As the Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM) and Police Civilian Oversight Board (PCOB) are at risk, Freedom Inc. tells the community why it is important to protect the two ahead of the next major decision scheduled for August.
On May 13, Freedom Inc., a Black and Southeast Asian nonprofit that seeks to achieve social justice, held a community session on what’s currently happening with the OIM and PCOB. Back in April, a vote was held to refer to ordinances that would give the Common Council greater oversight into the OIM and require it to use the city’s attorney for administrative tasks for June 17’s PCOB meeting and Aug. 4 for city council.
Community members, Freedom Inc. and families of victims of police murders gave hours of testimony as to why OIMs’ and PCOB’s independence needs to be protected. Still, a 16-4 vote pushed for the meetings on ordinance requirements to be pushed through.
Now, Freedom Inc. seeks to engage the community through education about the history of OIM and PCOB and how residents can help protect their independence.
“We believe that the solutions should be community-driven, and that we in this room have the shared knowledge and lived experiences to make decisions about our lives that are best for us,” said Milcah Rimmer, youth justice manager at Freedom Inc.
One of Freedom Inc’s biggest points is community control. It believes that the community as a whole should be able to govern local institutions as opposed to the select powerful.
“If we’re talking about police, for example, we’re talking about being able to review policy. We’re talking about community members being able to hire and fire officers and hold them accountable when they do wrong by our people,” Rimmer said.
The OIM and PCOB are some level of results for community control, but that was more a compromise, Rimmer said.
Rimmer pointed to the 2015 murder of Tony Robinson by Madison police and the fallout from community outrage, but that was the start to continued issues the public had with police. Five years later, with the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, more outrage from communities across the country led to Madison creating OIM and PCOB.
“They did not make changes to these police departments, policies or staffing because they wanted to,” Rimmer said. “They saw the impact of what it looks like when people hit the streets and speak up for what they believe in.”
That was a moment of fear from police departments, and a result of what collective action from the community could create, Rimmer said.
“The government wasn’t taking ownership for the harm they had caused or the lives they had taken. They weren’t taking ownership and apologizing or seeing our humanity. Their hand was forced by the actions of the people.”
Now the compromise is at risk of maintaining its independence if the Common Council votes in favor of the ordinances.
But Freedom Inc. wants the community to push for changes to grant better community control as the vote comes in a couple months.
Among the changes are ensuring that PCOB officials remain as community members and not elected officials, the power to review policy and make changes, separate OIM’s funding from the police budget and have a different legal council than the city.
The Common Council’s vote on ordinances will take place Aug. 4. Freedom Inc. plans to be in attendance again to testify and encourages community members to do the same.
