By Kim McDarison

Whitewater Police Chief Dan Meyer and Whitewater City Manager John Weidl on Monday in a recorded interview conduced by WhitewaterWise described the city of Whitewater as “safe,” although, both said, the city’s police department, due largely to a lack of resources, along with a lack of significant budgetary and manpower upgrades since 2008, has faced some challenges. Additionally, the two officials said, changing populations are among stressors that have impacted the city’s already taxed resources.

In an approximately 45-minute interview, during which some 30 minutes were recorded by the city’s technical staff, the two city officials sat down with this reporter to discuss changes in community demographics recently cited by the Whitewater Police Department, along with the department’s composition, identified needs, resources, and proposed and developing solutions for the future of the department. 

The interview was inspired, in part, by a letter which has received much state and national attention, which was written late last year for distribution to several local, state and federal officials, including President Joe Biden. The letter outlines challenges facing the department brought by a lack of resources, coupled with a changing demographic within the city, identified in the letter as primarily a population arriving from two Central American countries, that have brought additional pressure to the city’s policing resources, city officials have said. 

Whitewater is a city with a population of approximately 15,000. 

An earlier story about the letter, which was discussed during a Whitewater Common Council meeting held in December, and its full content is here: https://whitewaterwise.com/council-approves-letter-to-president-joe-biden-describing-immigration-related-challenges-facing-local-law-enforcement/.

In November, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, along with several county sheriffs, arrived in Whitewater to conduct a news conference, during which Johnson and Steil, both Republicans, talked largely about immigration issues from a national perspective, along with their party’s solutions.

An earlier story about the press conference held in Whitewater by Johnson and Steil is here: https://whitewaterwise.com/?s=Ron+Johnson and here: https://whitewaterwise.com/johnson-steil-meet-in-whitewater-with-law-enforcement-officials-policing-challenges-discussed/.

WhitewaterWise submitted 23 questions in advance of Monday’s interview, of which 16 were included in the city-produced video, following technical issues which, city staff has said, involved unanticipated difficulties producing audio.

The full interview, included the answers offered by both the police chief and the city manager to our 23 questions, including the first seven questions as captured on a reporter’s handheld audio recorder, follows.

Q: Can you help us better understand the composition of the Whitewater Police Department? How many sworn officers and civilian employees make up the department? How large is the annual operating budget that supports the department?

Meyer: Right now we are at 24 sworn staff, and we’ve been at that (number) since 2008. What makes up that 24 are three administrators, the chief, two captains, as well as five first-line supervisors, four of those are patrol lieutenants, one is a detective lieutenant, and we also have 13 patrol officers and we have two detectives and one school resource officer. We also have 13 civilian employees; that’s made up of seven dispatchers, two full-time clerical positions, and part-time clerical position, as well as two community services officers.

As far as the annual operating budget, as of 2024, we are sitting at just under $4.1 million.

Weidl: That $4.1 million, in the context of our general fund, which is about $11 million, represents about 38% of our total general fund, that goes towards police and dispatch services.

Q: How long have you served as a member of the Whitewater Police Department, and how long as its chief?

Meyer: I started here, Jan. 4 of 2010, so just over 14 years in total, and I’ve been a chief here since August of 2022.

Q: During your time on the force, how would you describe the kinds of calls the department traditionally handled? What types of services did it traditionally extend to the community?

Meyer: I think this is a community that has always seen a very broad range of calls. Many people think it’s a college town, so you deal with sort of the conduct with underage drinking, which definitely is a part of it. We’ve always had a very broad range, whether it be domestic incidents, things like that, that are typical of a city this size. So, we do have a very good balance though, for those types of things, and being able to have a proactive (at the time) have proactive enforcement, where we’re balancing that with … being out and just walking and talking with people.

Q: When did you begin to see a shift in the types of calls, or the volume of calls, the department  was receiving. In what way, if any, did the calls change?

Meyer: The call volume and type shifted primarily in January of 2022 is when we noticed it. In that time, we had a week period where we had three calls, that, at that point you just couldn’t ignore the change. In those three calls, (they) involved a family that was living in a 10- by 10-shed, with a young child, a 2- or 3-year-old, in there, and we are talking about 10-below temperatures, so just not at all a typical situation that we would see here in Whitewater. That same week, we had a fire in the downtown, and on that call, we had two young kids, I want to say 4 and 5 years old, that were found sleeping on the floor, no beds, and they were contacted, so it was just them, and thankfully, we had a mail carrier that saw smoke coming out of the doorway and our fire services was able to get there and put that fire out before the children were hurt, but clearly not typical to have kids that are unattended in the city. And then a third one is we had a 14-year-old girl that, we learned, was being forced to work 30 hours a week by Dad.

