President Obama spoke in Selma Sunday about the past and the present, making a link between the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and the contemporary movement to address the killings of unarmed African-American men by police officers in so many communities across this country. The president reminded the crowd that "citizens in Ferguson and New York and Cleveland just want the same thing young people here marched for 50 years ago -- the protection of the law."
Unfortunately, the laws that are needed are not always in place; as a result, one of the first questions that arises after an officer-involved death is: "Are the police going to investigate the police?
This is a critical question -- so much so that one of the chief recommendations of the president's Task Force on 21st Century Policing was for independent investigations of police-involved deaths.
In Madison, Wisconsin, where a 19-year-old African-American man was shot and killed Friday night by a local police officer, there's a better answer to the question than in most places, thanks to state Representative Chris Taylor.
Taylor was on Madison's Williamson Street Friday night when Tony Robinson, who police acknowledge was unarmed, was killed. She was getting gas as a nearby station when the shots that took Robinson's life were fired. She has been present as activists with groups such as the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition have demanded accountability and sweeping changes in police practices with a series of demonstrations that have filled the streets and, on Monday, the rotunda of the state Capitol.
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But Taylor's connection to what the legislator refers to as an "unspeakable tragedy," and to the policing issues that have been raised, runs deeper.
Several years ago, after the shooting in the same neighborhood of a white unarmed young man, Paul Heenan, an internal investigation by the Madison Police Department determined that the officer involved had not violated department policies or procedures. That raised a community outcry; there were protests, petitions and calls for a better system of investigating shootings by police officers.
Their voices joined a broader chorus of Wisconsinites calling for independent reviews of police shootings -- a chorus that included Michael Bell, whose son was killed in 2004 by police in Kenosha. No officer was charged with wrongdoing in the death of Michael Bell Jr., but the Bell family received nearly $1.75 million in a settlement with the city. Michael Bell became a prominent campaigner for an independent-review law. He did not portray it as a panacea, but he would suggest that such legislation could provide "a little more confidence" in the process.
"What this is about, too, is moving from internal affairs of a particular police department to outside the department," Bell would explain. "[Opponents of the change] say [the status quo] is a good check and balance, and we're saying it's not. That's why we're moving it outside."
Taylor heard the chorus. And she determined to make the change. It was not easy. She was serving her first full term as a state representative. She was a progressive Democrat in an overwhelmingly conservative and overwhelmingly Republican Assembly. But Taylor is not easily dissuaded.
The Madison attorney started looking for a Republican ally. She found one in Garey Bies, a former deputy sheriff from Sister Bay in Door County. Two years ago, the pair proposed Assembly Bill 409, which was written to require that investigations of officer-involved deaths be led by investigators from outside the police agencies with which the officers serve. The bill also proposed that families of shooting victims be informed of their legal rights and that the results of investigations that do not lead to criminal charges be made public.
"Law enforcement officers have one of the hardest jobs in the world and are confronted with life-threatening situations on a regular basis," argued Taylor and Bies. "Yet their ability to do their jobs depends on the trust of their community. This bill reasonably balances these realities with a uniform statewide structure to ensure a better process when officer-involved deaths occur anywhere in Wisconsin. This improved process will strengthen trust between law enforcement and communities."
The Republican state attorney general opposed the bill. Yet Taylor and Bies assembled a coalition of supporters that included the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, the Badger Sheriffs Association and the American Civil Liberties Union. And Taylor kept talking to Republican legislators with whom she frequently clashed on other issues.
Remarkably, in a time of so many partisan and ideological divisions, the bill advanced. In the spring of 2014, after securing unanimous support in the Republican-controlled Assembly and Senate, this quite progressive piece of legislation was signed into law by the very conservative Governor Scott Walker.
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