According to a jaw-dropping story from the Madison Isthmus, the city’s Office of the Independent Police Monitor has issued a 31-page legal broadside at the very government that funds it, threatening legal action over proposed rules that would simply require the office to follow the same administrative policies as every other city agency.
Interim Monitor Aeiramique “Meeka” Glass, a professional police accountability activist imported from Baltimore and San Diego, dropped the bombshell memo on April 21, shortly before the Common Council was scheduled to discuss increased oversight of her office. She alleges that city alders, the city attorney’s office, and even the media are “unduly influencing” her operation in violation of the 2020 ordinance that created this so-called watchdog. “This office will explore the necessary legal action to address these violations and will pursue all available options to protect the independence the ordinance was written to guarantee,” Glass stated.
The proposed rules would require the office to submit quarterly reports, comply with standard city hiring, procurement, and IT policies, and limit the hiring of outside legal counsel, given the office’s existing $50,000 legal budget. But as for one city agency sewing another? City Attorney Michael Haas clarified, “The basic law in Wisconsin is that one city agency cannot sue another city agency.”
This isn’t oversight — it’s a temper tantrum from an unaccountable bureaucracy that’s done shockingly little actual work since its creation amid the 2020 “defund the police” hysteria. The office has burned through roughly $1.8 million in taxpayer dollars since 2020. Its current $405,299 annual budget, more than half of which goes to just three staffers’ salaries, could instead pay the full compensation for more than four entry-level Madison police officers. Yet it only recently closed its first case after years of backlog, botched an annual report with AI-generated nonsense (including a fake double-Capitols skyline that had to be yanked and revised), and saw its data analyst launch a hunger strike to protest “interference.”
The trigger? Modest proposals from alders to require the monitor to play by city rules on everything from public records to employee policies — the same rules every other department follows. Critics, including commentator David Blaska, nailed it: This office “can never be truly independent” because it’s still city government. It’s just pretending otherwise while resisting any real transparency or metrics.
Local reaction has been critical. Reddit threads in r/madisonwi are filled with residents calling it “wasting city money that should be used for something more productive.” Defund-the-monitor calls have emerged during budget discussions, with some alders advocating for reallocating funds to police body cameras, which the monitor’s own report notes as lacking.
Glass, who has previously led police accountability offices in other high-crime cities, characterized the criticism as political persecution. However, the office has faced ongoing delays and limited policy impact. The Common Council postponed consideration of the ordinance changes to August after two hours of heated public comment, with 79 opposed to the reforms and 42 in favor.
This fiasco exposes everything rotten about progressive “oversight” experiments. The creation of the monitor’s office during the George Floyd era to appease activists has made it a self-perpetuating jobs program for anti-cop ideologues who lecture police while producing little but racial disparity reports and demands for more money. Meanwhile, the Madison Police Department continues to face challenges such as recruitment shortages and increases in certain crime categories.
Concerns have been raised that the office is not delivering the intended accountability and is instead incurring high costs while resisting standard administrative requirements. Maybe it’s time to scrap it entirely and let the Police and Fire Commission do the job — without the drama, the hunger strikes, or the lawsuit theater. Defund the monitor before it embarrasses itself further through sheer incompetence.