Meyer said the work schedule hindered the child’s ability to attend school.

The department, he said, “found out later that that’s kind of a major cultural difference from some of the people that are coming here from Central America, really that week was eye-opening for us, and it was in quick succession calls that we typically were not seeing here.  And really since that week, in January, 2022, it’s continued. That hasn’t slowed at all. The impact of the influx of people here has remained a big change for our department.” 

Q:  Recently you (Meyer) said the department was less able than in past years to police proactively. Can you explain the concept of proactive policing? What types of crimes can typically be avoided through proactive policing?

Meyer: When I say proactive policing I’m essentially talking about anything that’s outside the timeframe of taking a reactive call that comes into our dispatch center, going to that call, documenting that call, and doing all of the followup related to that call that comes into us reactively. Proactive enforcement is where we are out making traffic stops based on violations that we see, not that are reported to us. And not just traffic, but also going out and attending community events, doing “Cops and Kids” book readings, all of those types of things, where it’s not a crime or an incident that’s reported to us, we are just going out there and finding those things on our own. In the type of things we talked about (like) traffic that we’re stopping, a huge one is operating while intoxicated. There’s a lot of intoxicated drivers that we just happen to stumble upon. Whether it be because they are deviating in their lane or they are speeding, or they are going the wrong way down a one-way street, so those types of things we see quite a bit. And in a lot of circumstances, we are finding people with warrants or we find people who are carrying drugs, narcotics, and it’s sometimes larger amounts. So there are just a number of different things that you really can stop, a lot of lower-level things, early on by being able to get out there and make those contacts. Without the ability to impact (proactively), things go — they can grow, which is problematic.

Weidl: A couple of the types of calls Dan and I specifically talked about that the officers are now more likely to see even when they are out proactively policing, we found that it’s much more likely to involve not English-speaking (individuals), and that leads to some of the technological improvements that we have made, but it also will speak to the amount of time an average call will take. This all leads to this is something we are going to start looking at. The city has gone down the path of engaging — we sent out the RFP (request for proposals) — to engage with a third-party that’s going to help us look at these things. For example, we are truly going to look back and see if January was the precipice from a day-of perspective. We don’t have the resources to do that now. The city council has authorized that.  …  we are also seeing a significant increase in traffic crashes, with unlicensed drivers. So we think there’s some specific types of violations that, through specific types of proactive service delivery, we can try and (count) some of these things back. And then, a third one is for a while we were experiencing … some over-occupancy problems that Neighborhood Services was identifying. And that came to the common council at some point and there was a management change at one of the buildings that, and we worked through it, but we have had situations where, in addition to the over-occupancy, it’s lending itself to physical, and occasionally, sexual criminal activity that we’ve had to deal with. One of the things Dan and I were going to try … is to separate the services we need to augment, the people who are here, trying to succeed, looking for a place for their family to live, getting their children enrolled in the schools, and then there’s an enforcement issue that we are also dealing with, and I don’t want those issues to be conflated simply because right now the primary point of contact for people who are experiencing those issues happens to be the same department.

Meyer: Law enforcement is a very important portion of the solution, but it is far from the only. It is one piece of the overall pie that I think the city needs to really tackle to address this problem.

Q: Do you believe an increase in sworn officers will solve the problem of a deficit, compared to past years, in proactive policing? How many more officers will the department likely require to help bring proactive policing more in line with what the department would like to see?

Meyer: There is no doubt in my mind that we need more officers. What that number is, I don’t know. I will be — and this is one of the reasons, John mentioned, that we need to study this — we have to look at the data, and see what that says. I would be stunned if it is anything less than three officers, and I think that it’s probably going to say that we need more than that, but, no doubt, in order to get to a point where we are giving this community the proactive enforcement that it’s accustomed to, we need more.   

Q: Whitewater is a college town. Some have noted during council meetings that the state, on behalf of its university property located within the city, makes shared revenue payments to the city in lieu of property taxes. Do you believe shared revenue payments, as opposed to property taxes that might have otherwise been paid, lessens the dollars available to the police department?

