Last month, the Republican National Convention took over downtown Milwaukee for four days. The convention brought tens of thousands of people to the city, including thousands of out-of-state law enforcement officers to help local police with security.
Columbus, Ohio police officers who were in town for the RNC shot and killed a Milwaukee man while they were debriefing the day's events about a mile away from the convention. The shooting sparked community protests and calls for answers from the MPD. Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman talks about that incident and evaluates how law enforcement did during the RNC.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Following up on our last chat just before the RNC, how are you feeling now that it's over? How would you grade the experience overall?
Relieved. I would say a passing grade. It's important to understand that we always have learning lessons from any large event. But from the ability to collaborate with not only the event organizers, our elected officials, our various partners -- passing grade.
Do you have an estimate for the total number of law enforcement officers that worked the RNC?
We had thousands.
Would you say that number was a good number to have for the event — for the scale of the event, for the activity around the event?
It's hard to always look at what is the right amount. I believe we had a number of engagements to help attenuate or reduce any particular type of challenges, but it's better to have and not need than need and not have.
Some out-of-state police were assigned patrol routes outside the RNC perimeter. How were those areas assigned?
Well, first of all, we don't get into the whole operation aspect of it. We know that there was some challenges in regards to their responsibilities, but they were not outside of the perimeter from the standpoint of our overall security footprint. I know that there was a number of different understandings of what that particular type of responsibility entails. But as we recall, we had an inner perimeter, outer perimeter and within that particular space there was still the responsibility of having an awareness of those particular points where we had vehicle checkpoints. It's not just about being there right in the particular area. We had that covered, but also in regards to having larger responsibilities of making sure that we were aware of any particular type of challenges or issues that were coming that particular way.
On July 16, which was the second day of the RNC, officers from Columbus, Ohio, shot and killed Samuel Sharpe Jr. near 17th and Vilet. The bodycam footage shows that Sharpe held two knives as he approached another man in the street. The officers ordered sharp to drop the knives — he didn't. Officers then opened fire when he lunged toward the man. How do you think local law enforcement would have handled the situation since they had knowledge of the locals and some of that area's unhoused population?
I don't do Monday night quarterbacking. I look at what was the situation that was unfolding, the immediate danger. Those particular situations is a really hard way to navigate for law enforcement. As we all know, we have the responsibility of being guardians in our community to ensure that we're protecting everyone. What concerns me in this conversation is what about the individual who was on the receiving end of that particular action?
It seems like there's more focus on someone who is bringing immediate danger and threat in the way of great bodily harm, maybe to the point of death. But we are focusing on what was the intervention of that particular behavior and almost to a point, forgetting if someone was going to be on the receiving end of those particular behaviors. We have a responsibility to protect our community. I challenge the question about whether this was an outside agency, that particular patch could have been Glendale, could have been West Allis, could have been a squad coming from our community partners coming through the neighborhood, going to the county justice facility downtown, which serves the Milwaukee County. I don't understand the focus on the particular agency and not on the behaviors and the requirement to protect life and liberty.
As I look at this particular situation, I would like to say what would have happened if they weren't there? What would happen if they would have said, “Well, we're from Ohio, this is not my responsibility.” It is a challenge, I guess, in this situation that there was an unfortunate intervention where someone had a loss of life — which I've said this on many occasions — there are no winners in this. But I still want to refocus the conversation on the behaviors, the immediate danger that was involved, and that this was a split seconds of decisions being made that required response.
Did out-of-state officers receive any area-specific training?
There was discussions in regards to responsibilities, expectations. There was a briefing in regards to that particular work. Again, this is not where we discuss our operations, but we understood the need to make sure that we're putting enough work into our outside response agencies to know the resources, points of contact and responsibilities.
The officers from Columbus were not paired with Milwaukee officers, but was that something that was considered during preparation? Is that something that you would push for in preparation for another large-scale event, to have out-of-state officers be paired with local law enforcement?
As we know, these things come every four years and there's no need to have a discussion about what might be in the future for we already know that RNC is going to be in Houston. Looking at what we did, there's always the responsibility to ensure that we are improving as it was pointed out in the response to some of the questions earlier posed to us from our media, we did recognize the need to ensure having the outside agencies have partners with a local officer.
