Madison Police Department chief Shon Barnes, who will become the new chief in Seattle on February 1, sharply criticized the Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM) for overstepping its role — but an oficial from the OIM said Barnes misunderstands what that role is supposed to be.
“I think the office of the independent monitor and the independent monitor were on a great path. I think they were showing some promise, and then they decided to hire a data analyst, and they switched their focus from actually taking complaints and investigating or creating an investigative process to asking for data from the police department so (they) can find a problem,” Barnes said in an interview for the 365 Amplified podcast. “They are a hammer looking for a nail, and probably pose one of the greatest threats to the trust and legitimacy that we have built up between the police department and the community.
Listen to the full interview at this link or on your favorite podcast app, or press play below:
“I will tell you there are disparities in policing in every police department,” he added. “You don’t need to try to prove that. We know that.”
The data analyst, Greg Gelembiuk, said in an interview Thursday that Barnes is mischaracterizing what OIM is supposed to do.
“That is a complete misunderstanding of our role. That is 100 percent misunderstanding of our role,” Gelembiuk said. “We are not just the complaint department. That was never the idea. Our most important role is … to do analysis and to identify problems in the department, and then recommend policy changes or ways in which those problems can be rectified … It’s important to recognize we are not the complaint department. We may be complaint-guided, like if somebody comes to us with a complaint and we look into it and there’s legitimacy to it, then that may guide us in offering policy recommendations. But we are not the complaint department.”
The city ordinance that created the OIM describes the purpose as “providing civilian oversight of the Madison Police Department (MPD) and ensuring that the MPD is accountable and responsive to the needs and concerns of all segments of the community, thereby building and strengthening trust in the MPD throughout the community.”
Later, the ordinance says: “The OIM shall actively monitor MPD audits of MPD programs and activities, police officer use-of-force incidents, and MPD investigations of personnel … At any time, the Monitor may choose to undertake their own independent investigation of MPD personnel, including the Chief of Police and all represented and non-represented MPD personnel, in response to external or internally generated complaints of misconduct.”
The ordinance says OIM must also process complaints and may provide counsel for “aggrieved individuals.”
The Office of the Independent Monitor was established in 2024 after a review of the police department by the police oversight consulting firm OIR Group, a review that was recommended by the Madison Police Department Policy & Procedure Review Ad Hoc Committee, of which Gelembiuk was a member. Gelembiuk started providing data analysis as a contractor in September and was hired full-time in December.
He has been publicly critical of MPD in the past, something that Barnes noted in his interview.
“You cannot be biased and be an independent person,” he said. “You cannot say you’re the Office of the Independent Monitor, and yet you hire people who go on social media and give their opinions about the police, who are on record with how they feel about the police, and who are asking for data and fishing through research papers to find a methodology that you think will give you the answer that you want so that you can create some kind of sanction or punishment for the police department.”
“Any serious confrontation with the facts, what they do is attack the messenger,” Gelembiuk said. “Unfortunately, that’s an all too common phenomena in our society these days.”