Weidl: If the university were a tax-paying entity, which it is not, it would have a tax value of about $400 million. In comparison to the total valuation of the city, that would be about an additional 40% in tax revenue. Now recognize that nonprofits, various institutions don’t pay taxes that way, so then we go to what is the MSP program or the Municipal Service Payments program, and right now, this year, the city’s designation for police and dispatch services is zero dollars. In addition, we have an agreement with the university to reimburse a portion for dispatch services, and at the university’s request, we initiated a process of working through its dissolution, and I can do a deeper dive on why that happened, but the fact is about $400,000 in monies that was coming to the city for the purposes of providing law enforcement services, not only to the community but also the university and — it’s not just the students, it’s the family members and the events and visitors, and the friends — who also engage across the city. So, I hate to sound so, am I bearish on this or bullish? I can’t remember which one is which, but on this one … I don’t think the state is doing everything it can to assist us, and that was perhaps part of the impetus by the elected officials to ask Dan and I to put a letter together to try and convey that.

Meyer: This has been a historic problem. The shared revenue has been underfunded for a long time. It’s not a new problem. And it has impacted us for a number of years.

Weidl: Full disclosure … the state of Wisconsin has enacted through the budget additional shared revenue. The city’s additional allocation is about $695,000. And then when you run that through the ledger, that would be less the amount $200,000 we were receiving from the Department of Administration for the MSP program, less, the money we were receiving for the university, so, of course, while we are grateful to the state and everyone for what they did to help with shared revenue, one of the arguments Dan and I are making is, because of our situation as a university municipality, and that relationship, and because of some of the pressures that we’re facing, we are in very much an outlier situation financially.

(Editor’s note: the city’s video recording, including audio, of the interview, begins here.) 

Q: As a college town, the city has a second, university-run police department. Do you believe there is a benefit to the community derived from having two forces that could theoretically help alleviate some of the burden, especially as it relates to proactive policing, through mutual aid?

Meyer: There’s a benefit, no doubt. We work very closely with the university police department, have great working relationships with their staff. We train together as much as we possibly can. The biggest benefit to having them here in close proximity is when we have calls that we just simply don’t have enough staff to immediately respond to. We’re constantly asking them to come and be that first person on scene. The unfortunate part, and I think what gets lost in the general understanding of how that works, is they are there as a stop gap until our staff can get there to actually investigate whatever happened in the city, and to bring it to a resolution, and to document it, and, really that’s what takes 90, 95% of the time. So while it’s a huge benefit for helping to respond quickly, it’s not as much of a benefit for us longterm, in terms of like how much time our staff is allocating to calls. So, benefit, yes, but not to the degree people might think.

Q: In past presentations to the common council, you have mentioned using technical supports, such as drones and surveillance cameras to help alleviate the problems faced by a shortage of officers. Can technology sufficiently replace a human officer? Asked another way, is the human factor important when engaging as law enforcement officers with members of the public? Can the department rely on technology and still employ a “human factor” balance?

Meyer: Well, I guess what I would say is you’re never, in my opinion, gonna be able to replace a human police officer. That’s just — it is such a complex job, and there are so many different things that you have to be able to work through.

Weidl: Agreed.

Meyer: I don’t think a computer can do that. Who knows, maybe in 50 years I’ll be proven wrong, but, really when it comes to technology that makes our job a little bit easier, it makes it more efficient.

So, to give you an example, the Flock automated license plate reader cameras that we have installed, and are expanding in the city, that is one of those resources that allows us to be efficient. And the way that happens is, I’ll give an example of a credit union robbery. So if, say, we have a vehicle description, maybe it’s a red truck. We may not know exactly when that red truck entered the city or came to the area of the credit union. So what our detectives will do in the follow-through, to try to locate that person and identify them, is we’re gonna look at all the camera footage that we have, not just our posted city cameras, but we’re, we’re also gonna canvass the area to see what private ring cameras or what other type of cameras that the general public might have, so that’s hours and hours of footage that our detectives are essentially just watching and scanning through to see if there’s anything that might match it. And once you have that, it might be a red truck, but there’s no distinguishing characteristics, no license plate, anything on it that we can really do other than say blast it on social media, and say: ‘hey, this might be our red truck. Does anybody know who this is?’ So what the automated license plate readers do is they take a picture of every vehicle that passes by the camera, they take a picture of the plate, and it allows us to search that for the last 30 days, and I can say: ‘hey, I’m looking for a red truck.’ Every single red truck that’s passed that camera in the last 30 days will come up and show me in a list. So within, you know, five minutes, our detectives have access to all that information where it would’ve taken them hours and hours and hours to get that before. I mean, days probably.

