MADISON, Wis. — On Tuesday, the Madison city council will take up for a second time an ordinance banning tear gas in the city — a proposal that the sponsoring alder says likely won’t get the needed votes, but is continuing a conversation begun from the protests in 2020.
“The difference between what happened before and what’s happening now is we’re starting a conversation that will continue and hopefully if not change our ordinance, change Madison police department’s standard operating procedures,” alder Juliana Bennett said in an interview.
Police departments throughout the county and state have lodged their opposition to the measure, and Madison police chief Shon Barnes believes a ban would come with its own set of new dangers.
“Do you want officers to go hands-on with people who are holding fire? Do you want officers to have to use other results? I don’t want that at all,” he said.
The latest version of the ordinance proposal includes language that would provide exceptions for “urgent and imminent physical harm” to either the public or law enforcement. It would also apply to other police departments responding to an MPD call for mutual aid within its jurisdiction. When used within its exceptions, the ordinance would require a report on its use to the police civilian oversight board and the public safety review committee within 30 days.
In a report released in November 2021 commissioned to study MPD’s response to the 2020 protests, the Quattrone Center found issues with MPD’s response and recommended using tear gas cautiously in the future for crowd dispersal. MPD has adopted or intends to adopt with council approval the 69 recommendations that came out of that report, including using small units to target troublemakers within crowd situations.
“I’m from the South and I’ve seen police officers that certainly doesn’t look like justice,” Barnes said. “I’m not a fan of tear gas at all, just knowing some of the history of policing and how we have managed crowds in the past.”
While Barnes says tear gas going forward is only a last resort option (it hasn’t been used during his tenure, he said), Bennett points out that the ordinance is designed to limit what future police chiefs could choose to do as well.
“Barnes can say that this is a last resort; however, MPD’s standard operating procedures does not reflect that it’s a last resort,” Bennett said.
Nationwide, bans on tear gas at police departments haven’t picked up much support. Very recently, Alameda County in California banned some crowd control munitions; in 2020, a similar effort to ban rubber bullets in San Jose went nowhere. The Oregon state legislature this year revised when and how law enforcement in the state can use tear gas and other crowd control mechanisms; Portland’s mayor had flatly banned it after the summer of 2020.
Closer to home, the Milwaukee Police Department banned tear gas for the Democratic National Convention in 2020 that would ultimately go virtual; more than 100 police agencies in Wisconsin pulled out of their agreements for the event as a result.
Ban advocates say crowd control shouldn’t get to that point to begin with — and Bennett pointed to property damage and injuries at the last two Mifflin Block parties, where video footage shows students damaging cars and police officers playing games with students, as examples of how it hasn’t been used for unruly crowds in the past.
“This ordinance is about trust that the MPD has lost with our community,” she said.
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