Wausau's Policing Task Force Sending One Recommendation to City Leaders

Monday, April 11th, 2022 -- 11:01 AM

(Mike Leischner, WSAU) Wausau's Policing Task Force is sending one recommendation to city leaders for consideration; Mayor Katie Rosenberg says it involves having a direct contact point with the city's homeless population.

“We want to get feedback from Public Health and Safety because they have oversight of some of the policies related to the police department. And then we’ll go to the full council and get some input there from those folks and make sure that we’re all aligned. And then after that we’ll have a public hearing.”

She says the task force's final report shows that many of the issues with Police that have come up in other parts of the country aren't showing themselves here. “Systemic racism, use of force, and things like that and as we studied it, we found there is no evidence of systemic racism. There’s no evidence that use of force is improperly deployed.”

She says for the last year the department has been experimenting with having an officer connect with the homeless, which has worked so well that they'd like to make it a permanent position.

But before that happens there are several boxes to check. “It was helping people if they wanted to hook up with their social security. If they somehow lost their benefit, we were able to connect with them. If they were interested in maybe addressing some mental health or addiction issues, we had a house they could move into.”

Rosenberg adds that some of the issues the group brought up- such as having a record of reasons behind why officers are let go and the use of leave time for PTSD related to an on-the-job incident, that actually solved itself thanks to action from the legislature.

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