Police shootings outpace other states
Wisconsin had 24 fatal incidents; Minnesota had 9
“It’s about finding out what happened because you surely do not want that to happen again.”
State Sen. Van Wanggaard R-Racine and a retired police officer
Wisconsin police shot and killed nearly three times more people in 2017 than their law enforcement peers in Minnesota, but it’s a mystery why one state’s deaths rose while the other’s fell.
As of Thursday, officers in Wisconsin had fatally shot 24 people and those in Minnesota had killed nine, according to records reviewed by USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.
As the number of fatal shootings in Wisconsin has ticked up — more than double from two years ago — advocates for safer policing have turned the conversation toward trying to better understand the reasons for these shootings and how to reverse the trend.
“It’s about finding out what happened because you surely do not want that to happen again,” said state Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), a retired police officer who is considering whether Wisconsin should investigate fatal police shootings the same way federal authorities review deadly plane crashes.
Minnesota’s nine fatal shootings by police this year are down from 13 last year, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension figures indicate. The agency’s tally doesn’t include a fatal shooting by an off-duty police officer of a man stabbing people in a St. Cloud mall last year.
In 2016, Wisconsin law enforcement officers fatally shot 17 people in the state, according to a tally compiled by The Washington Post. In 2015, the number was 11.
This year, Wisconsin officers have killed 4.71 people for every 1 million people in the state, while Minnesota’s rate was 1.65, according to the Post’s database. Wisconsin’s 24 deaths also were higher than those in Illinois (20), Iowa (5) and Michigan (14).
Nationwide, Wisconsin is tied with Alabama for the 12th most fatal shootings in 2017, according to the Post.
One noteworthy statistic is that police in both Wisconsin and Minnesota appear to have been involved in nearly the same number of overall shootings in 2015 and 2016. More of the incidents resulted in deaths in Wisconsin, even though police in all states are trained to shoot to kill, not to maim.
But experts who study policing said they need more information — both on officers’ use of force generally and additional years’ worth of data — to determine what accounts for the difference between the states. Factors to consider include potential differences in police training and policies to civilians’ access to guns and the distance between the locations of the shootings and a hospital.
Minnesota’s experience with fatal police shootings provides an interesting comparison because of the states’ similarities, including in population, said Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, a statewide police union. Wisconsin has about 5.79 million residents and Minnesota about 5.56 million, according to Census Bureau estimates.
Palmer noted that FBI data indicate Wisconsin has a higher violent crime rate than Minnesota and its police officers are assaulted at a higher rate than those in Minnesota. A caveat is that the FBI figures aren’t regarded as complete.
“Between us and Minnesota, given all the similarities, those are some distinctions that make a difference and they may help explain why we’re seeing … the officer-involved shooting numbers that we are,” Palmer said.
Dave Metusalem, executive director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, said he wasn’t familiar with anything specifically Wisconsin was doing differently from Minnesota.
A suspect’s violent criminal past, untreated mental health issues and addiction problems are often present in police shootings, he said. In recent years it seems more common for officers to encounter situations with people in the midst of a mental health crisis that’s manifesting itself in violent ways, Metusalem said.
Use-of-force data lacking
Information is lacking when it comes to police use of force generally, which is a huge obstacle to understanding the issue and making any changes, said Seth Stoughton, an assistant law professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law whose work focuses on the regulation of police.
Fatal and nonfatal police shootings are a small part of police interactions, he said. Instead, lower-level uses of force, such as taking people to the ground or kicking them, are a better measure of how police officers use their authority. But that’s another area where good information is lacking.
“To some extent when we focus on these police shootings, it’s kind of like focusing on the Challenger space shuttle exploding,” Stoughton said. “It’s a major problem, it’s a major incident and it draws a lot of attention — and it should draw a lot of attention — but there may be a lot more detail that can help us understand what’s going on if we look beyond police shootings.”
The plane crash model
A conversation has begun in Wisconsin about beginning to look at these cases in a manner similar to plane crashes or medical mistakes.
In an approach similar to the one used by the National Transportation Safety Board, an external team of trained investigators would look not for fault or criminal liability, but rather at the circumstances of the incident to find lessons that can be learned, Wanggaard said. The team could then make recommendations for best practices and training, and explain other relevant factors. Ultimately, a report would be published for the public to view.
Such a review would not replace or supersede investigations already conducted by an outside law enforcement agency, as required by state law, he said.
Wanggaard said there are still questions to address before the state would implement such a model, but the senator said he might propose that the issue be studied by the Wisconsin Legislative Council.