Kirk Gunderson of Onalaska, Wis., hanged himself in the La Crosse County jail in 2005, when he was 17. Photo courtesy of Vicky Gunderson

By Julie Strupp
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Two days after Christmas 2005, Kirk Gunderson hanged himself with a sheet looped around a smoke detector in his solitary confinement cell in the La Crosse County Jail.

He was 17.

He formed letters out of moistened, rolled up toilet paper to spell the message: “I’m sorry 143 family.” The number is slang for “I love you” — one letter in I, four letters in love, and three letters in you.

Gunderson was in adult jail for stabbing his father and brother. Although he faced attempted murder charges, his family says what he really needed was mental health services — which he could have received in the juvenile justice system — to deal with the effects of head injuries from sports and Oxycontin abuse.

Gunderson’s death transformed his parents into activists. Their goal: Abolish a 1996 Wisconsin law that requires all 17-year-old offenders be treated as adults.

Vicky Gunderson became involved in juvenile justice issues after the 2005 suicide of her 17-year-old son, Kirk, while he was in the La Crosse County jail. Erik Daily/La Crosse Tribune

“We live with this every single day, that our son died alone, in hell,” says Vicky Gunderson, Kirk’s mother. “It just doesn’t go away.”

Wisconsin is one of 13 states that automatically place 17-year-olds in the adult criminal justice system. In the past few years, nearly one-third of states have passed laws to keep more young offenders in the juvenile justice system. But not Wisconsin.

In three previous legislative sessions, state Rep. Fred Kessler, D-Milwaukee, has introduced a bill that would place 17-year-olds back in juvenile court. He plans to offer it again. Kessler, a former Milwaukee juvenile court judge, says the existing law is too harsh for most young offenders.

“I just feel the adult consequences were devastating to them,” says Kessler, whose bill would still allow juveniles in serious cases to be tried in adult court.

Graphs: Arrests, Crime, Recidivism

(click to enlarge)
Juvenile arrests in Wisconsin, 2000 – 2010

Source: "The State of Juvenile Justice in Wisconsin," October 2011, Wisconsin Council on Children and Families

Arrests of 17-year-olds in Wisconsin by crime

Source: "Juvenile Arrests in Wisconsin 2010," Office of Justice Assistance

Recidivism rates in Wisconsin by age group, 2002

Source: 2008 Legislative Audit Bureau report, "17 year old offenders in the adult criminal justice system," p. 7.

State Rep. Fred Kessler, D-Milwaukee, is introducing legislation that would put 17-year-olds back in the juvenile justice system.

About 250,000 17-year-olds have been arrested since Wisconsin’s 1996 law was put in place, according to an October study by the nonprofit Wisconsin Council on Children and Families. About 75,000 of them spent some time in adult jail, the study found.

Some defend Wisconsin’s law, saying the threat of an adult sentence deters young people from breaking the law, and treating them sternly may dissuade them from re-offending.

“I don’t think we are good at making people understand there are consequences to their crimes,” says Rep. Robin Vos, R-Burlington, an outspoken supporter of keeping 17-year-olds in the adult system. “If you commit a crime, you deserve the consequences.”

Vos says the law has been working well for the past 15 years. Ultimately, any age set for automatic consideration as an adult for criminal prosecution will be arbitrary, he says, and 17 is a good place to draw that line.

State Rep. Robin Vos, R-Burlington, says the state law that treats 17-year-olds as adults in the criminal justice system deters crime.

“What concerns me is making sure the victim gets justice,” Vos says. “We coddled (17-year-olds) in the past, and that didn’t work. If we treat them like an adult, hopefully they won’t offend.”

Many researchers disagree, citing a growing body of neurological and statistical evidence suggesting Wisconsin’s policy is counterproductive. But they and other advocates are finding themselves stymied, in part because of concerns over cost.

The juvenile system offers more rehabilitative services than the adult system, which makes it more costly. The Wisconsin County Human Service Association, the group representing local human services departments, estimates putting 17-year-olds back in the juvenile system would collectively cost the state’s 72 counties an additional $75 million a year.

John Reinemann, legislative director for the Wisconsin Counties Association, says if the law changes, the state would need to provide the counties more funding.

“We support the restoration of 17-year-olds to the juvenile system, but our increase in cost has to be met,” says Reinemann, whose group represents the interests of Wisconsin counties. “The only other way we could get funds would be to economize other programs. … I just don’t think there is a lot of fat left to cut.”

A blunt tool

Under Wisconsin law, 17-year-olds cannot vote, buy cigarettes or drink alcohol. They are considered juveniles in almost every way — except when they commit a crime.

The juvenile and adult systems are very different: The former is geared more toward changing future behavior through treatment and programming; the latter focuses on punishment along with rehabilitation.

Jim Moeser is a former Dane County juvenile court administrator who now is deputy director of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, which backs changes in the law. Moeser says juvenile court provides more services to help young people change and opportunities for family involvement. Sentences are shorter and more individualized.

Some call the policy of treating all 17-year-olds as adults a blunt tool, noting Wisconsin law already allows anyone 10 and older — one of the lowest age limits in the nation — to be tried in adult court if they commit certain crimes, such as first-degree homicide.

The law also means that 17-year-olds, like Gunderson, can be held in adult jails before they are convicted, potentially putting young people in with hardened adult criminals. Critics say these young offenders should be held in juvenile institutions.

Racine County District Attorney Mike Nieskes supports the state law that treats 17-year-olds as adults in the criminal justice system. Courtesy of Pete Selkowe

But Racine County District Attorney Michael Nieskes argues Wisconsin’s juvenile system is designed for younger teenagers and children, not 17-year-olds. He sees age 17 as a “tipping point” between being an adult and being a child.

Nonetheless, the policy of automatically trying minors in adult court is declining across the United States as new evidence emerges challenging these “tough on crime” approaches.

Recent studies show that minors in adult facilities have higher rates of recidivism — and re-offend in more serious ways — than comparable offenders in the juvenile system. While proponents argue the tough policy deters young people from committing crimes, deterrence is hard to prove, and research is inconclusive.

And recent neurological evidence suggests young people simply don’t have the same capacity to appreciate the consequences of their actions, casting further doubt on the fairness of treating youthful offenders the same as adults.

During the past five years, 15 states have altered their statutes to raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction, to remove young offenders from adult jails and prisons and to change transfer laws to keep more minors in juvenile court, according to the Campaign for Youth Justice, a group that favors keeping young people in the juvenile justice system.

In the Midwest, Illinois and Indiana have changed laws to keep more juveniles out of adult court, and several more states are contemplating changes, the group says.

Super predators?

Throughout most of American history, juvenile offenders have been treated differently than adults, with increasing emphasis on rehabilitation. But a jump in juvenile crime, beginning in the late 1980s and peaking in 1994, sparked nationwide fears about a generation of uniquely violent “super predator” youth.

The Central Park jogger case of 1989 highlighted the prevailing fears: Five young men, ages 14 to 16, were charged with beating and raping a 28-year-old woman. In 2002, their convictions were overturned after it was discovered they had falsely confessed to the crime and real perpetrator was identified. But by then, many states had toughened their juvenile codes to make it easier to try juveniles as adults.

Wisconsin’s tough-on-juveniles approach was sparked in 1991 when an 11-year-old boy shot and killed a 21-year-old man in Racine. He couldn’t be charged in adult court because of his age. The incident spurred Racine County Circuit Judge Dennis Barry, now deceased, to help revise the juvenile justice code, which he and others felt didn’t adequately protect victims and the public.

A law moving jurisdiction of 17-year-olds to adult court was passed by the state Legislature and took effect in 1996.

Since then, there has been a steady decrease in juvenile crime across the United States and in Wisconsin. The worries about a generation of “super predators” never came to fruition.

Immature brains

Questions about the fairness of treating youthful offenders as adults have been driven in large part by growing knowledge about how the brain develops.

It is now widely accepted that most young adults are still developing their judgment, planning and decision-making capabilities even into their early 20s.

The brain of a 17-year-old is developmentally much different from that of a 25-year-old, says Michael Caldwell, a researcher at the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center in Madison, a secured state mental health clinic for young male offenders.

This means young people are more impulsive than adults, Caldwell says.  Their reckless behavior tends to diminish as their brains mature, he says.

The crimes Wisconsin juveniles commit are typically nonviolent, such as curfew or liquor violations. Only 2 percent of juvenile arrests in 2010 were for violent crimes, according to a recent study by the state Office of Justice Assistance.

In the 2005 Roper v. Simmons decision, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged the new science showing a fundamental difference between juvenile and adult brains. The 5-4 ruling held that imposing the death penalty on offenders who were under 18 when they committed their crime is unconstitutional.

But defenders of Wisconsin’s law argue that 17-year-olds can still tell right from wrong and should be held accountable in the same way as older adults.

“I’ve read all those brain development studies, but they say a brain doesn’t mature until 25,” says prosecutor Nieskes. “We need to choose an age, and I think 17 works well. … 17 is old enough for them to pay the full consequences of their actions.”

Is adult prison right for kids?

Studies also show that young people are at a much greater risk of victimization and death in adult jails and prisons than in juvenile facilities.

While awaiting trial on charges of attempted homicide, Kirk Gunderson was jailed with older inmates. His parents say their son sought their help after an adult offender exposed himself to the boy, saying, “I’m going to have you.” They say jail authorities, when told of this threat, responded by limiting Gunderson’s movements. He couldn’t go to church anymore.

At 17, Kirk Gunderson drew these two self-portraits in jail. He made the one on the left during the summer of 2005, when he was first incarcerated, and the one on the right about a week before he took his own life that December. Courtesy of Vicky Gunderson

Vicky Gunderson says her son was taking Prozac, an antidepressant, but needed further mental health help. Her son agreed to plead to much lesser charges, and was probably on track to be released soon. But days later, he got caught with materials to give himself a tattoo. His punishment — being placed in solitary — was more than he could handle, Gunderson says.

