{"id":4904,"date":"2023-08-13T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2023-08-13T12:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=4904"},"modified":"2023-08-13T12:10:30","modified_gmt":"2023-08-13T12:10:30","slug":"milwaukee-police-calls-medical-runs-skyrocket-proactivity-plummets-part-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=4904","title":{"rendered":"Milwaukee Police Calls, Medical Runs Skyrocket, Proactivity Plummets [PART 9]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/milwaukee-police-calls-medical-runs\/<\/a><\/p>\n

PART NINE IN A 10-PART SERIES. Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Milwaukee County\u2019s criminal justice system has broken down at almost all levels. Although some of this can be attributed to the pandemic, all of it can not. Local officials\u2019 questionable policy decisions and their failure to develop strategies to restore effectiveness also play a role, and it\u2019s imperiling public safety.
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PROBLEM #9: The number of medical runs tripled in 2022, exhausting hours of officers\u2019 time as they wait for people to receive care at hospitals. Highest-priority calls rose 24% from 2018 to 2022. Both of these issues stressed officers\u2019 workload. Although dispatched calls for service rose 7% from 2018 to 2022, proactive policing activities declined 59%.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"milwaukee<\/p>\n

Medical runs are when officers take arrested people to the hospital for treatment or observation. Police officials blame the increase in med runs on jail overcrowding issues, causing arrestees to be held longer at district stations. They blame the jail overcrowding on staff shortages and increases in the time inmates stay in the jail, in part because Tony Evers\u2019 Department of Corrections restricted prison admissions due to COVID-19. The length of stay in the jail was 44% higher in 2022 than before the pandemic.
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There are also few Milwaukee police officers, an issue we will explore in part 10.<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE SERIES:\u00a0 <\/strong>We have taken the lead in exploring the problems in Milwaukee County\u2019s Criminal Justice system, breaking stories on Milwaukee police staffing declines<\/a> (which started years ago), the DA\u2019s high non-prosecution rate and new reliance on summonses<\/a>, the ACLU Collins Agreement\u2019s deleterious effect on proactive policing<\/a>, new jail and police policies restricting bookings<\/a> and arrests, and the massive court backlogs<\/a>, which leave defendants on the streets longer to re-offend and which provoke constitutional concerns<\/a>. Milwaukee is at a crisis point, with record homicide numbers and a severe reckless driving crisis.
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Now, a new August 2023 report<\/a> from the Wisconsin Policy Forum has examined Milwaukee County\u2019s Criminal Justice System in great detail, providing fresh data from 2018 (before the pandemic) to 2022. The quotes and data in the opening section come from this report. We are excerpting some of the key statistical findings in a 10-part series to further understanding of the problem. You can\u2019t formulate solutions if you don\u2019t understand the problem\u2019s scope. The few news articles that emerged only superficially skimmed over the report\u2019s findings. <\/em><\/p>\n

Although the report deals with the context of the pandemic, it also makes it clear that, in many respects, trends imperiling public safety started before it or have continued, even escalating in some cases, in 2022, after its height. In other words, you can\u2019t blame everything on the pandemic. The report also indicates that, in a number of ways, problems that escalated during the pandemic have not been resolved by officials even as late as 2022.
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\nPROBLEM #9<\/strong><\/p>\n

The report authors also interviewed officials to try to dig into why arrests have dropped so much at the police level.<\/p>\n

\u201cMPD officials suggest that a likely explanation for the decline in arrests is the increased workload for officers caused by growing
\ncalls for service and increased \u2018medical runs\u2019 to transport individuals detained in district stations to hospitals or physicians to attend to their medical needs,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey say increased work volumes in these two areas preclude officers from spending as much time on the types of proactive policing activities that often produce arrests,\u201d it says The report found:<\/p>\n