Milwaukee Police Association Backs Trump, Activists Resist • Wisconsin Examiner

The Milwaukee Police Association (MPA) has thrown its support behind Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, following a visit Friday from Trump’s running mate JD Vance.

In a brief speech to the police association, Vance thanked Milwaukee officers for their security last month during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he said he “never felt safer.” He then focused on illegal immigrants as a cause of crime in Wisconsin and other states. “When you hear Republicans say every state is a border state, that’s not just a slogan,” Vance said, “that is a sad reflection of the reality that we have drug cartels operating as far north as they can in this country.“ He condemned “the Harris administration’s policies that make it harder for police to do their jobs,” including providing shelter and assistance to immigrants “who shouldn’t be here.”

Vance predicted a Trump victory in November and said the jobs of police officers would become “a lot easier.”

As the union and bargaining body for the Milwaukee Police Department, the MPA represents many Milwaukee officers. MPA President Alex Ayala called the union “the force behind the power,” adding that the importance of police officers “goes beyond the uniform and the badge; it’s about their dedication to serving and protecting all of us.”

Ayala, who succeeded Andrew Wagner as MPA president, said in a press release that officers in Milwaukee face several challenges, including “low bail for dangerous criminals.”

Other challenges facing the police, Ayala said, include “the need for a fair and concerted effort to prosecute offenders wanted on warrants, low officer morale in an often anti-police society, hasty decisions in incidents involving officers, and not to mention the staffing crisis that has forced officers to spend even more time away from their families.”

Ayala alleged that “some parts of the city are sometimes patrolling an entire area with just one unit — 44,000 citizens — while units are pulled into other parts of the city to handle high-priority calls that can often be more violent in nature, requiring more officers.” The MPA said that putting Trump and Vance in the White House will help address the issues the police union has raised. “Addressing these issues is not political — it is truly a matter of life and death for Milwaukee,” Ayala said in a press release.

The MPA generally expresses pro-law enforcement positions on policy and politics. Trump positioned himself as a “law-and-order president” from 2016 to 2020. When protesters took to the streets in cities across the country to protest the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Trump called on law enforcement to crack down on the demonstrations, suggested deploying the U.S. military to quell the uprising, and, according to Trump’s Secretary of Defense Mark Esperasked whether the police were allowed to shoot the demonstrators.

In the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, hundreds of Trump supporters attempted to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. After the attack, police officers who had directly witnessed the violent attack were expressed their opposition to Trump and their support for BidenBut across the country, other police officers remained loyal to the former president.

Milwaukee has been in the throes of a battle over police policy since 2020. For more than a year, the police union has been fighting a new policy passed by the Fire and Police Commission that requires video footage of officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths to be released to victims’ families within 48 hours and made public within 15 days. The MPA, along with representatives from the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team (MAIT), which investigates officer-involved incidents, argued that releasing the video footage would harm the interests of the police in those incidents.

“These activist groups are abusing key words like ‘transparency’ and ‘trust’ to push their agenda, while simultaneously dismissing factual data from previous community briefings,” said then-MPA President Andrew Wagner. said in a 2023 press release. “Instead of waiting for an investigation to be completed, their goal seems to be to control their own narrative. We have all seen false stories being spread publicly to incite riots. These false stories have destroyed cities, and when the truth finally comes out, the damage has been done.” The union later filed a lawsuit challenging the video release policy, freezing its implementation for months. As the Republican National Convention (RNC) drew to a close, the union has dropped the lawsuit Wagner called the legal effort “fruitless.”

Early 2024the MPA and other police associations worked to change state law to prevent deaths involving officers from being investigated under Wisconsin’s John Doe law. This law allows a judge to review a case, hear arguments, and decide whether there is probable cause to appoint special prosecutors in cases where a prosecutor, such as a district attorney, has declined to file charges.

During public hearingspolice unions accused families of people killed by police of retaliating against officers whose conduct had already been found to be justified. Wagner also told the Wisconsin Examiner that the families of people killed by police are not victims, and that officers ultimately need to be able to move on with their lives after deadly incidents.

Since 2020, when Wisconsin voters decided to pass a constitutional amendment known as Marsy’s Law, debates over who is the victim of a police shooting have grown more complicated. Since the introduction of Marsy’s Lawwhich creates new privacy rights for victims of crime, police departments have argued that officers who kill people in serious incidents such as shootings are victims and their identities should remain confidential.

Debates over who is a victim have divided police unions like the MPA and local activist groups like Milwaukee’s Against Racist and Political Repression. The Alliance issued a press release criticizing Vance’s comments on Friday and statements from MPA members. “One representative referred to police officers as traumatized victims when they shot people, and recounted the officer-involved shooting on July 17,” the Alliance said. “This victimization of police officers is not only a disrespectful tactic that obscures how victims of police crime and their loved ones are the real victims, it is also a misapplication of Marsy’s Law, which the MPA continues to cite as its attempts to undermine the transparency and accountability of the Milwaukee Police Department.”

The Alliance noted that Vance’s visit came exactly one month after the shooting. Sam Sharpwho was killed by Ohio police officers deployed to Milwaukee for the RNC. Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said the officers were breaking up a knife fight and saving a life by killing Sharpe. However, the man’s family said Sharpe — who lived homeless with other Milwaukee residents in King Park — was attacked by someone who began to intimidate him. Sharpe’s family said he had multiple medical conditions, limited mobility and posed no threat to officers. The Alliance stressed that Vance’s recent statements did not mention the Sharpe shooting. However, the Alliance said in a press release, “Vance and the MPA have made it clear that they will do everything they can to ignore these demands and to resist those who are demanding transparency and accountability from law enforcement.”

The Alliance also said that while Vance touted public safety as a key part of his platform, “his comments were simply fear-mongering tactics to continue attacking immigrants and justifying police crimes.” The activist group added, “Vance continually deflected questions about the budget problems police departments are facing and crime to make inane and inflammatory comments against immigrants.”

“Milwaukee residents and organizations like ours also know that these words mean we must continue to organize to prioritize our communities and hold police accountable for their crimes,” the Alliance said.