So that’s just one example of the efficiencies that we’re looking at, but replacing a human, I just don’t see that happening.

Weidl: I just want to, at the very end, add that, we very much think some of this technology is working; not only the license plate readers, but the drone technology that we’ve implemented has been successful, and I would be remiss if I didn’t extend our gratitude to the elected officials who specifically voted to add money into the budget moving forward into this year on top of what was requested in order to allow for some of this. So it’s because of them and … Dan has a plan, and it starts with doing the study, and even before that, it starts with some technological improvements, and they have been gracious enough to allow us to test some of these solutions, and we do think it’s gonna pay dividends.

Q: If the department were to receive additional funding, from a national, state or even local source, what are the first three improvements you would likely make?

Meyer: We may have different answers on this, but I can tell you, from my perspective, I think that’s kind of three-pronged. The first and foremost for me, priority-wise is adding staffing for law enforcement.

But secondly, I think this city really could use an immigration liaison officer or personation — I shouldn’t say officer — but immigration liaison position. That doesn’t necessarily have to be under the umbrella of the police department, but when we talk about the people that are coming here, many of, I mean, they’re coming with the clothes on their back. So to be able to get them hooked up with resources, we can’t do that in the police department, and we really just don’t have a person here that is designated to do that right now.

There are people that are doing it kind of out outta the goodness of their hearts out in the community, but to rely on that, I don’t think is necessarily the right answer longterm, and the other thing I think is that that type of position really could bridge the gap and trust. The people that are coming here are fleeing here for a variety of reasons, but one thing that’s pretty consistent across the board is there is a pretty healthy distrust of government law enforcement, and a lot of that’s because coming from Venezuela, coming from Nicaragua, you don’t have governments that you can trust.

So I don’t blame that, but it’s just something we have to overcome. So that’s the second part.

The third part, I think, is it would be great to have some money available for some of these nonprofits to be able to request grant funding because there’s just so much need. There are a ton of organizations that are doing great things and have been since 2022, but they need money to be able to operate.

Weidl: We’re going to study all of this stuff, and, I think I would just add that part of my role is to support what the staff are telling us they need on the ground, and this is what’s coming up, so we asked the common council to fund a very methodical — and it’s not gonna be extremely long, but it’s going to be a diligent process for looking at all of these things within context, and then maybe the priority on these might change, or the dollar amounts might change, but of these three items, or, you know, when you look at funding mechanisms to, for people who are serving the community within that, I might say transportation seems to be a large subset of an issue about something we can’t solve — helping people get — one of the subset issues is if you want to get a license, you have to go to a place in Milwaukee (which) is best suited for dealing with that, as I understand it, so how does someone who doesn’t have the license to drive or the transportation to drive themselves, or you risk, which is leading, you go back to the previous question, leading to undocumented drivers and accidents being one of the things we’re experiencing, but to answer it directly, no, I think this list is in the appropriate order of magnitude. We’re going to look at it, and we honestly hope to have real solutions that we can present to the elected officials within the next, let’s call it 180 days, but I’m hoping sooner.

Q: A letter signed by the police chief, the city manager and members of the council was recently drafted to be sent to national and state-level officials. Once the recipients receive and read these letters, what specifically are you hoping they will do?

Meyer: Well, I expect them to take it seriously and to seriously consider what can be done for the city. My hope is that that letter spurs meetings with staff from those elected officials so that we can kind of grind out what those solutions look like.

Reporter followup: So start the conversation is primarily what you’re hoping the letter will do?

Meyer: But not just the conversation; it’s gotta be action. It’s got, we, we need money, we need funding. It can’t just be a conversation about, you know, plans. It has to be —there’s gotta be delivery. That’s what we need.

Reporter followup: So you would like to see them carve out some sort of path to funding?

Meyer: Correct.

Weidl: Agreed.