Juveniles are 19 times more likely to commit suicide in jail than young people in the general population, and 36 times more likely to kill themselves in an adult jail than in a juvenile detention facility, according to a 2007 study from the Campaign for Youth Justice, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

There’s also a significant racial dynamic. A Wisconsin Council on Children and Families study that tracked 1,000 Wisconsin 17-year-olds charged over six years found young blacks were much more likely to be incarcerated than whites. Eighty percent were sent to jail or prison compared to 46 percent of young whites.

Pam Oliver, a sociology professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies incarceration, says Wisconsin has one of the worst racial disparities in the nation, both at adult and juvenile levels. Young black people also typically enter prison at a younger age, magnifying the impact on this group, she says.

In 2008, Oliver served on then-Gov. Jim Doyle’s Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System. It recommended returning 17-year-olds to juvenile court, concluding that the current policy was exacerbating the “school to prison pipeline” for blacks.

But nothing changed — for reasons that Oliver believes has less to do with a sober assessment of public policy than a concern about costs.

“You’d like the system to try to rehabilitate young people and not throw them away,” she says. “Many people don’t think it’s a good idea to treat 17-year-olds as adults. Honestly, it saves the state a lot of money. The money is what’s really going on.”

Obstacles to change

The juvenile system is significantly more expensive than the corrections system for adults. While it costs about $50 per day to house a jail inmate and about $87 per day to house a state prison inmate, the daily cost in juvenile facilities ranges from $140 to $215, a fiscal analysis from the Department of Corrections shows.

Dane County Juvenile Court Administrator John Bauman says returning 17-year-olds to juvenile court  would add a financial burden to the juvenile system. Bauman believes Wisconsin should raise the age to 18, but he says cost has been the main deterrent.

“It really boils down to how are we going to do this without seriously jeopardizing the rest of the system,” Bauman says.

Proponents counter that the move would eventually pay for itself — less recidivism means lower societal and prison costs.

“Long range, you save money — there’s no question,” says Sister Esther Heffernan, a sociology professor at Edgewood College in Madison who researches corrections policies.

Heffernan notes Wisconsin’s juvenile facilities used to be overcrowded. But since 2000, the rate of juvenile arrests is down 37 percent, according to a 2011 Wisconsin Council on Children and Families study. In fact, three state juvenile correctional institutions were consolidated into one site in July.

Kessler says bipartisan support for his bill is growing. However, given the dominant mood of the Legislature to be tough on crime and to reign in spending, “I think this is going to be a tough sell in this climate right now,” Kessler admits.

Vicky and Kermit Gunderson of Onalaska, Wis., with their son Jay at their second annual awareness run in October 2011. The family organized the hometown event in memory of Kirk. Courtesy of Vicky Gunderson

Vicky Gunderson vows to keep fighting. After her son Kirk died, she and her husband Kermit visited his solitary cell. They lobbied to remove the smoke detectors the boy had used to hang himself.

In fall 2006, the detectors were removed.

The Gundersons say they will continue to push for Wisconsin to change its law that automatically treats 17-year-olds as adult criminals. They’ve spoken to Congress, given interviews, written letters to the editor and recently held the second annual run to raise awareness of the issue in their son’s name.

“He’s still my son,” she says. ”You just don’t give up on your kids, no matter what.”

Julie Strupp can be reached at jstrupp@wisconsinwatch.org.

The nonprofit and nonpartisan Center (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Ricardo Lisade waits to be fingerprinted on a bus at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti the morning of his arrival on Sep. 13, 2011. Jacob Kushner/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

By Jacob Kushner

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The United States this year has deported more than 250 Haitians, half of whom were jailed without charges in facilities so filthy they pose life-threatening health risks.

Some Haitians faced lengthy confinement in U.S. immigration facilities before the deportations. Officials held Chicago resident Ricardo Lisade in a Kenosha, Wis. detention center for five months before deporting him, and Haitian authorities then placed him on probation without charging him with a crime.

An investigation by the nonprofit Florida Center for Investigative Reporting found evidence that the Obama administration has not followed its own policy of seeking alternatives to deportation when there are serious medical and humanitarian concerns.

One deportee who arrived in April suffered from asthma, hypertension, diabetes, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and head trauma, among other ailments. That same month, the U.S. government deported a mentally ill immigrant whose psychiatric medications were lost by Haitian authorities after his first day in jail.

“What’s distinct about the situation in Haiti is that, unlike in other countries, people are immediately jailed, and the conditions in Haitian jails are condemned universally for violating human rights,” said Rebecca Sharpless, director of the University of Miami Law School Immigration Clinic, which helps immigrants appeal deportation orders.

The health risks for incarcerated deportees have increased significantly since October 2010, the beginning of a cholera outbreak that has infected more than 470,000 people and killed 6,500, including some prisoners.

International health experts say deportees in Haiti’s jails are at risk of contracting cholera, which can spread rapidly in overcrowded cells that lack clean water, soap and waste disposal. Once exposed to cholera, victims can die in less than 24 hours. One deportee has already died — two days after he was released from detention in a Haitian jail cell where he became stricken with cholera-like symptoms.

Haitian authorities told FCIR that they place approximately half of all deportees in jails to monitor what they term “serious criminals” — a largely arbitrary determination.

These detentions, which have lasted as long as 11 days, have occurred although the Haitian constitution bans the detention of anyone for more than 48 hours without appearing before a judge, and a United Nations treaty states that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.”

‘Crisis has not gone away’

One day after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake destroyed much of Haiti’s capital, the U.S. government suspended deportations. Since then, the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an independent initiative of the Organization of American States mandated to promote and protect human rights among member nations, have lobbied countries against deportations due to worsening conditions in Haiti.

“The crisis has not gone away,” said Michel Forst, the U.N. independent expert on human rights, appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council to examine and report on conditions in Haiti. “The most important help the international community can give to Haiti is to suspend the forced return of Haitians.”

Still, the Department of Homeland Security resumed deportations to Haiti on Jan. 20 —the same day the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning urging Americans to avoid Haiti due to health risks and lawlessness.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said deportations to Haiti resumed because a U.S. Supreme Court decision required detainees to be released after 180 days. That requirement, they said, would have placed“some detained Haitian nationals with significant criminal records into U.S. communities, which in turn poses a significant threat to the American public.”

But FCIR found at least three deportees arriving in August and September were convicted of non-violent drug offenses, and three-quarters of all Haitian deportees in recent years had no criminal convictions at all, according to immigration records.

“The hypocrisy is stunning,” Sharpless said. “U.S. officials have known for a long time that it’s dangerous to send people back to jail in Haiti. They also knew that the cholera outbreak raised the stakes even higher because cholera and Haitian jails are a deadly combination. Yet they decided to resume deportations anyway.”

Held in Wisconsin

When U.S. immigration officials finally placed Chicago immigrant Lisade on a deportation flight to Haiti in September, he was eager to be released after spending most of the previous 17 months in immigration detention centers in Wisconsin, Illinois and Kentucky.

Lisade, 33, who was brought to the United States from Haiti at age 8 as a legal resident, amassed a criminal record in the Midwest that included a 1994 conviction for armed robbery and home invasion, a 1999 residential burglary, and a 2007 domestic violence conviction.

Ricardo Lisade, 33, was deported to Haiti in September after spending 17 months in and out of immigration detention centers in Wisconsin and other states. Jacob Kushner/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

But in March 2010, after completing a prison sentence, Lisade was surprised that instead of being allowed to return to his family in Chicago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials took him into custody. He was confined in a section of Kenosha County Jail reserved for ICE detainees, from which an immigration judge ordered Lisade deported to Haiti two months later.

Because the U.S. had temporarily stopped deporting people to Haiti due to the conditions after the January 2010 earthquake, Lisade spent the next five months in that Kenosha jail.

Immigration authorities released Lisade on extended supervision in August 2010 because a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling forbids ICE from detaining immigrants with final orders of removal for more than six months in most cases.

In December 2010, Lisade was taken back into custody on the premise that his deportation to Haiti was imminent. On Jan. 20, ICE sent the first flight of deportees to Haiti since the earthquake. But Lisade would spend an additional eight and a half months in a Kentucky immigration center before his time came.

Key details of his case were confirmed for this report by an attorney with the nonprofit National Immigrant Justice Center in Illinois.

An unexpected homecoming

After officials finally deported Lisade to Haiti on Sept. 13, he was surprised when Haitian authorities placed him on 18 months of probation — even though he was not charged with a crime in Haiti. The probation requires Lisade to report weekly to a judicial police station to sign his name, and forbids him from obtaining a passport, visa or other travel documents until he successfully completes the period.

A flight carrying deportees from a Louisiana detention center arrives at Toussaint Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince on Sept. 13, 2011. Jacob Kushner/Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Some deportees have no other form of identification in Haiti, meaning they cannot receive wire transfers from their family in the United States and risk being apprehended by Haitian police who routinely stop people and demand such identification. At the time he was interviewed, Lisade said he did not have any Haitian ID.

“I haven’t been on probation since I was a juvenile,” Lisade said the morning he arrived at the airport in Port-au-Prince. “Now I have to do another probation for a country where I never committed a crime? A country I left when I was eight years old? That doesn’t make no sense at all.”

The day of Lisade’s arrival, another deportee, longtime Chicago resident Samuel Durand, learned he would be immediately placed in “administrative detention” — meaning a Port-au-Prince jail.

Durand said he moved to the United States in 1996 with his mother and five siblings to join their father, a U.S. citizen and longtime Chicago cab driver. He grew up playing soccer in the Oak Park neighborhood West of Chicago and graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School in 1999.

WATCH VIDEO: Samuel Durand’s story

On Dec. 14, 2006, Durand violently confronted a man he says scratched his car, and he was arrested later that day – one of about 20 times he was arrested in the United States, court records show.

Durand eventually was convicted of robbery, battery and marijuana manufacturing and delivery, according to court records. He was sentenced to four years in prison and served two before being ordered deported to Haiti due to his felony conviction and because his 10-year legal residence had expired.

“It is a shock to me because the country is not functioning … and the U.S. government is still sending people here,” Durand said.

But the bigger shock came when he arrived in Haiti expecting freedom, only to be placed in a 20-by-10 foot cell along with three other deportees and various Haitian prisoners.

