Where I stand

De-escalation First, Real Limits on Crowd-Control Weapons

On April 18th, our Sheriff’s office answered roughly a thousand nonviolent, de-escalation-trained demonstrators with tear gas, pepper spray, and less-lethal rounds, much of it fired from behind fences and barriers. The first thing I saw when I arrived was an elderly woman on her hands and knees, unable to stand, after being gassed. I watched a person get knocked unconscious by a police ATV. I was tear gassed myself, more than once, while never raising a hand to anyone.

Here is the fact that should end the argument: there is no evidence a single officer was harmed that day. Not a scratch. Some deputies fired chemical weapons into the crowd from cover while other deputies walked through that same crowd completely at ease. You cannot call a crowd violent and then send your own people strolling through it unprotected. Both things cannot be true. And days later, the Sheriff went on camera citing “preliminary reports” that demonstrators had jumped his deputies and tried to take their weapons, claims the public footage does not support and his office has never substantiated or corrected.

A department that opens with chemical weapons against people who pose no threat is not keeping anyone safe. It is creating the very danger it claims to be managing, for the public and for its own deputies.

It is also showing you the future. There will be a next crowd, on State Street, at the Capitol, on a picket line, with pressure building on command to clear it, and the opening move at Ridglan is the opening move you should expect. Restraint under a little pressure is how you predict restraint under real pressure. On April 18th, there was none. That has to change before the next crowd gathers, not after.

And let me be clear about who is responsible. April 18th was a failure of command. Leadership called a peaceful crowd dangerous, planned an operation on that premise, and sent deputies in primed for unneeded force, taking direction from private security contractors. The deputies on that line did not choose any of that, and the accountability for it runs up the chain, not down. I am running against that leadership, not against the men and women it put there.

As Sheriff, I will:

Make de-escalation the default, with force as a last resort, never an opening move.
Set strict, written limits on crowd-control munitions. No chemical agents or less-lethal rounds used indiscriminately against a peaceful crowd: any force must be tied to a specific, articulable threat, authorized by a supervisor, and preceded by clear, lawful dispersal warnings, never an opening move.
Publish the use-of-force policy and the data, so the public can hold the department to its own rules.
Train and staff for de-escalation, so deputies have real options other than the gas canister.

None of this is radical. De-escalation as the default, written limits on force, published policy and data: that is the national standard the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing set out in 2015, with police leaders at the table. Dane County deserves at least the national standard.

What happened on April 18th should never happen in this county again.

Sources

Where this page describes what I saw on April 18th, that is my firsthand account as an eyewitness. The links above are the documented record.

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