Q: Over the last two years, the city has seen an influx of people we have been describing as “newcomers.” Found within that demographic are people whom we might describe as immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers and others. Many come with unique circumstances that may not affect other demographic groups within the city, such as few resources, a language barrier, and they often need to work, but are legally unable to obtain a driver’s license. Do you think federal or state resources earmarked to specifically address some of these unique situations could help alleviate stresses seen at the law enforcement level?

Meyer: I do, and I do think that that’s a conversation that the Legislature needs to have, and look at other states and what they’ve done. You know, realistically, and I think about this more pragmatically, but if people are going to make the decision to drive because it’s what’s best for their families and … if they are trying to feed their families, so no matter what they’re gonna be on the road, my preference would be to have an avenue so that they can study for, successfully pass a written test, and show that they can pass a driving test, and if they can do that, I would much prefer to have them have the ability to legally drive rather than not have an avenue for that.

Weidl: Agreed. I think the only thing I would add, or stress, is we wanna stay focused on, as you point out, these are unique subsets of larger problems, and both Dan and I recognize we will not, and the city will not, most likely, be able to address some of the larger macroeconomic and socioeconomic and demographic challenges, but what we’re simply asking for legislators at the regional, state, and federal level to consider is there are probably a few specific things that can be done to help. If we’re experiencing undocumented driving and accidents, I highly doubt it’s simply happening only in the communities where the location, the migration is happening. Those things have a spillover effect, and so we do think, again, at the risk of repeating myself, a specific subset of issues related with access to transportation, and hopefully that leads to employment, which that hopefully leads to ensuring the vehicle, so when this does eventually happen in the future, because we’re not gonna eliminate accidents, there’s a pathway to documenting and ensuring that everybody’s okay in the way that the United States and Wisconsin has become accustomed to dealing with those types of incidents, so I don’t think we’re asking for overarching or global solutions. We’re asking for things on the ground that our officers can implement, could be done at state, local, county level, that would really have an impact.

Q: If Whitewater’s police department were to receive more resources, how would you, as chief, and city manager, employ them to help police the city, and, by extension, the newcomer group? Are we thinking in terms of outreach, education, incarceration, deportation, or are there other remedies at your disposal?

Meyer: Well, first off, the outreach and education is a huge element to that, and it’s something that we don’t currently have enough time to do. We’ve done small things to, you know, really what amounts to the best we can in that realm, and that includes putting together kind of like a helpful tips guide in both English and Spanish. We’ve commissioned an attorney, an immigration attorney, to put together an immigration guide that’s posted on the city’s website. So that’s about an 80-page document both in English and Spanish. So those are things that, you know, within our means we’ve done, but we haven’t been able to really get out into the community as much as we’d like, into the churches, because I know it’s a huge opportunity to reach the people that are coming here, but to hit on the second part of that, the immigration, nothing’s gonna change with more staff. We don’t have any statutory authority to enforce immigration status. That’s not something that local law enforcement should or would be concerned with, so more staffing isn’t gonna change that. What more staffing does is allow us to serve the entire community at the level, again, that it is used to being served at. When I talk about proactive enforcement, our traffic stop numbers from 2010 through 2022, we’re roughly around 2,400 a year average. In 2023, we were on track for 1,200, and I don’t know what the final number was yet, but cutting that in half is not what this community expects and it’s not what it deserves.

Q: How important is it to law enforcement groups that other groups, besides other law enforcement agencies, become partners with the police to help bridge these unique gaps?

Meyer: I think that goes absolutely without saying, and as I mentioned previously, the nonprofits that are directly providing services when people get here, whether bedding, food, clothing, you know, we got a huge storm coming this week, I know there’s a huge push to get coats and jackets for people. That’s huge, but not only that, but the healthcare, people coming here with no insurance; they need a place to go so that they can be safe and, and healthy. So those are, I mean, just kind of basic human needs that have nothing to do with law enforcement that these people need.

Q: Is, in your opinion, the building of bridges with these other groups, perhaps through some sort of administrative function at the local, state or national level, valuable enough to law enforcement to merit funding? I think the question I’m asking here is with funding, there’s going to be so much money that can be divvied out to various things. If there were such a thing as a central organization point where one could develop economies of scale, so we don’t have 10 groups all trying to distribute water or three groups all trying to distribute mattresses, but they have a, you used the word liaison, a person who would help them take a look at what they do, what their budgets are, what their capacities are, and say, ‘okay, we’ll assign this part to you and this part to you, and maybe you can help with this.’ Does that merit funding in your mind?