“The holding cell holding like 15, 17 people in that little cell,” Durand said. “Ain’t nowhere to sleep, people sleeping on top of other people—the jail condition is not good at all.”

Dr. John May, president of Health Through Walls, a North Miami nonprofit organization that works to improve jail conditions in foreign nations, travels frequently to Haiti. He visited the facility where Durand was held one week before his arrival.

“This is what we see everywhere,” May said. “Tuberculosis would thrive in this environment, certainly skin conditions like scabies, which we see often. And most seriously and concerning in Haiti recently is cholera, and it would just take one person with cholera here and it would quickly spread to the others.”

Because there is no waste disposal, a shower stall and toilet fill with garbage and urine in the Pettionville jail cell on a day when five deportees were held there. Jacob Kushner/Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Cholera is spread primarily through feces and can result in severe vomiting and diarrhea. “Any situation that doesn’t have a lot of good hygiene is a great setting for the spread of cholera, which is what we have here,” May said.

In January, 34-year-old deportee Wildrick Guerrier, whose Florida criminal record included convictions for battery and possession of a firearm, died from what doctors described as cholera-like symptoms two days after being released from the holding cell where he became ill — one of the same cells where deportees are incarcerated today.

When asked if detaining deportees in such conditions poses life-threatening health risks, Chairman of Haiti’s Commission in Charge of Deportees Pierre Wilner Casseus said only that deportees exhibiting symptoms of illness are released immediately.

“We don’t give them any medicine,” Casseus said, adding that the International Organization for Migration, which works to improve living conditions in Haiti, attends to the health needs of jailed deportees. But an IOM spokesperson said Haitian officials do not allow access to the deportees once they are in jail.

Medical care denied

Sometimes, jailhouse conditions in Haiti complicate existing medical problems, as they did for Jeff Dorne, a longtime Boston resident from Haiti diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Dorne served six years in prison for a 2003 rape conviction in New Jersey, after which he was ordered deported by an immigration judge because his felony violated his legal permanent residency, which had also expired while he was in prison.

An Aug. 12, 2011, photo of the Petionville jail cell where some deportees are detained upon their arrival in Haiti. Jacob Kushner/Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

After he was deported in April, Haitian authorities immediately imprisoned him — without charge — in the same Petionville cell where Durand would later be held. Dorne’s illness required him to take four medications daily, so U.S. immigration officers sent a one-month supply of those prescriptions to Haiti’s judicial police. But jails in Haiti do not have medical personnel and Haitian police are not trained in basic medical care.

On Dorne’s first night in the Petionville jail in Port-au-Prince, the municipal police gave him the medication, and then, according to Dorne, held onto — or lost — the remaining pills.

“The prescription said every night. So Saturday night I asked the chief officer, ‘Can you get my medication for me?’ ” Dorne said. “They told me they can’t find it. Every day I asked them for it. After two, three days, I stopped asking.”

During his next few days in jail, Dorne said some of the symptoms that had subsided after he began psychiatric treatment in the New Jersey prison returned.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “My hands started shaking.”

May, the doctor at Health Through Walls, said mentally ill inmates face grave risks because they are often unable to negotiate for themselves.

“A person who requires antipsychotic medications … could rapidly deteriorate without having them,” May said.

The police officer in charge of that jail said he was not familiar with Dorne’s case.

An FCIR review of statements made by federal immigration authorities after deportations resumed in January found evidence that ICE sometimes fails to abide by its policy involving Haitians with medical problems. An April 1 ICE memorandum explaining the decision to resume deportations said alternatives would be considered for medical and humanitarian purposes. Yet Haitians with documented medical problems continue to be deported from the United States.

The U.S. government deported Dorne, for example, three days after the Department of Justice documented his paranoid schizophrenia and the four psychiatric medications prescribed to him.

Ralph Celestin, 51, was deported to Haiti in April even though he suffers from numerous health ailements including asthma, diabetes and hypertension. He has not been convicted of a crime in the United States since a burglary convction in 1978. Jacob Kushner/Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Deportee Ralph Celestin, 51, suffered from so many health problems that a list of his conditions and medications filled six pages of a New Jersey prison document. Despite his having asthma, hypertension and diabetes, ICE deported Celestin to Haiti on the same April flight as Dorne.

Immigration attorneys in the United States are fighting deportations of individual Haitian clients under the 1984 U.N. Convention Against Torture, which forbids governments from deporting people to countries where they will undergo “severe pain or suffering.” In April, a mentally ill Haitian immigrant in Miami had his deportation deferred on the grounds that the conditions in a Haitian jail could meet that standard in his case.

Deportee detentions in Haiti are well-documented, dating back to at least 1998, when deportees were placed in the dangerous National Penitentiary sometimes for months. In some instances, deportees bribed their way out of jail, though FCIR found no evidence that suggested corruption influences deportee detentions today.

The 2010 earthquake destroyed all but one of the government ministry buildings and killed an estimated 20 to 40 percent of civil servants. Today, Haiti’s judicial police must process hundreds of U.S. deportees annually with drastically fewer resources. Each time a deportee flight arrives, for example, routine identification procedures at the judicial police station stop, so the only functioning digital camera can be used to photograph the deportees.

Freedom roulette

On the morning a deportee flight arrives in Haiti, members of Haiti’s Commission in Charge of Deportees arrive at the airport grounds. They mingle with Haitian police officers, U.S. immigration officials and deportee advocates.

The commission includes representatives from four government ministries and the independent Office of Citizen Protection. Once the deportees have been transferred to the judicial police holding station, commission members decide who will go free — and who will be incarcerated.

The process is largely ad hoc. No written policy exists, and there is little consensus among members of the deportee commission about the primary purpose of the detentions.

Secretary of State for the Ministry of Public Security Aramick Louis said detentions are meant for deportees’ protection during the “vulnerable” transition to Haiti.

Frederic Leconte, the commissioner of Haiti’s judicial police, said the detentions allow the state time to understand each individual’s situation — even though the U.S. government provides detailed files on each deportee two weeks prior to arrival, and FCIR was unable to document any instances in which detained deportees were interviewed or even observed directly by officials.

Head of Haiti's Citizen Protection ministry, Florence Elie serves as an adjunct member of the Haitian comission that decides which arriving deportees will be freed and which will be detained. Jacob Kushner/Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Haiti’s Citizen Protection chief Florence Elie, an adjunct member of the commission, said the detentions are meant to allow authorities “to get to know” the deportees.

“Whenever I have to make a choice between the welfare of the community against the welfare of one person, I have to be very careful,” Elie said. “These people who come to Haiti are a threat to the society.”

But Haitian law does not allow someone to be jailed based on the possibility he may commit a crime in the future. “This is what I fought against,” said Privat Precil, the director general of Haiti’s Ministry of Justice from 2002 to 2004. “It is just a police policy that is not legal under Haitian law.”

Length of the deportee detentions varies. The deportees who were incarcerated after arriving Aug. 9 spent seven days in jail. After FCIR questioned government officials about the length of the detentions later that month, the head of the deportee commission was replaced, and deportees on the following flight were released after three days – still plenty of time to risk exposure to cholera.

According to an April memo from ICE, deportees are prioritized “through the consideration of adverse factors, such as the severity, number of convictions, and dates since convictions, and balance these against any equities of the Haitian national, such as duration of residence in the United States, family ties, or significant medical issues.”

Barbara Gonzalez, ICE’s press secretary, said in an email that the agency would “prioritize those who pose the greatest threat to the community.”

But an FCIR review of ICE data shows the agency deported at least 2,684 non-criminal immigrants to Haiti from 2007 to 2010, and FCIR found three deportees who arrived in August and September whose criminal records included only non-violent offenses.

The Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and the White House did not respond to questions about FCIR’s findings.

Total deportations have risen over the past decade, with the Obama administration deporting 387,000 immigrants worldwide in the year beginning October 2009 — more than twice the number deported under President George W. Bush at the beginning of his term in the year starting October 2001.

As recently as 2008, 74 percent of all Haitian deportees did not have criminal convictions, according to ICE data. In the three months leading up to Haiti’s earthquake, 67 percent of deportees were non-criminals.

In August, Gonzalez was asked to provide a list of post-earthquake deportees’ convictions to support the agency’s claim that those deported since the earthquake would have posed a threat if released in the United States. After nearly four weeks without a response, a follow-up elicited this answer from Gonzalez: “We have nothing to add. Regards.”

Deportations came as surprise

Whatever conditions the United States used to justify halting deportations to Haiti had not changed by the time ICE sent the first flight in January, said Laura Raymond, international human rights associate for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting constitutional rights.

“You look at what they said right after the earthquake when they suspended deportations; it cited conditions. The only thing that changed in Haiti between then and when they reinstated deportations was a cholera epidemic — things got much worse,” Raymond said.

Today, approximately 587,000 Haitians live in the United States. Although only 426 of them are estimated to live in Wisconsin, an additional 4,439 reside in Illinois, giving it the eighth largest Haitian population in the country.

For Bernadette Durand, the September deportation of her son, Samuel Durand, is nothing short of tragedy.

“Haiti isn’t good for people to live. They have sicknesses, cholera. People who leave here have gone back and gotten sick from the water. All bad things happen in Haiti,” Bernadette, 56, said in Creole from her Chicago home. She said her husband died in 2002 from an unknown cause, leaving her job as a hotel maid as the family’s primary source of income. She also cares part-time for her son’s five children.

“They’re growing up without their daddy,” said Durand’s brother, Jean Marc, 34. “He was a good father. He had a part-time job. Now sometime they cry that they want to see their daddy. It’s painful.”

The nonprofit and nonpartisan Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Auric Gold says concealed carry in Wisconsin was “worth the wait, because we got a better law.” Credit: Eric Tadsen

Wisconsin’s concealed carry bill has few restrictions

By Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Bob Jauch has earned his “F” grade from the National Rifle Association. The Democratic Wisconsin state senator from Poplar has long fought the gun lobby’s efforts to let state residents carry concealed weapons.

