TO PROTECT AND VIOLATE?

Records show rising cop complaints in Racine

As hundreds pack Racine Municipal Court to fight $968 citations from a
Halloween fund-raiser "rave" bust, records show that the city's police
department is no stranger to formal citizen complaints.

A Shepherd Express open-records request, in fact, showed a spike in
complaints against Racine police officers in 2001, the most recent year for
which totals were immediately available.

Last year, Racine citizens filed 91 complaints against local police-39
alleging officer incivility and 10 charging excessive force-according to a
summary released in response to the newspaper's request.

The department received a total of only 56 complaints in 2000, following 53
in 1999, 86 in 1998, 79 in 1997 and 62 in 1996.

Last year's 49 incivility or excessive-force complaints also were a six-year
high. The department was accused of the violations only 19 times in 2000,
following 22 such complaints in 1999, 29 in 1998, 24 in 1997 and 21 in 1996.

The department declined to release 2002 complaints to date, citing factors
such as officer and citizen confidentiality, and the potential to taint
complaint investigations. It also declined to immediately release
complaint-disposition information for 1996-2001, citing a lack of
computerized summary data.

Department Public Information Officer William Macemon insists that the 2001
total doesn't prove much about citizen-police relations in Racine, which has
taken substantial media heat for the Halloween bust. Only three people were
actually arrested at the Nov. 2 fund-raiser for a local theater, with 441
others ticketed for merely attending an alleged drug rave.

"Let's say a department gets 100 complaints but only, say, two are
substantiated," Macemon says. "Does that mean the department is doing
something wrong? No, it doesn't."

The 1996-2001 complaint totals, however, are at least "suspicious," says
Chris Ahmuty, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of
Wisconsin, which is investigating the Halloween bust.

"We want to be fair to the officers," he says. "But at least we now are
seeing some figures to go with a lot of anecdotal evidence about police
actions like the mass-ticketing."