A Madison police officer shot and killed Corey Durell Ruiz on Wednesday after Ruiz pulled a fixed-blade knife and wounded an officer in the middle of a busy intersection. Tragically, there were no body cameras on the officers involved. Why? Because the Madison Common Council has repeatedly refused to equip its police with this basic tool of transparency. The public is left to piece together the truth from shaky bystander videos, anti-police protesters, and whatever the department can provide.
Police responded just after 1 p.m. on July 22 to reports of a man casing parked cars in the Marquette neighborhood. Ruiz bolted on a bicycle, weaving through backyards. Officers caught up with him at Williamson and South Baldwin, where a struggle erupted in the middle of the intersection. Chief John Patterson reports that Ruiz produced a fixed-blade knife and managed to injure an officer. A Taser was deployed without success. The officer who was cut then fired multiple rounds at close range. Four officers were present, but only one had to pull the trigger. Ruiz died at the scene. The wounded officer was treated for a non-life-threatening injury.
Ruiz, age 41, was no stranger to law enforcement. Court records show felony convictions for two counts of strangulation/suffocation and robbery with force in 2009; cocaine and marijuana possession plus bail jumping in 2014; bail jumping and auto theft in 2020; resisting an officer causing substantial bodily harm and battery or threat to a judge, prosecutor or law enforcement officer in 2021; And that’s not even counting the parade of misdemeanors—retail theft, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, drug paraphernalia—racking up charges as recently as 2024. This is the sort of career criminal that soft on crime anti police cities keep recycling back onto the streets.
Madison, ever the progressive outlier, is still one of the only major police departments in Wisconsin that refuses to equip its patrol officers with body cameras. For over a decade, the Common Council has stonewalled, delayed, and outright blocked every attempt by police leadership to bring the department into the 21st century.
In 2015, the council rejected a body-camera pilot by a 19-1 vote. In 2017, it removed $123,000 from the capital budget that would have funded 47 cameras and related equipment. A limited pilot in the North District was eventually approved in 2023 by a 16-4 vote after years of study. The four “no” votes included then-Alder Juliana Bennett, along with Alders Nikki Conklin, Yannette Figueroa Cole and Sabrina Madison. Bennett had previously proposed language directing the city not to pursue either a pilot or full deployment of body cameras. Bennett, who left the council and is now the DSA-endorsed Democratic candidate for the 76th Assembly District
In November 2025, during debate on the 2026 operating budget, Alders Barbara Harrington-McKinney, Isadore Knox Jr. and Joann Pritchett offered a floor amendment that would have redirected approximately $405,000 from the Office of the Independent Monitor to staff positions needed to support a body-camera program. The amendment failed 17-3. Only the three sponsors voted yes. The majority of the council, including progressive members, rejected the funding shift. Body cameras were instead placed on a “horizon list” for possible future consideration.
Chief Patterson has continued to describe body-worn cameras as “an essential tool for the modern police officer.” In June 2026, he again requested a phased rollout beginning in the North District as part of the 2027 capital budget process. The Wisconsin Professional Police Association has long supported the technology, noting that without officer-perspective video, critical incidents become the subject of competing narratives and speculation.
Madison’s far-left Common Council, still living in the shadow of the 2020 riots, has doubled down on restricting police use-of-force and restraining holds. In the Ruiz case, officers tried a Taser unsuccessfully, then had to resort to deadly force when faced with a knife-wielding repeat offender. If body cameras had been in place, we’d have an independent record of what actually happened, instead of relying on the selective outrage of activists and the council’s own narrative.
The investigation will face an independent review. Bystander cell phone videos caught bits and pieces of the chaos, but without body cameras, there is no full officer-perspective record. That gap is no accident. It is the direct result of years of deliberate, ideological policy choices by Madison’s elected Common Council.