In January 2004, when the Senate voted 23-10 to override then-Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s veto of a concealed carry bill, Jauch unloaded with both barrels. “The special interests won today,” he said from the Senate floor. “The NRA won today.”

That victory was short-lived, however; the state Assembly fell one vote short of overriding Doyle’s veto.

Two years later another concealed carry bill passed, and the governor’s veto was narrowly sustained. Again Jauch argued against it.

This year, following the election of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and GOP majorities in both houses, concealed carry was back. On June 9, Jauch voted against the bill in committee, saying he didn’t think it would make Wisconsin safer.

But there was no stopping concealed carry this time around. It easily passed both houses of the Legislature with bipartisan support and was signed into law by Walker. In the Senate, the vote was 25 to 8, with all 19 Republicans and six Democrats voting in favor.

Among them was Bob Jauch.

State Sen. Bob Jauch was against concealed carry before he was for it.

Jauch had co-sponsored amendments to add the state Capitol, domestic violence shelters, child care centers, polling places, churches and bars to the list of places from which concealed weapons would be automatically prohibited. All were defeated, meaning these places will have to post signs to keep weapons out. But he voted for the final bill anyway.

“I think the mood of the public has changed,” Jauch explained in a letter to constituents. And while he does not expect to see a reduction in crime, which is already much lower in Wisconsin than the national average, Jauch wrote that “there is no evidence that concealed carry in other states has endangered the public or led to a rampant misuse of firearms.”

Wisconsin’s new law, which takes effect Tuesday, leaves Illinois as the lone state with a blanket ban on carrying concealed weapons. The NRA and its supporters have been picking off holdout states for years (in 2002 there were six), and pushing for the expansion of those rights in states that allow concealed carry.

The NRA hailed Wisconsin’s law as “one of the nation’s strongest.”

“The odd thing about Wisconsin is that we went right from prohibition to no precautions whatsoever,” says Jeri Bonavia, executive director of the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort, a statewide advocacy group that focuses on gun-violence prevention. “Our law doesn’t have as many safeguards or restrictions as other states.”

Auric Gold, secretary of the pro-gun-rights group Wisconsin Carry Inc., agrees that the bill offers more expansive rights than earlier versions: “I might say it was worth the wait, because we got a better law than the one that was vetoed by Governor Doyle.”

“It’s a great law,” agrees Rachel Parsons, a spokeswoman with the NRA’s national office in Fairfax, Va. “We’re very happy.”

Not for the squeamish

State Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, a cosponsor of Wisconsin’s concealed carry bill, offers a simple explanation for why the bill is stronger. He says that in the past, when passage hinged on swinging a vote or two to override a gubernatorial veto, bill drafters had to deal with the concerns of “the most squeamish” potential supporters.

State Sen. Glenn Grothman believes concealed carry license holders “are far more responsible than the population as a whole.”

“But here, if the most squeamish person says, ‘I’m not going to vote for it unless there’s this and this,” then you can say, ‘Don’t vote for it, we have the votes anyway.’ ”

Wisconsin’s concealed carry law allows anyone 21 or older to apply for a license, which costs $50 and is good for five years. Only a small group of individuals — including convicted felons and persons with domestic abuse restraining orders against them — may be denied a license. The allowable weapons include handguns, knives, billy clubs and stun guns.

The freedom to concealed carry is automatically suspended in only a few places, such as law enforcement offices, courthouses and schools. Businesses and government buildings may choose to prohibit weapons by posting signs at every entrance, but no bans may be enacted on the state Capitol grounds or the open areas of city and state parks, college campuses, and public zoos.

Gov. Walker’s Department of Administration has opted to allow concealed weapons in most areas of the state Capitol and other state government buildings. Lawmakers will set their own policies as to where weapons will be permitted.

License holders may bring concealed handguns into taverns, so long as they don’t drink while there. Weapons are not automatically banned in airports, except past security checkpoints.

Hawk Sullivan, the owner of three popular Madison-area bars, says he’s posting signs prohibiting weapons at all of them: “If I see someone with a gun, I’ll call the police.”

As of Tuesday, all Wisconsin residents can have loaded and unencased handguns in their vehicles. And employers may not prevent their license-holding employees from keeping concealed weapons in their vehicles, even when parked on company property or used in connection with their job.

The database of concealed carry license holders will be kept secret. Law enforcement officers may access it to confirm that a person who fails to produce a license on request (a $25 fine, refundable if produced within 48 hours) is indeed licensed, but cannot routinely check the database when they stop a vehicle.

This bothers Doug Pettit, chief of police in the village of Oregon and chairman of the legislative committee for the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association, who says law enforcement officers believe “more information is better than the lack of information.”

Oregon Police Chief Doug Pettit is worried that licenses may go to people who are “not familiar with the weapon and are not trained properly.” Courtesy of Doug Pettit

Pettit also feels the law is too lax in terms of who can get a concealed carry license, saying the narrow list of exemptions would not include, for instance, a gang member in Milwaukee with multiple felony charges that were all pleaded down to misdemeanors.

Concerns have also been raised — on both sides — about the level of training needed to obtain a license. An initial bill included no provisions for licensing and training. These were added later, after objections were raised.

The law as passed says the training requirement can be met by taking a basic hunter education course, like those offered by the state Department of Natural Resources. Critics note that these courses focus on rifles and shotguns, not handguns, and do not teach about using weapons in crisis situations.

Says Pettit, “It just concerns me that some individuals may decide to get a concealed carry license even though they’re not familiar with the weapon and are not trained properly.” Police officers, he notes, receive extensive instruction on the use of firearms under stress — learning, for instance, to always look beyond their target to see if others are in the line of fire.

In response to such concerns, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen drafted, and Walker grudgingly approved, an administrative rule to require at least four hours of training, including some hands-on. The rule has drawn howls of protest from the NRA, which insists Wisconsin’s law was passed “with a presumption of freedom, rather than excessive regulation.”

Even before this four-hour training rule was suggested, NRA lobbyist Darren LaSorte was quoted saying that eliminating Wisconsin’s licensing and training requirements “will certainly be an aspiration of ours down the line.”

Adds NRA spokeswoman Parsons, “We will continue to work with members of the Legislature to strengthen the language,” so more people can carry.

‘The NRA power myth’

Bonavia argues that the Wisconsin public has never been as keen on concealed carry as have members of the state Legislature. And even among lawmakers, Bonavia doesn’t know “if they were as persuaded of the need for concealed carry as they were of the need to vote for it.”

Many politicians, she says, believe “it’s political suicide to vote against the NRA.” They’ve “bought into the NRA power myth.”

In fact, the NRA doesn’t always get its way.

Despite considerable NRA support, one of Wisconsin’s leading gun-rights advocates, state Sen. David Zien, R-Eau Claire, was defeated in his bid for reelection in 2006. And state Rep. Gary Sherman, D-Port Wing, an NRA member who switched positions to cast the deciding vote against overriding Doyle’s veto of concealed carry in 2004, won re-election that year and on two subsequent occasions.

After the 2004 vote, NRA lobbyist LaSorte was quoted as saying “some seats are going to have to change,” adding that Sherman is “certainly going to be in the sights of his constituents.”

Sherman, now a state appellate court judge, recalls that the NRA did target him, running a full-page ad in the Ashland Daily Press and backing his opponent. But the feedback he got from constituents was “overwhelmingly in favor of the governor’s veto.” As for the NRA’s supposed clout, Sherman says, “I’ve never been under the impression that any organization could wield as much power with the electorate as the NRA claims.”

Direct contributions to state candidates from the NRA Political Victory Fund have been nominal, totalling just $15,000 since mid-2008, state records show. But Parsons says the group’s clout springs from other sources: “The reason we are so powerful is that our members vote and they contact their legislators.”

The NRA also maintains a formidable lobbying presence. In the first six months of 2011, the group reported spending $66,658 on 415 hours of lobbying in Wisconsin, 76 percent of which was devoted to the concealed carry bill, state records show. It registered four lobbyists, all from the group’s national headquarters in Fairfax, Va.

Another group, Wisconsin Gun Owners Inc., reported spending $78,516 on 364 hours of lobbying during this period, half on the successful concealed carry bill. In all, proponents of concealed carry reported spending a total of 541 hours on lobbying the bill, compared to 205 hours reported by groups opposed to it. The group that logged the most hours against it, 66, was Milwaukee County.

The office of state Sen. Pam Galloway, R-Wausau, the bill’s lead sponsor, confirms that the NRA was among “a number of groups that reached out to provide input” during the bill-drafting process.

A non-issue in the making?

A few Wisconsin communities, including Germantown in Washington County and Sturtevant in Racine County, have voted to allow concealed weapons in most municipal buildings. But many more are taking steps to prohibit these, as the law allows.

State Rep. Donna Seidel, D-Wausau, a leading opponent of concealed carry in Wisconsin, sees this as significant: “If there was such a great desire for this policy in Wisconsin, why are those who can prohibit it doing so?”

And officials are chafing at their inability to keep weapons out of some areas, like the open areas of parks and college campuses.

“Factually speaking, it significantly diminishes our ability to keep weapons off campus,” says David Giroux, spokesman for the 26-campus University of Wisconsin System, which opposed the change. “The new law creates a much more complex environment for us.” Giroux says every campus in the system will post signs against weapons in buildings, at a total of at least 12,000 doors.

The Wisconsin Parks & Recreation Association, representing local parks officials, also opposes the change. Executive director Steve Thompson cites special concern over allowing weapons in areas used for concerts, youth-related programs and athletic events: “The potential is there for something to go awry.”

Some businesses are also reacting uncomfortably to the change. “They would prefer to have zero tolerance — no weapons on the premises, period,” says Keith Kopplin, a lawyer with the Milwaukee law firm of Krukowski & Costello, which advises employers. Yet now any weapons ban must generally exclude the personal vehicles of workers with concealed carry licenses.

Gun rights advocate Gold, an NRA-certified firearms instructor (although not a current NRA member), has over the past several years regularly carried weapons openly in and around his home in Madison, as when he walks through his neighborhood or goes to the grocery store. He says the new law will give him another option, when the situation warrants it.

