of law enforcement look like
in terms of technology and how it's being used?
What do you see, what's going to be the next big to do?
That's a tough one because just as I sit here, if I go back three years,
everything that was related to technology has just expanded like you would not believe.
It is growing so rapidly.
We've got data centers that are powering algorithms that we could never imagine before.
So it is hard to predict what's going to happen, but we must try, if we can, to keep this human
centered, justice must be human centered.
From one human to another, no worry, thanks for stopping by.
Thank you very much, I appreciate it.
Appreciate you.