This is an event of the magnitude I don't think that our city has ever seen before. The expectation that there is perfection, I think, is an illogical and not rational belief. We put forth effort, and as I've shown in regards to the leadership for this department, confidence does not equal perfection. Confident we have plans, but as we all know, plans have to be reviewed. If there is a situation you need to put forth some redirection or looking at how we can improve, we should always be open to that. We put forth the effort over a year and a half, to put forth the best plans that we had with very little experience before, especially that the DNC was mostly virtual, of knowing that this was an extremely huge lift — putting in efforts that we may never see this particular type of level of national special security event ever again in this city; maybe not my professional lifetime.
What does covering the RNC, preparing for the RNC and then the shooting that took place — what does that do with community relations between the police and the citizens? What is MPD doing now to maintain or improve those relations?
We continue to engage. This is a very interesting conversation. It's almost like we're picking and choosing who has a more right to live, or how to die or what is the importance in regards to officers’ response to being a guardian. So, we are missing the conversation about the potential victim here in this situation. What was supposed to happen to him? He didn't have any knives in his hands. He was standing right in front of someone who was an immediate threat to his own life. Why are we not focusing on behaviors? There is no theme or particular words or actions that were shown that we would not expect about sworn officers here to protect life and liberty.
There was an immediate threat to great body harm or death to the person who was at the receiving end of whatever conflict or issue that happened between the two of them. That is perplexing to me in regards to how do we lose faith in law enforcement when you have a situation like I always say a sworn officer needs to respond. When we talk about this particular situation, does it make a difference if it’s Ohio? What if it would have been Wauwatosa? Would it have made a difference in what law enforcement responded when you have someone who is in our community about to receive harm?
In a situation where officers are seeing this unfold in front of them, are their techniques to de-escalate things? Is that something that is trained?
Keywords there: If deescalation has its proper place, when there is cooperation in regards to the work or actions being shown. De-escalation is trained for our entire department. We have it, but it's a tool, a tool of one of many things that we utilize in regards to dealing with volatile or serious situations. But you talk about this situation, this is a very specific situation that unfolded very, very quickly. De-escalation is the opportunity when the opportunity arises. You just said it yourself he was lunging. Where is the de-escalation to do or deal with that? De-escalation is for the purpose of slowing things down. Did it seem slow to you? Did it seem slow to anyone? I'm perplexed in this conversation because the focus is on a threat where there was someone on the receiving end of that threat. So that person doesn't have a right to live?
The unfortunate thing is we all know the challenges in regards to the unhoused and dealing with those who have mental health challenges. But when you have behaviors like that, this is not just a simple field investigation or an investigation of a more common nature. We had an in-the-moment action going on with very few little options. I saw it from my own professional perspective. The officers had only two choices, one to engage or two to ignore. I don't believe our public, I don't believe our city would have found that to be acceptable if they did not engage. I find that there would be a lot more angst and frustration and maybe even a narrative that typical officers don't care. Here you had officers in light of the challenges of not being from our community, understanding the role of what a guardian should be engaged to protect someone's life. That's the narrative I choose to talk about.
Overall, what are some lessons learned from the preparation for the RNC, for covering an event of that scale? Do you have any takeaways?
I'm glad it's over. When you try to do a little bit of a post-look at the particular training and the planning — I can't be more proud of the team that we have for planning purposes. We had to take a number of members offline just to do this work solely for almost a little over a year and a half. I just want to reiterate that as much as you plan you think you have enough plans? I've met with the team on a frequent basis. We had a lot of difficult, tough questions in regards to what resources we're bringing and how we're going to utilize. Reflection: I wouldn't change anything in regards to how we had really engaged, especially from my executive leadership to our planning team.
Once we got close to the actual event we were meeting weekly, which is a huge commitment from our executive team with our planning team that we're doing it on a daily basis many, many hours working with so many partners. I did a lot of traveling to recruit, going to different communities, going to different, departments and chiefs. You’ve got to put the work in and we put a lot of professional hours into this. For what we have had to deal with from a post-2020 DNC virtual where we didn't have a true experience of what these challenges were like.
You asked me for a grade, we got a passing grade. With all the challenges of staffing I had to use a lot of professional capital to bring resources into the city because of the challenges of what it is policing in the 21st century. I will say that I’m proud of the team, proud of the work and absolutely proud of our city. Beyond just a couple of those challenging situations, we really did shine and the majority of talk was about the event and the beauty of our city.