“Open carry is just not as practical in the winter and concealed carry is not as practical in the summer,” he says. And it may not make sense to carry openly in a “dense crowd.”

Gold thinks Wisconsin’s experience will be similar to other states, where concealed carry gradually becomes “a non-issue with most people.” They hear alarms about “blood running in the streets,” but no such thing occurs.

Sen. Grothman agrees. “You watch too much TV if you think the average citizen is just ready to go off at the drop of a hat,” he says, adding that he believes concealed carry license holders “are far more responsible than the population as a whole.”

Grothman shrugs off the concerns raised by Chief Pettit: “If I’m a law enforcement officer, the guy I’m going to worry about is the guy who doesn’t have a concealed carry license.”

Indeed, Grothman thinks it’s “ridiculous” that there was talk of designating the state Capitol as a place where weapons are not allowed, which the Walker administration declined to do. “It’s a little hypocritical if lawmakers say we don’t want concealed carry where we work,” he says. “We’re telling everybody else out there, ‘Don’t worry.’ ”

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by the Open Society Institute.

The nonprofit and nonpartisan Center (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and other news media. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

A July 2009 fire at the Patrick Cudahy meatpacking plant blazed for days, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people and causing more than $200 million in damage. While many aspects of the response went well, significant problems also occurred, including failures to meet federal emergency response requirements. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Prellwitz

By Sarah Karon
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

In October 2007, about 140 firefighters, police officers, paramedics and other responders gathered at the Patrick Cudahy meatpacking plant, just south of Milwaukee. They were told a bomb, believed to be the work of an animal rights activist, had exploded in the cavernous building, and a fire threatened 177,000 pounds of pressurized ammonia.

As firefighters readied their hoses, responders rushed to activate an emergency operations center, evacuate the building and notify the public.

After three and a half hours, they stopped, put away their equipment and sat down to assess their response.

Every year, state and local agencies in Wisconsin perform multiple exercises to test emergency response capabilities, funded by federal homeland security grants created after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

At Cudahy, an eerily similar real-life disaster took place less than two years after the training exercise.

The Patrick Cudahy fire — which began accidentally July 5, 2009, after a man at a Fourth of July party launched a military flare onto the building’s roof — blazed for days, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people and causing more than $200 million in damage. It was the largest structure fire in Wisconsin history.

Carol Wantuch, the city of Cudahy’s emergency management coordinator at the time, says the 2007 drill was invaluable in helping prepare for the real-life response. No one was killed or injured, and responders protected the highly flammable ammonia from the fire, which Wantuch attributes in part to the exercise.

But significant problems also occurred during the Cudahy fire, including communication failures, equipment shortages and breakdowns in chain of command, according to Wantuch and an after-action report written about the event.

The Cudahy fire exemplifies the successes and failures of the state’s emergency response since 9/11. Reports prepared after exercises and incidents show that emergency response in Wisconsin often continues to be uncoordinated, despite millions invested in better equipment, training and communications. Experts say the problem is the worst in rural areas.

And there are questions about accountability. Although federal emergency response standards exist, neither the state nor the federal government requires jurisdictions that receive homeland security funding to report compliance with these guidelines.

Cuts in homeland security funding have emergency responders worried they will not be able to maintain current levels of preparedness.

“Our budgets have been slashed,” Wantuch says. “It’s going to get more and more difficult.”

Maj. Gen. Donald Dunbar, chair of the Wisconsin Homeland Security Council. Courtesy of Wisconsin Emergency Management

Officials note successes

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism reviewed 68 after-action reports from real-life emergencies and exercises that took place in 37 Wisconsin counties between 2005 and 2011. The review revealed a wide range of competency among responders.

In nearly half the exercises and events, responders did not understand proper command structure, did not have appropriate equipment and had problems communicating with the public. Nearly one quarter of the reports indicate problems with evacuation plans and radio equipment.
Click to explore the Center’s interactive map of after-action reports across Wisconsin

Top state homeland security officials have carefully avoided declaring victory in their efforts to ensure that Wisconsin is prepared for emergencies.

Brian Satula, head of Wisconsin Emergency Management, which coordinates the state’s disaster response and recovery efforts, says there is always more to be done, noting that his agency “maintains a posture of constant improvement.”

Wisconsin Emergency Management Administrator Brian Satula.

Satula and others insist Wisconsin is better prepared for disasters than it was before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, thanks to more than $425 million in federal money invested in equipment, training and better communication among state and local agencies.

“The training has improved, planning is robust and all-inclusive and our responders are better equipped to help our communities,” Satula says.

Maj. Gen. Donald Dunbar agrees, saying that since 9/11 “there has been a more collaborative approach to preparedness.”

Dunbar, who chairs the Wisconsin Homeland Security Council, adds that “preparedness is a process and we do not anticipate declaring ourselves prepared – rather, we will continue to work to improve.” He notes that exercises and training have helped “response efforts to any emergency.”
Link: Interview excerpts from Dunbar and other Homeland Security Council officials

That training was evident in the Cudahy response, Wantuch says. The city was evacuated rapidly. Hospital staff went to shelters to help special-needs evacuees. The mayor held frequent press conferences. Sixty-three fire departments helped fight the blaze, thanks to mutual aid agreements.

But some responders also struggled to follow aspects of the federal model for emergency response, called the National Incident Management System.

A February 2008 blizzard left an estimated 2,000 vehicles stranded overnight on a stretch of Interstate 39-90. A report about the event led to changes: The Department of Transportation implemented a traffic alert hotline, improved communication among state agencies, installed gates and portable barriers on interstate on-ramps and hooked up traffic cameras that had been collecting dust in storage. Joseph W. Jackson III/Wisconsin State Journal

Breakdowns in coordination

NIMS, a detailed framework of common procedures and terminology, is designed to help agencies that usually do not work together coordinate their efforts. Experts say it works — when followed properly. But communication and command-structure breakdowns can result when responders don’t know the system well enough.

These problems were evident in the Cudahy fire response. Response leaders had too many people to manage; one commander supervised 45 officers. Officers attempted to evacuate areas that had already been contacted by other responders. The incident commander failed to follow federal rules regarding labor shifts, resulting in firefighters working to exhaustion. Two specialized incident management teams offered to relieve the Cudahy command, but were turned down because of a miscommunication.

The consequences of not following NIMS protocols vary. Sometimes repercussions are minor: an over-crowded command center, a delay in getting snacks to evacuees. But in fast-moving events, the stakes are higher.

In 1970, miscommunication and a lack of coordination contributed to 16 deaths in southern California wildfires. Afterward the U.S. Forest Service created the Incident Command Structure, which the federal government adopted for NIMS in 2004.

But some responders have struggled to learn the system, due to a lack of training, compliance requirements and funding.

The after-action reports reviewed by the Center cite dozens of problems caused by responders’ unfamiliarity with NIMS.

In August 2007, flash floods in La Crosse County washed out sections of railroad track, overturning cars containing hazardous materials. An after-action report notes that most responders and local residents “may not have been made aware” of the risk, saying “it is unclear” if information regarding protection measures “was received by the public in the affected area.”

A report prepared after the state Capitol protests this year reveals chain-of-command problems from policymakers to police. “State agencies were not allowed to coordinate and discuss plans, nor were they made aware” of other agencies participating in the response, the report says.

And during a dam failure exercise last year in Menominee County, participants struggled with nearly every task, from contacting the appropriate agencies to activating an emergency operations center to knowing how to notify the public.

“Many participants in the exercise asked the question in one form or another — who’s going to be in charge or who makes the decisions?” the Wisconsin Emergency Management exercise director wrote in the report.

Some after-action reports do lead to improvements. Following the Menominee exercise, for example, the county updated its emergency action plan and began using an emergency notification system.

And after a February 2008 blizzard left an estimated 2,000 vehicles stranded overnight on a stretch of Interstate 39-90, the Department of Transportation implemented a traffic alert hotline, improved communication among the statewide Traffic Operations Center, the State Patrol and the State Emergency Operations Center, installed gates and portable barriers on interstate on-ramps and hooked up traffic cameras that had been collecting dust in storage.

However, experts say the state’s rural areas lag behind in their response capabilities due to lack of funds and, in many cases, assumptions that they are not at risk for large-scale disasters.

Compliance hard for rural agencies

Experts say these problems are due less to responders’ unwillingness to learn federal protocols, and more to agencies being overworked and understaffed.

Mark Stigler, a retired Waukesha deputy police chief, wrote his 2010 master’s thesis on strategies to help rural areas meet federal preparedness standards. He says the lack of training is particularly apparent in rural Wisconsin communities, where one emergency manager typically oversees an entire county, with little to no staff support.
Primary source: Mark Stigler’s thesis for the Naval Postgraduate School

He notes that several NIMS courses require emergency responders to take off two or more days from work — something that “is just not feasible in the part-time and volunteer world of rural communities.”

Coaxing cooperation among jurisdictions is another hurdle. Wisconsin municipalities are guaranteed a level of autonomy under the state constitution and cherish that privilege. Under NIMS, separate agencies must work together and sometimes surrender control in the process.

“These are huge philosophical changes,” says Thomas Bauer, a retired Oak Creek police chief who wrote his 2009 master’s thesis on NIMS. “Any time you cross organizational lines, it’s that much clumsier and more difficult to master.”

Bauer and others say it might be unrealistic to expect smaller communities to learn advanced NIMS guidelines, given cuts in homeland security funding and the slim likelihood these regions will need to respond to large-scale disasters.

A certain number of emergency responders are urged to take NIMS classes, depending on their position. But indicating NIMS compliance is often simply a matter of checking boxes on reports to the federal government.

Depending on the type of grant, county and state agencies that receive federal preparedness funding are required to submit after-action reports to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is responsible for leading the federal government’s disaster response efforts. State and local agencies may also submit NIMS compliance questionnaires to a FEMA database, allowing local officials to “evaluate and report their jurisdiction’s implementation of NIMS,” according to the FEMA website.

