A group of radicals associated with Freedom Inc., an activist group funded by Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, trashed police during a Fitchburg meeting this week as violent, racist rapists who are neo-fascist colonials.
They offered no specifics, citing only various cases that did not occur in Fitchburg. One Freedom Inc. speaker, Bianca Gomez, fixated on Police Chief Alfonso Morales’ Latino heritage, saying, “We are sick and tired of you throwing self-hating people of color in our face and expecting us to be content with violence.”
Mai Yang, of Freedom Inc., said that police “kill” and “rape us” and “have no regards to human life.”
“Fighting to survive a system of oppression is not a crime,” she said. “The police harassing and assaulting people should be a crime. No cop city.”
Talk show host Dan O’Donnell reported on the meeting, but the other media outlets that did tended to sanitize the radicals’ comments.
In 2020, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that “the state has awarded contracts and grants worth $3.6 million to Freedom Inc.” That included more than $876,000 in federal money awarded by the state Department under AG Kaul, the newspaper reported, and more than $730,000 from a state agency during Evers’ administration.
One-by-one, the mostly masked Freedom Inc. activists took turns bashing police and Fitchburg Chief Algonso Morales, urging aldermen to vote down a new $35-$50 million police training facility. The department is suffering from major recruitment issues, with half of its patrol positions vacant.
In the end, the radicals got their way, as aldermen buckled under the pressure, even though the project had the support of the Dane County NAACP, which argued the facility would produce better trained officers, helping the community. The police services facility was voted down 4-3 with one alderman, Jay Allen not voting.
“While I understand that many of you are terrified,” Allen said, referring to police and stating the obvious, “I can also tell you that Fitchburg police officers are not here to kill you.”
According to Channel 3000, the Police Department is now located in the basement of City Hall. Although the activists demanded the money be shifted to lots of free stuff – like housing and food – Morales said that’s not even possible.
“We borrowed money from the city through a capital improvement budget to pay for this building. And again, they do it through loans. That money cannot be utilized for social services. And again, that’s out of my realm of expertise. But in short, it can’t be done,” Fitchburg Police Chief Alfonso Morales told Channel 3000.
Julia Arata-Fratta, Fitchburg’s mayor, said at the meeting that the new police services facility would include tactical training for the department, a shooting range and training bay. She said the city had received more than 100 emails both for and against the facility and added, “This mayor and this Council support our Police Department” and agreed the facility was needed. According to the mayor, the new building would prove safety conditions for officers.
“Our officers deserve a better place to work,” the mayor said.
However, the project’s cost grew from $35 to $50 million, which some taxpayers criticized.
One citizen, James Roberts, called it a “Taj Mahal of a Police Department,” referring to police as being similar to a “pampered spoiled rich kid” and adding that it was “fiscally irresponsible to the taxpayers of the city.”
However another resident, Rita Henricks, said that she supported the building because it’s “needed. I don’t like higher taxes, but we have to pay for what we need. We need a well-trained Police Department.’
Jim Palmer, head of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, spoke on behalf of the officers. He said the department is down 17 officers, which is nearly half of patrol staffing. He said this “threatens to impair the agency’s ability to fulfill its primary function,” which he defined as “responding for calls” for help from citizens.
According to the latest data from the Wisconsin Department of Justice, there are “fewer officers working in the state since 2008, when the state first began tracking data,” Palmer said. He said the new police facility would give the city a “competitive advantage” to recruit and retain officers, who are currently working in an “outdated, overcrowded facility.”
“It’s good for public safety and for officer safety,” he said of the facility.
Then the Freedom Inc. radicals took the stage. Some ignored time limits and requests to provide their addresses.
Jnae Thompson of Freedom Inc., said she was “disgusted.”
“Communities continue to be terrorized by the police. Police can’t prevent crime,” she blathered, calling the facility a “symbol of violence and oppression” that is “anti-black, racist and harmful.”
She accused Morales of being “incapable of respecting Black Lives Matter protesters in Milwaukee and now we have to suffer the consequences.” [Note: One of the key BLM leaders who appeared at a press conference calling for Morales’ ouster in Milwaukee is now in a Kentucky prison for pushing a juvenile to rob a drug house.]
Jewel Adams of Freedom Inc. called the building a “mansion” for police to work in.
Other Freedom Inc. speakers referred to the facility as “cop city” and accused police of being rapists. “Cops are the most harmful people to our communities. Girls are assaulted,” said one.
A speaker who self-identified as a “transgender man” complained about having to explain “my gender and legel name” when stopped by the police.
Another Freedom Inc. speaker claimed that “police use their authority to sexually assault people.” Yet another claimed, “Investing in police will mean more violence.”
Another said the facility is “going to destroy black lives, communities, homes and families,” calling it “disrespectful in the least.”
The Freedom Inc. radicals demanded that police shift the money toward housing, food insecurity and the like. One accused the city leaders of “participating and harming black and southeast Asian women and girls and LGBTQI people” if they voted to approve the facility.
Chai Moua, the executive director of Freedom Inc., said that “police are routinely called into situations where there was no violence before police arrived” and bizarrely claimed that training “escalates everything.”
Bianca Gomez of Freedom Inc. claimed, without offering any evidence, that Morales “likes to intimidate and harass residents in Milwaukee.”
“Your chief is a racist Trump supporter who upholds white supremacy, patriarchy and the criminalization of black communities. I don’t care that he is a Latino man. We can’t trust him with our children,” she claimed.
She said, “We do not need more state violence. You are choosing to aid and abet a neo-fascist colonial state. History will judge you.”
However, another speaker, not affiliated with Freedom Inc., called Morales a man of “high integrity and morals and values and his officers as well.” He urged the city to approve the facility saying Fitchburg had “delayed acting on a new police station for 10 years.”
A Freedom Inc. radical also complained that “none of this was done in Spanish.”
