Hi All,

I won't be at the meeting on Thursday as I'll be out of town, below will be my thoughts and comments that I wish to have distributed that evening. And Mike, if possible could you send them out before hand as well.

First off, I would like to say that I would like to be involved in crafting the RFP. I don't believe it should be passed this Thursday as I feel that one it needs a lot of work. And two, that if we don't do our due diligence we will be doing a disservice to the community. 

Yes I understand that the city is concerned about the time that it will take, but if we limit ourselves to such thoughts that we will severely dampen our ability to conduct a meaningful review and will be doing a disservice to the citizens of our city. It is not our job to be expedient, our job is to be successful and if we are expedient at the pressure of the city then we've wasted our time and end up just as a PR note for the city to seem like they did something when in fact they did nothing.

With that said, I believe that we should form a subcommittee charged with making the final draft of the RFP. I do not believe that we will be able to have a strong RFP that would let us serve the city to our full capacity without a subcommittee. 

On money allocated, in digging a bit it quickly became apparent that the money allocated will not be enough. The University of Cincinnati, a smaller department, did a similar review and it cost them about $400K. From the looks of it we could probably do an adequate one for about $200K. But the current amount allocated will mean that this committee won't be able to do what it was charged to do. 

In looking over the RFP, sections 2 and 3 are what I would like to highlight. Particularly section 2.5, and this is really why I believe we need a subcommittee. 2.5 just reviews to see if the MPD has structure's in place to address the issues we are supposed to review, of course they do, but the outcomes is the problem. There is nothing in the RFP that talks about the disparities or the problems of the outcomes of our police department. There is no methodological requirement, it ends up being cops reviewing cops. There is no emphasis one the MPD outcomes, the disparities in race and mental health we know so much about. There is not standard to be compared to, there is no criteria for evaluation. 

In it's current form the RFP ends up being just a checkbox evaluation of MPD processes and systems, with nothing explicit about the disparities of the outcomes we're seeing.

But really, the bottom line comes down to this, are we going to rubber stamp something the city gave us without thorough thought and investigation for the sake of time. Or are we going to hunker down, dig in, take a look at it and deliver the best product that we can so that we serve not the city government, but the people of the city. 

We need specific goals and criteria for an MPD evaluation, we need explicit field observation requirements for MPD officers, we need explicit requirements in gaining more information from communities, we need actionable items and recommendations, the RFP must be methodological, and it must specify what is an expert because if we don't then we'll have someone that gives cities rubber stamps of approval for their policing come and review our PD.  

I can not support the RFP as it stands or even with slight modifications and I know many people in Madison will not support it either. If it does, then we have already failed in our duty to the citizens of this city. 

Thanks,

Matthew Braunginn