Gina Barton, and Ashley Luthern

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Milwaukee Police Department performs thousands of illegal stop-and-frisks targeting African-Americans and Latinos every year, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the ACLU of Wisconsin.

The suit, filed against the city, the Fire and Police Commission and Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn, claims police routinely pull people over and stop them on the street without cause, demanding identification and searching them or their vehicles. Such stops are a violation of the fourth amendment, which requires police to have “reasonable suspicion" that the person is dangerous or has committed a crime, the suit says.

The suit also accuses officers of conducting stop-and-frisks “motivated by race and ethnicity” in violation of the 14th amendment.

Named plaintiffs in the class-action suit include a mother who says police stopped her son just blocks from his school when he was 11 and a 60-year-old school secretary who says police followed her and her 4-year-old granddaughter into her house without her permission, claiming they had evidence of heroin use.

“Black and Latino people throughout Milwaukee — including children — fear that they may be stopped, frisked, or otherwise treated like criminal suspects when doing nothing more than walking to a friend’s house or home from school, driving to and from the homes of loved ones, running errands, or simply taking a leisurely walk or drive through the city,” the suit says.

On Wednesday, Flynn denied the allegations.

“The Milwaukee Police Department has never used the practice of 'stop and frisk,' nor has there ever been a quota for traffic stops," he said in a written statement. "However, traffic stops in high-crime areas have been proven to reduce the number of non-fatal shootings, robberies and motor vehicle thefts."

One the plaintiffs, Charles Collins, has been repeatedly stopped by police during the 55 years he has lived in Milwaukee.

"As a black man in Wisconsin, I'm edgy when I'm going outside," said Collins, a veteran and retired nursing assistant. "You should have the freedom to move around freely with no apprehension, no dread."

The Milwaukee Police Department's crime-prevention strategy includes “blanketing certain geographic areas in which residents are predominantly people of color with ‘saturation patrols’ by MPD officers, who conduct high-volume, suspicionless stops and frisks throughout the area,” the suit says.

“As a result, the combined number of traffic and pedestrian stops skyrocketed" from 66,657 in 2007 to a high point of 268,809 in 2012, according to the suit and police department data. It has mostly trended down since, coming in at 196,434 in 2015, the most recent year available.

Milwaukee's population is about 600,000.

Mike Crivello, president of the Milwaukee Police Association, denied officers make stops based on race or ethnicity. The problem is Flynn's emphasis on "quantity of work over quality," he said.

"It is unfortunate that the mandated quota-like demands of the chief of police, sanctioned by the mayor, has sown the seeds of distrust," Crivello said in a statement.

The police department and Fire and Police Commission have been on notice since at least 2011, when a Journal Sentinel investigation revealed that black Milwaukee drivers were seven times as likely to be pulled over as whites, the suit says.

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At the time, Flynn conceded that not all those people were involved in criminal activity.

“Yes, of course, we are going to stop lots of innocent people," he told the Journal Sentinel in 2011. "The point is, do folks understand what their role is as a cooperative citizen in having a safe environment.”

A new analysis by the ACLU "strongly suggests" Milwaukee police officers often don't have legal reasons for stops, the suit says.

"The bottom line is that the data we have so far on this unlawful and massive stop-and-frisk program show that black and Latino people are far more likely to be targeted for police stops, which raises serious concerns," said Nusrat Choudhury, the lead attorney on the suit.

Alicia Silvestre, who is Latina, says she was targeted in 2015. Police pulled her over, followed her home, aggressively entered her house and dumped out her purse looking for her driver's license — all while her 4-year-old granddaughter cried, according to the suit. When she called to complain, an officer told her she was pulled over for running a red light. But there was no light at the Bay View intersection where the stop occurred, the suit says.

Flynn maintains the disparities in stops reflect demographics of victims and perpetrators. In 2016, 79% of homicide victims and 75% of aggravated assault victims were African-American, as were more than 80% of the suspects in those crime categories, he said Wednesday.

"What we've been doing is using lawful traffic enforcement in public spaces to affect the environment," he said during a news conference.

The stops often don't result in citations or arrests and despite more police contact with citizens, the number of complaints against officers has declined annually since 2007, he said Wednesday.

Cumbersome complaint process

Tracy Adams, another plaintiff in the suit, said she tried to file a complaint but got only vague answers about how to do so.

Her son has been stopped at least three times over the past several years, beginning in 2010 when he was 11, the suit says. When no one answered the door at a friend's house, he took out his phone. Police grabbed it and took him to a squad car, where they patted him down.

When Adams called to complain about how officers treated her son, a sergeant at District 7 explained "that MPD officers have 'a policy to stop young men walking through alleys,' " the suit says.

It seemed to her the officers thought the issue was a "waste of time."

Earlier this month, the commission made it possible to file complaints online and began offering forms in Spanish and Hmong. It also relaxed the initial filing requirement so people do not need to have the forms notarized before submitting them.

DOJ report awaited

The ACLU's lawsuit comes as the public awaits the outcome of a collaborative reform report from the U.S. Department of Justice, which is expected to evaluate the Police Department's use of force, training and policies, including those that address stops and searches of citizens.

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Flynn requested the voluntary review more than a year ago — on the same day federal prosecutors announced they would not charge a now-fired Milwaukee police officer with the on-duty fatal shooting of Dontre Hamilton in Red Arrow Park.

The ACLU filed the suit while the report is pending because the Justice Department's recommendations through the collaborative reform process are not legally binding, said Choudhury, the attorney. If a department is violating constitutional rights, the process cannot ensure those violations stop, she said.

"This lawsuit at its core seeks to advance evidence-based and bias-free policing as do other civil rights lawsuits challenging massive stop-and-frisk programs," Choudhury said.

In 2013, a judge forced the New York Police Department to curb the practice of stop-and-frisk after a similar lawsuit.