But it is difficult to assess whether local agencies meet these federal preparedness requirements. There is no federal or state requirement for local jurisdictions receiving homeland security funding to report NIMS compliance, and there is no federal requirement for states to track compliance among local jurisdictions. Furthermore, Wisconsin’s NIMS coordinator was recently laid off after funding for the position ran out.

In a 2008 national survey response, Wisconsin Emergency Management Training Supervisor Jerry Haberl cited the lack of compliance enforcement as one of a myriad of reasons why Wisconsin emergency responders struggle to learn NIMS.

“Many agencies are not taking NIMS seriously anymore and are dropping out or going back to their old ways,” Haberl wrote, summarizing the comments of the state’s NIMS Advisory Group. “NIMS is turning into another federal program that we have gotten all excited about one day and then it fades away to obscurity.”

Click the photo to read about drills at Point Beach Nuclear Plant in Two Creeks, in rural Manitowoc County. Courtesy of NextEra Energy

Reports say public health, nuclear readiness good

It’s unclear how Wisconsin’s preparedness ranks compared to other states; studies on the topic are often of limited use, according to experts.

In the few reports that have been done, the state has fared relatively well.

An after-action report on the 2009 H1N1 flu epidemic notes that public health employees communicated frequently with emergency responders, an online epidemic surveillance system was effective and the state had a stockpile of equipment, such as respirators. While some health professionals involved in the response complained that vaccine distribution was “inequitable,” a Wisconsin health department official says the state distributed more vaccines to minorities and underserved groups than any other state.

The state also received a nine out of 10 ranking in a 2010 report that assesses state health care systems’ ability to respond to a bioterrorism attack or other public health emergency. The report says Wisconsin is well-prepared for a public health emergency because, among other reasons, it has an electronic outbreak surveillance system and enough public health staff to handle an outbreak.

But that high score might not mean much, says Michael Greenberger, who directs the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland.

“My own view is the ranking isn’t very reliable, but people take it very seriously,” he says, noting that the report is based on only 10 metrics, which change annually, and that states’ scores can vary greatly year to year. Wisconsin’s score has been as high as 10 and as low as two since the report was first published in 2003.

Henry Anderson, a member of the Homeland Security Council representing the Department of Health Services, says his department is pleased with Wisconsin’s score. He notes that the report is conducted independently of state cooperation and uses only publicly available information to assess the state’s capabilities.

Anderson acknowledged, however, that federal funding cuts combined with a tight state budget might force DHS to “do more with less.”

“The planning and the disaster response activities are going to have to go on whether we get federal funding or not,” Anderson says. “When we have big conventions in Milwaukee or elsewhere that might be a target — we can’t ignore being prepared for those.”

Wisconsin also received high marks in a report assessing states’ preparedness for a nuclear disaster. The report, written by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, found states with nuclear power plants, including Wisconsin, are much better equipped to respond to an accident than states without them.

However, a 2009 exercise for the Point Beach nuclear power plant, located on Lake Michigan near Green Bay, was riddled with problems: The county emergency management director did not receive important updates, the emergency operations center was not secure, maps were inaccurate and responders could not understand jargon-filled briefings. The following year, another Point Beach exercise went more smoothly, although responders still faced setbacks, including contamination risks during the drill.

The Marshfield police department's special response team provides cover for members of the hazardous materials team as they carry a victim out of a school during a 2001 drill. Craig DeGrand, deputy fire chief, said the exercise highlighted areas for improvement. "As always, communication is a big one of those areas we need to continue working on." Brady Lane/Marshfield News-Herald

Communication problems emerge

During the Cudahy fire, police couldn’t communicate with the command post because their radios operated on a different channel — a problem that has dogged many responders trying to coordinate with multiple agencies during drills and disasters.

The state has poured money into the problem, investing about $79 million since 2003 in communications interoperability — much of which has come from homeland security funds. Over $18 million has been devoted to developing a statewide emergency communications network that can handle multiple frequencies.

As of July, 66 of 80 Wisconsin Interoperable System for Communications sites were active; the state expects to complete the project by November.

But new equipment can be only part of the solution. Brian Jackson, a scientist with the RAND Corp., which provides nonpartisan research on national security issues, says agencies must practice working together in training and disaster exercises more often.

State homeland security experts say these drills have strengthened the state’s preparedness levels since 9/11. But as funding for training dwindles, many emergency responders worry whether the state will be able to maintain its current response capabilities.

“We have folks who are retiring,” says Linda Kollmann, the emergency management director of Winnebago County. “Where are those dollars going to come from to train those new folks? If funding goes away, I fear we’re going to be facing a difficult time.”

Steve Kreuser, the emergency management director of Wood County, agrees, saying: “I think it’s fair to say that with funding reductions, there’s a potential to be less safe.”

“I don’t know how we’ll manage,” says Wantuch, the Cudahy official. “We’ll do the best we can, and hope for the best. It’s all we can do.”

Sarah Karon can be reached at skaron@wisconsinwatch.org. Reporter Jason Smathers contributed to this report. The nonprofit and nonpartisan Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and other news media. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

The Center’s three-part series

A thread running through these stories by Center reporters Jason Smathers and Sarah Karon: Homeland security funding is dwindling. How are emergency response agencies trying to do more with less?

Part One: Funding

A decade after 9/11 attacks, Wisconsin’s homeland security funding falls short Experts disagree on how we’ll be affected. Aug. 28, 2011.

Part Two: Infrastructure

From ports to power plants, millions spent to avert terrorism attacks But funding to protect utilities, ports and other critical infrastructure has all but disappeared. Sept. 4, 2011.

Part Three: Emergency response

Emergency response often uncoordinated in post-9/11 era Communication breakdowns and other problems plague rural areas especially. Sept. 11, 2011.

• Sidebar: Marinette school standoff communication was ‘large problem’ Green Bay Press-Gazette.
• Interview excerpts: In their own words: Top homeland security officials answer ‘Are we safer?’

Multimedia and data

Chart: Total funding

Homeland security funding overview, 2003-2011 The Center compiled data on dozens of grant programs to capture a rare picture of total homeland security spending in the state, revealing a big drop for 2011.

Map: Lessons learned

What they learned in the disaster: Agencies’ after-action reports Emergency responders’ accounts, often frank, of their successes and failures after disasters both real and simulated. These “after-action” reports have never been published in one place; the Center summarized, archived and mapped 75 of them.

Regional stories from Gannett Wisconsin Media

Nuclear plant safety

Nuclear security teams prepare with mock attacks Guards for the Kewaunee nuclear plant get a “paramilitary level of training,” reports the Herald Times Reporter of Manitowoc.


Nuclear plant: Evacuation plans in place, but officials don’t expect all to leave Manitowoc has practiced evacuating about 1,600 people at a time, but farmers say it’s unrealistic to move livestock in an emergency, according to the Herald Times Reporter.

Airport security

TSA touts safer airports, but security breaches continue Of the more than 25,000 breaches nationwide since November 2001, more than half involve people entering supposedly secure airport areas, federal officials found. The Green Bay Press-Gazette.

Post-9/11 policing

At Lambeau Field and beyond, how a police force stepped up security after 9/11 “It’s forced us to work together,” said Green Bay police Lt. Jim Runge of joint trainings. The Green Bay Press-Gazette.

The U.S. Navy's USS Fort Worth, a littoral combat ship, slides into the Menominee River during its launch at Marinette Marine on Dec. 4, 2010. In recent years, Marinette County has received more than $626,000 in federal homeland security funds to protect its port on the Menominee River, near Lake Michigan. AP Photo/Lockheed Martin

A University of Wisconsin-Madison police officer attempts to restrain the crowd at Camp Randall Stadium from rushing the field during the Badgers victory over Ohio State on October 16, 2010. Security at Camp Randall has increased since the 9/11 attacks, as police have brought barricades and occasionally brought bomb sniffing dogs to high-profile events. Jeff Schorfheide/The Badger Herald

By Jason Smathers
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Marinette County Emergency Management Director Eric Burmeister understands that many people view his northeastern Wisconsin county of about 41,700 people as an unlikely terrorism target.

But in recent years, Marinette County has received more than $626,000 in federal homeland security funds to protect its port on the Menominee River, near Lake Michigan, used by Marinette Marine, a manufacturer of Navy combat ships. The company itself has gotten an additional $852,000, and nearby Marinette Fuel and Dock Co. received nearly $110,000 to protect those facilities.

The port security grants are part of a broader homeland security effort by both the federal and state governments to protect Wisconsin’s critical infrastructure — major sites such as stadiums, nuclear power plants and water supply stations whose attack or destruction could cause major loss of life or significant economic damage.

The focus on protecting these major sites began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks and quickly attracted public attention as high profile facilities such as Green Bay’s Lambeau Field and Madison’s Camp Randall Stadium tightened security. More than $425 million in federal money has been allocated for Wisconsin’s homeland security efforts.

Federal funding to protect key infrastructure has declined, however, as overall homeland security funding has dropped sharply in Wisconsin. That has forced a shift in strategy away from protecting sites to responding more effectively if man-made or natural disasters occur.

Wisconsin has received at least $18 million from the federal government since 2003 to bolster security at its key resources. Many grants, with the exception of port security grants, require 40 percent matching funds for private sector sites and 20 percent from public sector sites.

Between 2005 and 2007, state officials created a ranked list of the state’s high-risk critical infrastructure, both in private and public hands, and then focused on improving security at the 42 highest-risk facilities.

The list of those facilities and others identified by homeland security is classified, officials say.

But sites acknowledged by the Wisconsin Homeland Security Council include three nuclear power plants, including one in Minnesota and the Kewaunee and Point Beach plants, “five sports facilities, several large festivals, four international ports, large water systems, and key transportation nodes.”

About 85 percent of the sites are located in the Green Bay, Milwaukee or Madison areas.

Green Bay Police Lt. Jim Runge says Lambeau’s security measures have remained steady in the past decade, with police occasionally tightening security when federal officials identify potential threats to stadiums and other facilities. Police block off Lombardi Avenue with semis during Green Bay Packers football games, pat down everyone who enters the stadium, prohibit large bags and search vehicles coming near the stadium.