Meyer: I do think it does, because right now, in lieu of that, we have a bunch of organizations, including law enforcement, that are doing their best to fill that gap, but really are not either intended or funded well enough to be able to do it successfully.

Q: Addressing some of the concerns of a distinct population, especially those brought by “newcomers,” can be challenging and can elicit politicking from those who hold opinions often developed on national party lines. Do you find this kind of rhetoric helpful in seeking remedies to local-level concerns?

Meyer: No, I think that’s a pretty resounding no, and no part of writing this letter was ever intended to be a political stunt or anything like that. Our goal is to be as apolitical as possible, and to get the resources that this city needs, and I’ll tell you, these past few days have been pretty eye-opening for me. Some of the things that have been emailed to me or voicemails left for me, they’re not helpful. The slant that’s been been put on this, it does nothing but breed division, and that’s not our goal here. Our goal is to be able to serve this community.

Weidl: Agree. Democracy’s messy. We have to acknowledge that, and as Dan pointed to some of the, and in fact, most all of the people, Dan and I would now need to understand and hear us, exist in a political environment, and they’ve gotta work through that, and it’s an election year, so we’re trying to stay focused on the problems, identifying the problems, and then, I’ve said it countless times as Colin Powell has said, leadership is problem solving.

So then trying to solve those, and we have many, many great organizations from the Community Foundation, to the Community Space. There are just countless organizations that are trying to do the best they can. I mean, our local library has a closet that is now, right now, taking winter coats, that I’ve given to, but really trying, when you talk about is this issue worth funding, and how do we deal with some of the politicking of this, stay in the arena, right? We gotta stay in our lane, which is helping our elected officials and our community express the issues that we are facing, right? I’m not trying to make this bigger. It’s big enough without making it bigger than it is, and I know that, as manager, I’m committed to helping our police department, and our staff, and the city, obtain the resources it needs so we can pivot towards these issues.

Q: What would you say to the newcomer population to make its members feel welcomed and safe in Whitewater, especially if you are awarded additional resources?

Meyer: Sure. Well, ultimately we’re a resource for people, and whether that’s the existing community or this community coming from Central America, that doesn’t change, but I will say in law enforcement, we’re kind of in the unenviable position where we do have to, we took an oath to enforce the law of the land … and this isn’t just this population, but we’re doing things that are, are not … people will not see it in their best interest sometimes. So in the example of the unlicensed drivers, I get a lot of questions: ‘well, why can’t we just decide not to enforce that law?’ No, we can’t. That’s — we just don’t have that option.

So, I kind of go back to something that I really do find to be true: we’re, generally in law enforcement, we’re dealing, 80 to 90% of our time is dealing with 5% of the population, and whether or not that is, again, our existing population or the population coming from Central America, most of our time is spent on a very small group of people, and that’s for those people, unfortunately, the contact you have with law enforcement is not always gonna be good, and that’s just what it is, but we, like I said, we swore an oath to enforce the law of the land. For the other, you know, 95% of people, I hope they see us as a resource.

Weidl: It’s a tough message that Dan does have to deliver. I try to split it into two buckets: there’s the service component, right? The immigration liaison is a real example of the service component, and then we have license plate cameras, which is a real example of the enforcement component, and we’re not talking, show me every red truck so I can find someone who I think might be driving without a license.

So to newcomers, whether they’re new students, right, new residents from another community, or to newcomers from another country, our officers have two goals, two things that they have to do at the same time, and one is support the increasing diversity of our population and be inclusive in the ways they do that, and then someone ordinarily starts a sentence with, make no mistake. So make no mistake, for the 5% that are not here to contribute or engage with us in a positive way, law enforcement’s going to be given the tools and resources to deal with that.

You will not be able to deal with one successfully without dealing with another, and I think Dan brought up real examples of investigatory time when something, when an investigation simply takes longer because of a language barrier, or we have additional investigations, because any student who leaves the campus and does anything outside those limits, it’s our investigation. So, I know I’m moving around a lot of things on the table.

There are, there’s a service component, there’s an enforcement component, and we are going to deal with both just as seriously, because, it comes up in some of your questions, we have been getting calls by longtime residents, and we have been getting calls by new residents. We’ve gotten calls from people at the university; people whose children are going to the university, asking us what we’re doing.

