Tensions ran high in the first of six public forums hosted by Madison Police Chief Mike Koval at the Madison Central Library Tuesday.
Questions regarding how the police should facilitate protests, address mental health issues in the community and eliminate existing racial disparities in the city fell short of reaching consensus.
“The chasm between the haves and the have-nots has never been more pronounced, and is growing by the hour,” Koval said.
Koval’s recent rebuke of the language in an open letter from the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition, the organizers behind the Black Lives Matter protests, that called Madison police “occupying forces,” came under fire from attendees as too harsh and failing to grasp the greater issue of policing discrepancies between crime committed by black and white citizens.
“Officers have been entrusted with a great deal of discretion. Discretion that can be used for right, and discretion that can be abused,” Koval said. “I’m not saying I have 455 choir boys.”
But some audience members stressed strong concerns regarding how much the police department can really do to effectively change a system that has long been in place.
“I get that no one wants to say that I’m part of the system, I’m part of the racial disparities,” Young, Gifted and Black Coalition activist Eric Upchurch said.
The emotional and passionate testimony, characterized by Koval and other community members as “difficult to hear,” included one man’s personal experience being wrongfully incarcerated and now living on the streets.
“I can only imagine how tough it was to actually live that,” Upchurch said. “That man is a homeless man. No matter how sorry you are, he is still living that experience.”
Koval affirmed a commitment to continuing to facilitate protests in a way that would allow both freedom of expression and also prevent unreasonable inconvenience, but some felt the necessity of protest outweighs inconvenience.
“The inconvenience is good because it makes us think about [the disparities],” activist Amelia Royko Maurer said. “We could really turn around and not care, we have that option every day. Protest is the speech of the unheard.”