Security fencing around the Appleton Water Utility pump station on the north shore of Lake Winnebago on Aug. 31, 2011. Wm. Glasheen/Appleton Post-Crescent

Simple fixes sometimes best

Many of the critical infrastructure grants have been used to buy simple security improvements such as fences, security cameras and lighting. Others, such as a $196,000 grant given to Dane County in 2010, involve purchases such as computer forensics software and hardware, a bomb disposal suit and video and sonar equipment.

But sophisticated improvements may not always be cost-effective, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering professor Vicki Bier. In 2009, Bier and her graduate students studied the cost-effectiveness of some of Wisconsin’s critical infrastructure investments using limited data from the Office of Justice Assistance.

The analysis showed that while expenditures reduced risk at most facilities, the cost-effectiveness of the security improvements varied widely. Sites where security risks were easily fixed were the most cost-effective investments, Bier found.

“Some of them may have been commercial facilities that had hazardous materials that never had a fence,” she says. “And before the 9/11 era, people would have thought, ‘OK, fine, why would someone blow up our ammonia tank? So we don’t need a fence.’ And after 9/11, someone thought, ‘Hey, maybe we should have a guard and a fence and a lock.’ ”

Security strategy shifts

In recent years, the state has moved away from costly infrastructure protection to improving its ability to respond to and recover from disasters, says Greg Engle, homeland security program director for OJA. Engle says the new focus was partly prompted by dwindling federal funding for infrastructure protection.

The measures include intelligence-sharing and training exercises, such as how first responders should deal with long-term power outages.

“Here in Wisconsin we have numerous types of risks … that you can’t necessarily protect against with a fence,” Engle says. “So you have to put in better processes to enable emergency responders to work together, so businesses can recover, communities can recover. I think with limited funding it’s an excellent strategy.”

Port security funding remains

Although much of the federal funding for critical infrastructure protection in Wisconsin has disappeared, the federal government continues to invest in port security. This year, about $3.1 million was awarded directly to Wisconsin municipalities and businesses to reduce risks at ports.

Among recent recipients of port-security funding is Fountain City, a city of 859 in Buffalo County on the Mississippi River, which received nearly $40,000 for a boat patrol upgrade, according to the federal government’s stimulus tracking website.

Jason Mork, an officer with the Fountain City Police Department, says the money was used to buy a Ford F150 pickup truck. Mork says the department needed a new truck to tow the boat to the Mississippi River.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, located near Fountain City, is responsible for ensuring the Mississippi River remains navigable. Mork says having extra patrol capability helps keep that facility safer. However, he acknowledges his department has some access to other vehicles it could use to move the boat.

But, says Mork, “If there’s grant money available, I’m going to try and bring it home.”

In Marinette County, Burmeister says his department has used federal funds not only to keep a close watch over Marinette Marine but also all of downtown Marinette with a new video camera system.

“A person, in theory, cannot enter or leave Marinette without being on at least one camera,” Burmeister says.

And the county has sonar equipment to check for explosives before newly completed warships enter the water. He’s grateful for the federal funding that has helped his county both protect facilities against threats and respond effectively if disaster strikes.

“We want to harden the port itself,” Burmeister says. “But then also from a response and recovery side, if we were to see an event, the first responders have the tools and the equipment to respond.”

That response capability has been useful in Marinette County in recent years. In 2008, a sniper killed three swimmers from a bridge in nearby Niagra. In 2010, a student held classmates and a teacher hostage at Marinette High School, eventually killing himself. Those incidents, Burmeister says, prove that the risk of disaster is there.

“That argument that ‘It’s northeast Wisconsin, bad things don’t happen here,’ doesn’t work,” Burmeister says. “It does happen here. For us to sit back and not be prepared puts us in front of the snowball as it’s heading down the hill.”

Jason Smathers can be reached at jsmathers@wisconsinwatch.org. Reporter Sarah Karon contributed to this report. The nonprofit and nonpartisan Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and other news media. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Human trafficking in the heartland

The Center’s Julie Strupp talked to victims of this hidden crime for her August 2011 story: Read the story

Wisconsin declines to sign letter from 45 state attorneys general

By Julie Strupp

Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

In July, police in DeKalb County, Ga., found a 15-year-old Wisconsin runaway who was allegedly forced into prostitution and was advertised online as a 25-year-old providing “adult services.”

Wisconsin, however, wasn’t among the 45 states that on Wednesday accused Backpage.com, the website that published the Wisconsin girl’s advertisement, of facilitating child exploitation and sex trafficking across the nation.

The state attorneys general sent a letter to Backpage.com lawyer Samuel Fifer calling the website a “hub” for human trafficking and asking for details about the company’s policies aimed at preventing the illegal activity.

More than 50 cases of trafficking or attempted trafficking of minors on Backpage.com have been filed in 22 states in the past three years, the letter says.

Backpage.com vice president Carl Ferrer acknowledged the company identifies more than 400 “adult services” posts that may involve minors, the letter says. Minors are not legally capable of consenting to sex, and law enforcement officials have discovered many of those advertised are coerced, officials said.

When asked why he declined to sign the letter from the attorneys general, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who has focused on fighting Internet crime against children, issued a statement to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism saying he has “a policy of not publicly announcing the details of ongoing investigations or publicly negotiating private sector cooperation.”

Illegal activity has occurred on Backpage.com and other websites, Van Hollen said.

“More than 200 cyber tips involving unlawful web activity—including activity on Backpage.com—and numerous child enticement and child pornography cases are investigated by Wisconsin’s ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) Task Force,” the statement said, noting that such investigations have resulted in more than 100 arrests this year.

Van Hollen encouraged all websites to cooperate with law enforcement to prevent their sites from being “conduits for illegal activity.”

Backpage.com officials have readily acknowledged prostitution ads appear on the website, but said in a February 2011 statement they have introduced some policies to eradicate illegal activity on the website, including implementing a no-nudity policy.

But Backpage.com hasn’t gone far enough for the attorneys general, who said the website makes an estimated $22.7 million per year from ads in the “adult” section.

“We believe Backpage.com sets a minimal bar for content review in an effort to temper public condemnation, while ensuring that the revenue spigot provided by prostitution advertising remains intact,” the letter says.

Fitchburg, Wis., police say the runaway teenager, who has an infant son, was forced into prostitution in Milwaukee and Atlanta. Police say a pimp advertised her on Backpage.com as a 25-year-old providing “adult services.”

Lt. Steve Elliott of the Appleton Police Department agrees online escort advertisements like those found on Backpage.com often mask what is actually human trafficking in Wisconsin, a crime he says is hidden and pervasive.

Craigslist.com, another classifieds website, shut down its adult services section last September after a similar outcry from anti-trafficking activists and attorneys general. The attorneys general applauded the website’s decision in the letter to Backpage.com, saying it’s difficult to accurately detect underage human trafficking.

If you have information relating to illegal sex trafficking activity being conducted online, call a local law enforcement agency or the Missing and Exploited Children Cyber Tipline at 1-800-843-5678.

Julie Strupp can be reached at jstrupp@wisconsinwatch.org. The nonprofit and nonpartisan Center (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and other news media. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Homeland security funding, 2003-2011

Click here to explore an interactive version of this data.

BIG DROP: Funds that in 2010 accounted for about $10 million haven’t been allocated yet for 2011. If those funds stay level, homeland security funding overall will drop 24 percent. Research: Jason Smathers; Graphic: Kate Golden/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

By Jason Smathers
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

La Crosse Fire Chief Gregg Cleveland says his firefighters could be at risk for injury or death in certain rescue situations, if specialized federally funded training is cut.

Kristin Gunther, a state policy analyst who helps agricultural businesses plan responses to contamination or disruptions in the food supply, wonders whether her program will soon end.

Milwaukee Fire Chief Mark Rohlfing is unsure how southeastern Wisconsin will find new resources to prevent and respond to large-scale disasters now that a federally funded Milwaukee-area security program is in jeopardy.

That’s because federal funding for much of the state’s homeland security effort, designed to prepare and protect Wisconsin in the event of terrorist attacks and other emergencies, is being drastically cut as Congress focuses on states that are more likely terrorism targets.

The grant programs were launched in 2002 as a response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

A decade after the 9/11 attacks, Wisconsin is better prepared to prevent and respond to terrorism and natural disasters, experts say, thanks in part to more than $425 million in federal money allocated for state homeland-security efforts.

Local and national experts interviewed by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism agree that the initiatives have enhanced emergency response and safety throughout the nation. But they sharply disagree about whether budget cuts proposed by Congress are a good idea.

Brig. Gen. Donald Dunbar, head of Wisconsin’s Homeland Security Council, says the state has made significant progress in preparedness since 9/11, but acknowledges the reduction in funding could harm some of those efforts.

“The drop in fiscal support will clearly affect our ability to address our priorities and may eliminate entire programs,” Dunbar says.

Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, says the drawdown of federal support will undermine state and local emergency response nationwide.

“It is already going on throughout the country,” Greenberger says. “We’re not talking about homeland security — we’re talking about traditional public safety, and that’s being eroded, day by day.”

Brig. Gen. Donald Dunbar, chair of the Wisconsin Homeland Security Council. Courtesy of Wisconsin Emergency Management

Matt Mayer of the Heritage Foundation, who formerly headed the federal Homeland Security Office of Grants and Training, says the cuts mean the nation is focusing its resources on heavily populated urban areas most at risk for man-made or natural disasters.

“We should stop sending money to Montana and Wyoming, significantly cut the money going to Wisconsin or Ohio,” says Mayer, a visiting fellow for the conservative think tank. “That’s not to say you won’t have a lone wolf incident in the Mall of America next to you … but no amount of money will help stop that.”

Wisconsin’s homeland security funding has declined sharply, from a height of more than $75 million in 2004 to between $16 million and $26 million this year. Such funding pays for hazardous materials response training, supports intelligence-gathering centers in Milwaukee and Madison and allows local agencies to buy equipment, such as the $400,000 mobile Emergency Command Center purchased by Dane County in 2004.

