uh every time there's a critical incident in the police department whether it's a SWAT incident or a hostage incident or a civil disturbance or a police use of force one of the things we learned to do is debrief that means try to understand what happened examine our systems and processes understand whether or not we in fact inhere adhere to our training and adhere to our standard operating procedures and then identify if we have either performance lapses lapses in our training or lapses in our standard operating procedures and move to correct them U one of the things we've strived to be these last few years is an organization that is constantly trying to improve its systems its processes its responses its tactics its training and its strategies for dealing with the issues of crime fear and disorder here in Milwaukee now recently uh there have been some uh understandable discussions about the quality and the uh timeliness of our sex assault uh investigations here in the city earlier this week a 34 count charging document was produced in which a serial rapist was accused of numerous crimes and although I think it's clear from the charging document that the sensitive crimes division performed in an exemplary manner conducting the investigation in Chief the fact remains that in that charging document there were assertions made by some of the victims of this as salent that indicated that the police department upon its first response had performed in a less than optimal way indeed it appeared that in a couple of these circumstances no reports were made at all and in some of these circumstances two of them anyway uh the victims felt that they had uh not been uh respectfully treated by the officers the investigations are clearly in their early stages but we want to try to determine just what we did and did not do during this particular incident yesterday uh a report was issued the report had been requested by the mayor's Commission on domestic violence and sexual assault was funded by oja U we've uh provided copies to you before you got here and again as you look into that document there are a lot of observations made about how sexual assaults and sexual crimes are handled in the city of Milwaukee what services are available for victims what alternatives there are for them what forms of support and counseling are for them but again as We examined the document uh there were anecdotal reports from victims that comported with the uh some of the statements that we saw in the charging document that once again indicated at least upon upon in some segments of our victim population there is a sense that this Police Department is less than responsive at the point of first report now the oja report indicates that we do uh pre-service training while you're in the academy we do training and and that's true um our current sexual assault training for police recruits I have to read this they get 12 hours of sexual assault investigation training in the academy eight hours of interviewing victims training and 15 hours of cultural competency training and part of the cultural competency training is to relate back to how some cultures experience some sorts of crimes obviously sexual assault is one of those crimes which is not only difficult for individual victims to come to terms with but also depending upon their cultural background there may be inhibitions in how these crimes are reported or victims from different backgrounds May in fact present differently to First responding officers I think that Academy training is pretty good and pretty thorough but what is clear and was clear to me when I read the U oja report is that we have a generation of officers who weren't exposed to that training and more to the point we don't do uh inservice training meaning every year officers go back to the academy they get a get a booster shot of training they re-qualify first aid they re-qualify with with their pistol and they get training in Police Department procedures and uh and uh and changes in the law clearly that's a shortcoming so you know today I'm announcing to you but I've already directed our Academy director to begin our inservice training session start again in the fall and we are going to put together inservice training on sexual assault and Link it to our cultural competence in training as well listen we can't prevent or respond to those things that we do not know about uh I am committed to thoughtful data collection and thoughtful data analysis and the use of data to inform our decisions um incomplete data does me no good and as a matter of simple Justice it does us no good to try to represent that we are members of the criminal justice system if we are somehow deterring people from Seeking Justice because of their perceived status or their perceived uh individual uh shortcomings or problems uh that's not we're in the business to do we take an earth oath to protect and serve that means protect and serve everybody and that is why as we examine the things that have gone right such as the investigation by sensitive crimes division we need to be alert to indications that things have gone wrong or that somehow we have uh let uh uh let develop in some precincts a culture that does not treat all victims equally again these are anecdotal reports and the fact remains we take an awful lot of sex assault reports but the fact remains if we can improve uh we must Now understand um our people in the communications division are trained not to ask follow-up questions of people who claim a sexual assault uh apparently several years ago this is a point of consternation that victims were feeling grilled by dispatchers about what had just happened to them and this was perceived apparently at that time as deterring some people from following through on the call so every sexual assault alleged via the telephone regardless of if it meets UCR standards oja standards or the standards of the elements of a crime is logged in as a sexual assault that's what they said it is that's what it is officers are dispatched obviously it's that first response that's critical that those officers size up this situation accurately and that their first report accurately reflects the elements of the crime reported frequently it's a different crime that's been reported sometimes it's no crime at all but at any rate it's that first responding officer who's got to get it right if it's a serious sexual crime immediately uh the folks from sensitive crimes division get involved in the investigation U their numbers of complaints accepted and looked into track fairly closely uh with a total number of complaints made but they're the ones who have to determine the elements of the crime they're the ones that are spending expensive amounts of time with the victim their total numbers of cases investigates tends to be far less than those that just are taken in in the first place they get all the cases referred to them one of their major issues is to sift through them again matching the allegations to the elements of the relevant crime and producing the appropriate charge to follow up on um but again all of that data can be skewed if for some reason uh people from the victim Community aren't reporting it which brings me back to the initial Point I've got two different documents front of me that have come to me in the same week that although neither is supported by data just because I'm a data Guide doesn't mean I have to be blind to the power of stories all right stories and anecdotes are a form of truth I don't know what the total numbers are but I know we have stories and anecdotes that indicates that there is a feeling abroad among some people that our first response is not always appropriate because of that we're going to do additional training uh because of that I'm going to continue to ask for your help soliciting two F two two kinds of people one is unreported rape victims and two is rape victims who think the police department didn't respond appropriately to their concern there's two different phone numbers you've been nice enough to give them earlier I'd like you to give them out again today if if you if you please would the sensitive crimes division is 93574 i that's 93574 to if you feel you've been a victim of a sexual assault please contact them if you don't feel your case has been investigated if you feel that somehow uh you were ill treated by us while trying to make a complaint of a sexual assault of any kind our professional performance division is 935 7939 that's 935 7939 both of these divisions are under direction from me to take these complaints seriously we'll follow up on them and again keep in mind the entire notion of critical debriefing even as I will see to it that we invest vestigate uh individual allegations that we did not respond appropriately I have an equal duty to make sure that our training and that our procedures and that our culture uh have not somehow contributed to uh responses that have not always been deemed professional so that's the overall point I want to make we're moving in the direction of embracing those findings of the U sexual assault uh report that we can Implement unilaterally and we will actually ly solicit from the community uh additional information that will help us investigate additional crimes if need be or um amend or change our first responses