Q: What would you say to residents and business owners in Whitewater who worry that the community may have already become overwrought with crime to a point where it is no longer safe?

Meyer: I do believe this is still a safe community, but, that said, that shouldn’t be taken for granted, and that’s the reason that we’re doing this process and trying to get the resources, because we see the value in that proactive enforcement and not being able to deliver that is problematic. So, yes, it’s a safe community, but in order to keep it that way, we have to do the work to make sure we can do it.

Weidl: Agreed. Said a different way, if we had waited until things were out of control, we would be doing a disservice to our elected officials, our taxpayers, and our stakeholders. As soon as the data coming out of the department started indicating things were moving in another direction, we started working on it, and we spent the better part of this year putting together a strategy that’s funded a staffing study, and puts us on a pathway to referendum if we need it, also implementing technological improvements even before the most recent allowance from the elected officials through the budget process.

So these things take time, and what I would ask for is a little bit of grace from the community. It’s our obligation to bring these concerns forward. It’s our duty to also stand there and deal with the repercussions of that as we work towards solutions.

Make no mistake, to say that again. It’s our duty to inform the elected officials at a public meeting where it can be viewed by all of our taxpayers and stakeholders that we’re seeing something that isn’t normal or what we would consider normal, and to Dan’s credit, I’m thankful that they’re so direct in trying to tackle these issues and ask for what they need, because to do it, go the different direction, and wait until it was too late or try and obfuscate or hide behind other issues, would be doing a disservice to the officers that are on the street every day and the direction that our community is trying to take itself.

Meyer: To piggyback off that, if I could, I honestly, I couldn’t think of a more divisive issue to have to talk about in front of groups of people — immigration. I don’t think anybody in the city wants to have to have that conversation, but like you (he motioned to the city manager) said, we are not doing our jobs as leaders to ignore it.

Q: Over the last two years, as the community, including law enforcement, has worked to accommodate its residents using the budget and resources it has, what would you say are the most important and useful strategies that your department has been able to employ to serve and protect the full community?

Meyer: For me, it’s, first and foremost, it was the relationships that we built, and stakeholder gathering, right from the start, in early 2022, again after that week that I talked about earlier, gathering people from the law enforcement realm, county agencies, state agencies, also, all of our nonprofits that we’ve been working with, in getting this issue on the table. Our district attorney’s office, the city attorney, just getting, and this is before John was here, but getting this issue on the table, because as law enforcement, you’re kind of the leading edge of this. You’re the first to notice these changes. So we communicated what we were seeing to that group of people, and at the very least got those conversations started. So that kind of, it — it’s grown over time and that we haven’t done as much as I think we would like to do, but again, we’re talking about a lack of resources here, but really getting those stakeholders on the same page was probably number one. Number two, I would say is the technology, for a law enforcement perspective, that’s, again, when we’re talking about the strategy of this is getting ourselves better positioned for our technology. What that meant, in 2023, is we started, well, I guess this was earlier, 2022 for Propio, using that for our interpretation services. We implemented the drone program in 2023. We put a fentanyl hood in our evidence lab. We have our Flock automated license plate reader, which is still growing, and then we also created a search warrant response team. So those are all things and outfitted that team. Those are all things that are kind of centered around technology in the efficiencies that they can provide for our staff.

So three, I think is just more of a broad strategy behind all this, which again, John mentioned earlier, but what we’re looking at moving forward is doing that staffing study quarter one of 2024, and after that, potentially, having a pre-funded study for how we can bring this to referendum, if that’s the way we need to go. So kind of just strategically looking at how do we get — this is where we know we are, that’s where we know we want to get to. How do we — what steps do we take to get to that point?

Q: If no additional funds are made available through state and federal resources, what are the solutions over the next year that you feel the department can employ? Are opportunities for more local funding available? 

Weidl: So if we do not obtain additional resources in any way whatsoever, we’re likely stuck at a status quo, and it will result in additional pressure on some of the partnerships that we’ve created, and just to be able to answer, I did want to thank, there are several organizations that are involved in discussing this issue or bringing education to this issue, including the Greater Whitewater Committee, the League of Women Voters, there’s, I believe, and if I get anyone’s name wrong, I’m sorry, Whitewater Unites Lives, there’s, the school district (which) has offered their space up for a Latinx job fair and additionally host classes for people who are looking to learn English, and you don’t have to have a child enrolled in the district or be enrolled in the district to attend. So it will require further reliance from our existing partnerships that we’re already grateful for, but we know that they are also cash-strapped, like we are.