In May, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it was cutting 33 cities out of 2011 funding for the Urban Areas Security Initiative, a federal grant program that funds multi-jurisdictional terrorism prevention, including personnel, equipment and training, for urban communities at high risk of attack. The Milwaukee-area program, which covers a five-county region in southeastern Wisconsin, was among those cut.

Rohlfing says the program helps first responders by paying for better equipment, including an emergency response vehicle for the fire department and a boat to patrol the Lake Michigan shoreline. The funding also provides for multi-jurisdictional exercises to prepare for terrorist attacks or other mass casualty disasters.

Rohlfing hopes funding could be restored to Milwaukee.

“(The decision on) who gets funded is made on a federal level, and this year that battle was won by those areas that get the lion’s share of the dollars,” Rohlfing says. He adds that the case needs to be made that in Milwaukee, “ ‘We don’t need 100 million like New York City, but we do need help to prepare for these regional and national events.’ ”

Even without funding moving forward, the program will not come to a grinding halt, says Greg Engle, homeland security program director for the state Office of Justice Assistance. He says the program likely will sustain itself for a time with grant money it has already received.

However, once that money is spent, the future of the urban-preparedness program is uncertain. Engle says it will be tough to find money for certain items, such as the Milwaukee fusion center, which serves as a regional intelligence hub for local, state and federal law enforcement.

“I think we’re just going to have to continue to work with them … to try and meet their needs as best we can, but it’s difficult,” Engle says.

And the pot of money Engle would draw on for that support is also in jeopardy.

Sgt. Todd Zehms of the Brown County Sheriff's Department dons a bomb squad suit in a demonstration of equipment obtained through Department of Homeland Security grants. Courtesy of the Green Bay Press-Gazette

Changing priorities

In June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 2012 homeland security appropriations bill, reducing overall funding by $1.1 billion to $42.3 billion. Funding for state and local grant programs would be cut in half.

In addition, the state’s share of firefighter assistance grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency have dropped more than 50 percent over the past few years. In 2007, fire departments across Wisconsin received about $21 million in federal funding to buy equipment, hire staff and other expenses. In 2010, that amount was $10 million.

In Wisconsin, funding that provides some protection for infrastructure at risk of terrorist attack, such as power plants and water supplies, also has been eliminated this year, as has a specific federal grant for planning and training to improve emergency communications.

Funds flowing to Wisconsin could drop even further.

U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Alabama, sponsored the bill that cuts state homeland security grants. Aderholt estimated that $13 billion in state and local grants dating back to 2005 still had not been spent. He said the grant program needs to shrink until the department spends down the balance and can demonstrate that money has been used effectively.

Brown County Sgt. Todd Zehms demonstrates the Brown-Outagamie County Bomb Squad robot. Courtesy of the Green Bay Press-Gazette

“I know how important first responders are to our nation’s preparedness – we all see it every day,” Aderholt said on the House floor. “But we simply cannot keep throwing money into a clogged pipeline when our debt is soaring out of control. I believe it’s our duty to reform these grant programs.”

While experts like Mayer agree with Aderholt, others suggest the cuts might be made in haste.

Brian Jackson, a scientist for the RAND Corporation who specializes in terrorism preparedness, says there was such a rush to spend money to protect the nation in the wake of 9/11 that there was little focus on “building in” evaluation efforts to track programs effectiveness. Without that information, he says, the impending budget cuts could be made without any real direction.

“Particularly if we cut without knowing, there is the risk that we will cut things that are effective and valuable,” says Jackson, whose group provides nonpartisan research on topics including national security. “That said, there are probably areas in security programs where we are spending more than we need to be spending.”

Fitchburg Fire Chief Randy Pickering in 2010 discusses the features of Dane County's mobile Emergency Command Center, purchased for $400,000 in 2004 with federal homeland security funds. Federal funding to Wisconsin for such equipment has been drastically cut as Congress focuses on protecting more likely terrorist targets. Kyle McDaniel/Wisconsin State Journal

Some programs deemed essential

Collapse rescue training is one of four priority areas designated by the state Office of Justice Assistance as essential, regardless of budget cuts. The others are statewide training and exercises, quick-response teams for high-risk standoffs, terrorist attacks or other emergencies, and the Madison fusion center. But Engle admits he’s not sure there will even be enough federal funding to fully sustain them.

Cleveland, the La Crosse fire chief, says his firefighters have benefited from specialized training paid for with homeland security funds, such as the training that helped responders carefully search unstable and collapsed buildings after tornadoes hit their city in May.

Before training, “firefighters were putting themselves at risk,” Cleveland says. “That results in injuries and potentially fatalities because they don’t have the expertise of doing this.”

Further funding cuts to state and local programs also mean the state may have to shutter some programs altogether, such as the food and agricultural security initiative led in part by Gunther.

The lack of funding for agricultural security doesn’t necessarily match the risk, as the industry is one of the few sectors to recently sustain an attack that some consider an act of agro-terrorism.

In 1996, police in Berlin, located 20 miles west of Oshkosh, got an anonymous tip that animal feed at a National By-Products plant had been contaminated with pesticide. State and local agencies tracked down the contaminated food stock, but not until it had been distributed to 4,000 farms across four states. Officials were forced to destroy $4 million worth of feed due to uncertainty as to which bundles were contaminated.

The perpetrator — identified in the federal documents as Brian “Skip” Lea, who had a business relationship with National By-Products — struck again in 1997 by attempting to contaminate restaurant grease used to make animal food, but was caught in 1999.

But Gunther says there is no “long-term vision” for the food-security initiative beyond 2012. Gunther is one of two policy analysts working for the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection helping government and businesses train for agricultural disasters and draw up emergency response plans for Wisconsin’s dairy industry.

If the program ends, Gunther says response to threats to food safety or agriculture will again be spread across several agencies, and there will be no assurance that training or disaster planning will be kept up to date.

“I don’t want to suggest that the agency will be left unprepared,” she says. “It’s just that the resources that we now provide to enhance those basic efforts will no longer be available.”

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Jason Smathers can be reached at jsmathers@wisconsinwatch.org. Reporter Sarah Karon contributed to this report. The nonprofit and nonpartisan Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and other news media. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Justice David Prosser.

Justice Ann Walsh Bradley.

By Bill Lueders and Kate Golden
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

On the Wisconsin Supreme Court, even the justices’ accounts of what they’ve witnessed split along ideological lines.

The court’s conservative justices gave a significantly different version of events than their liberal counterparts in their statements to Dane County sheriff’s deputies investigating a June 13 altercation between Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and David Prosser, according to reports released Friday.

The incident remains under investigation by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, which is charged with enforcing judicial ethics.

On Thursday, Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett concluded that, based on her review of the reports, no criminal charges would be filed.

Prosser issued a press statement saying he was “gratified that the prosecutor found these scurrilous charges were without merit.” Bradley’s statement said, “My focus from the outset has not been one of criminal prosecution, but rather addressing workplace safety.”

The justices agree that the dispute, first reported by Wisconsin Public Radio and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, erupted during a discussion over the timing of the court’s decision upholding the state’s collective bargaining law.

Released the next day, that decision was a 4-3 split, with conservative Justices Prosser, Patience Roggensack, Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman in the majority.

In their accounts of the altercation, the justices agree Prosser stated during the dispute that he had “lost confidence” in Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson’s leadership. Bradley told him to get out of her office and moved toward him.

Beyond that, the two sides do not concur.

Roggensack and Gableman joined Prosser in stating that Bradley rushed at Prosser with her fist raised and he reacted defensively.

“Justice Gableman said Justice Bradley’s fist was going towards and away from Justice Prosser’s face in almost a punching motion,” wrote Detective Peter Hansen in a report.

Prosser said his hands contacted Bradley’s neck but that it was inadvertent, “a total reflex.” He said that he never applied pressure to Bradley’s neck.

Bradley told deputies she “was in his face like a coach can get in the face of a player, yet did not touch him.” She insisted her hand “wasn’t in his face.”

Abrahamson said she did not see Bradley’s fist raised at any time.

Abrahamson said she saw Prosser put both his hands in Bradley’s “neck area.” And while she does not believe he squeezed, “because I didn’t see her eyes bulge or hear her gasp for a breath,” she said, “I was shocked by what I saw.”

Roggensack said she immediately got between the two justices and said, “Ann, this isn’t like you.” Others said that Roggensack pulled Bradley back.

Roggensack told deputies she thought both justices “were out of line.”

Ziegler said she was looking elsewhere and didn’t see where Prosser’s hands went. But she told deputies Bradley couldn’t have been choked because of the way she acted afterward — Bradley immediately went to her desk and started typing.

None of the justices responded to a request for comment from the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. But Abrahamson, in a statement, said she was committed to improving the court environment and will propose that the court open its conferences to the public.

The reports paint the picture of a toxic workplace.

Abrahamson and Bradley said they had long feared Prosser’s unpredictable “outbursts.” Bradley told deputies that while there were many positive things about Prosser, “he needs help.”

Justice Patrick Crooks, who was not present during the altercation, told deputies that Prosser “loses his cool repeatedly.”

Bradley told deputies that Prosser’s anger had previously been directed at the chief justice, whom he had called a “bitch” in February 2010. She added that she thought Prosser was paranoid and getting worse, according to the reports.

“You never know what will set him off,” Bradley said. Abrahamson told deputies almost the exact same thing.

Prosser told deputies he had heard Bradley say her law clerk was afraid to work late because of him, but “he was concerned that she is trying to set this up and portray him as a monster, and show that he is entirely responsible for what happened.”

He said he “did not believe he did anything wrong,” and suggested to deputies that word of the incident had been leaked to do the “absolute maximum damage to a public figure that you can do.”

The records show that Bradley discussed the possibility of getting a restraining order against Prosser but decided to try to handle it internally first, convening a meeting of the justices two days after the altercation.

Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs met with the justices and produced a brief report. He wrote that Prosser at one point turned to Bradley and said, “I should not have put my hands on you.”

The nonprofit and nonpartisan Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and other news media. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

The original story, first broken jointly by the Center and Wisconsin Public Radio, is here.

A viewer should open below, but if not the documents are also available here: Prosser vs. Bradley investigative file