Wisconsin could see 15 possible police reform laws this year

(The Center Square) – Police reform in Wisconsin is set to take its next big step this week.

The Assembly’s Committee on Government Accountability and Oversight will hear four police reform proposals Tuesday afternoon.

All four are from Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine.

“These are not feel-good bills,” Wanggaard told The Center Square on Monday. “These are bills that will actually result in positive changes. They will move the needle in the positive direction.”

Wanggaard’s four plans would:

Require police departments to track and report data to the state.Require an update for use of force policies.Make police data more open to the public.Clarify the rules for chokeholds in police departments across the state.

“Each one of these didn’t just happen because of an incident somewhere else,” Wanggaard explained. “We’ve been working on these bills, in some cases, for years.”

The four plans all passed the Wisconsin Senate last week, most of them with Democratic votes as well.

But Wanggaard’s proposals are just part of a wide-reaching police reform movement at the Capitol in Madison.

The Wisconsin Assembly is working on its own package of reforms that came from a year’s worth of hearings by the Speaker’s Task Force On Racial Disparities.

“The task force identified seven or eight areas that they brought forward,” Wanggaard said. “Those will be passed in the Assembly, they will then send them to us, and we will pass them in the Senate.”

Wanggaard said Wisconsin could have 15 new police reform laws on the books by the end of the summer, provided Gov. Evers signs them.

“At the beginning of this process I spent about an hour-and-a-half or two hours on the phone with the governor,” Wanggaard explained. “A little more than half of what he wanted, we were already working on. But there are some things that he wanted that just weren’t going to happen.”

Wanggarrd says chief among those was a ban on no-knock warrants in the state.

The Assembly committee hearing is Tuesday at 1 p.m. If passed in committee, Wanggaard’s legislation would then head to the full Assembly for a vote.

Disclaimer: This content is distributed by The Center Square