The next step is really, and I know referendum can be a scary word, but for me what it is, it’s an opportunity to directly ask the taxpayers. That’s how the system was designed. When levy limits were put in place, you live within what you’re allowed to raise your levy based on growth. Anything outside of that, you have to go directly to the taxpayers. So for me, this quite honestly represents democracy in its truest form. We’re gonna study it. We’re gonna put together what we believe is an actionable solution set. It’s gonna have a dollar amount attached to it, and much like the fire referendum, however it shakes out, I’m confident that the community is also interested in ensuring that law enforcement has the resources that it needs, and ultimately, it will be up to us to shape that ask and then ask them.

Q: Much discussion in the media of late has revolved around migrant populations and immigrants. Do you find that these population segments are the only groups causing the department’s resources to be spread thin?

Meyer: No. That is certainly not the case. That’s, it is not the migrant population that’s the only reason for our resources being spread thin. In fact, I would say what we’re seeing now, in terms of the drug problem, not just in Whitewater, but this part of the state, is worse than anything I’ve seen since I started here in 2010, and I can say that pretty unequivocally. So this is a much bigger issue than just this population coming here. It’s definitely causing resources to be expanded, but it’s not the only issue.

Weidl: Agreed.

Q: As the department prepares to embark upon a study to determine how best to restructure its resources, are law enforcement needs, as they relate to the full demographic spectrum of community members, being included within the assessment?

Meyer: I think, yes. We, when we looked at putting together that request for proposals to get that staffing study done, we (he motioned to the city manager) reviewed that together, and I think as we, we want to be, I guess leave no stone unturned and it’s a way of putting it — I think everything needs to be studied and out on the table.

Weidl: And that request for proposals was put together with some of our specific challenges in mind, but also using several other requests for proposals for police, staffing, studies that have been used recently throughout the state and from other communities, so there are specific subsets and it, it would, we shared the document and have it after this if you would like, it’s out there. It’s what went out. It is generic in a sense that it could apply to any department, with this many personnel working this many hours, in this staffing structure, up against this call volume, and then within that, we’ve asked them to help take a look at some specific subsets of our data and challenges, and things that Dan and the staff are seeing. There’s also a component where they will, before anything is locked in, they will come to a public meeting and engage the elected officials in their questions, and things they would like to see incorporated, as well as sharing draft results.

This is truly going to be a participatory process. This will involve input from staff, elected officials, a public meeting, and it will deal with our challenges within the context of how any law enforcement organization would move forward in assessing its staffing and its needs. 

If you’re there, you might as well look at the whole thing and see where you’re at. It hasn’t been done at least since 2008, and that’s, if I could go back and prove that there was any type of forethought into why staffing was added, which is probably too long ago to figure out how that all came together.

Q: Have I neglected to ask you about any points or circumstances that you feel are particularly germane to the law enforcement discussion we are having?

Meyer: I guess what I would say is I just wanna reiterate that our position here is apolitical, and we’re driving at resources to make sure that the entire community is served, and if you could take just one thing away from this is just that this is about resources; it’s not a political stunt.

Weidl: Agreed, and within that, we would seek any opportunity to meet with our regional, state, county, federal legislators in order to further educate and exchange information, and specifically try and explain why it is not only Whitewater, but there are probably — we’re one of the communities that could benefit from some of the more holistic things we’re asking for in terms of maybe a grant funding to be put together, so there are several agencies that could apply, and something like that might apply across several states or across Wisconsin. So, trying to stay focused on the problem solving.

We’re here for the other stuff too. We recognize that as public officials, we need to be open to all of the communications we’re gonna get from taxpayers and stakeholders.

What I would say is the stuff we find the most beneficial is the correspondence focused on helping us figure out how to solve the issue, how to identify the problem as it exists, and what we can do to help solve the issue, because where Dan and I would like to be probably in three to five years is in a world where, even if the migrant pattern exists, there are pathways put in place to help mitigate that so our officers can get back to what I think they’re most effective at, and what our community wants, which is to have them visible, and out on the streets, and doing that proactive police work.

That is what gives you the reputation of being a safe community, is having your police officers out there, seen, trusted, and being able to communicate effectively with our entire diverse population.