MADISON, Wis. -- The new nominee for Pittsburgh police chief spent the majority of his career working in a smaller city with a very different culture from the one whose department he will lead next.
The streets in Madison are wider, and the buildings are generally cleaner. It's a place where strangers stop to say hello to each other and hold open doors. It's a city where it's ingrained in people to be polite.
Madison is home to the Wisconsin State Capitol, a large, white dome surrounded by restaurants and visible even from across Lake Mendota, where people go paddleboarding on the weekends.
Ask police and local politicians about the North District that Cameron McLay led as a police captain and they'll tell you that part of it contains million-dollar homes that sit on lakefront property. The lower-income, sometimes more troublesome area, they say, is Vera Court.
Drive through Vera Court and you'll see sets of brick apartment buildings, some with white columns out front. There's not a single boarded or abandoned building in sight. It's more comparable to Brookline than to Homewood.
The residents here express few complaints about the police who patrol their neighborhood.
One white woman, who was charged with disorderly conduct, complained that she felt a Madison police officer was racist because he spent more talking talking to a black woman involved in her case than he did to her. In the next breath, she praised another officer who helped organize a community parade when they installed speed bumps and plant a community garden.
Those second officer's tactics are ones often promoted in Madison, the sort of non-stereotypical police work on which the department prides itself.
Whether the tactics used in Madison will transfer to Pittsburgh remains to be seen.
"He looks terrific on paper," Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, said of Mr. McLay, "But that needs to translate to the leadership of the force. So time will tell."
He continued, "My biggest concern is that they do to Chief McLay what they did to David Kennedy," referring to a professor who tried to bring in a program aimed at reducing crime. "I fear he's going to have a real challenge to bring this police force under control."
Madison is a city of about 240,000 people, more than three-quarters of whom are white. The median household income at the last census rounded to $53,000, or about $15,000 higher than that of Pittsburgh. The officers combined make less than half the number of arrests Pittsburgh police do. According to their annual reports, Madison police arrested 7,828 people last year, and Pittsburgh police arrested 18,541.
Violent crime rates are lower here than they are in Pittsburgh. Madison recorded three homicides so far this year, while Pittsburgh surpassed 40 last month.
Madison police reported that they knew of 505 aggravated assaults last year and cleared -- or solved -- 71 percent of them. Pittsburgh police wrote in their annual report that they knew of 1,259 aggravated assaults last year and cleared 58 percent of them.
The most pressing issues in Madison include an increase in gun cases, domestic violence cases and concerns over what to do with the mentally ill, said Madison police Chief Michael Koval.
The average officer who handles those calls is about 29 years old and has a bachelor's, if not a master's degree, when joining the force. Madison tends to be the second or third department on an officer's resume, Chief Koval said.
It's hard to find controversy here, even in the lawsuits filed against the department. The Madison police department has been sued in federal court, where potential civil rights violations are heard, four times in the last five years.
Most of the federal cases involving the Madison police department, such as one filed by a homeless man who was angry that police removed him from a shelter, were dismissed after a judge found the suit did not make a claim on which action could be taken. One remains open -- filed by a man who claimed SWAT officers fired tear gas into his home without a search warrant or a warrant for his arrest because he refused to come outside. That case has been postponed while the plaintiff's criminal case on charges of strangulation and suffocation proceeds.
Mr. McLay, whose rank as a captain in Madison was similar to that of a commander in Pittsburgh, was not named in any of those suits, or in any filed in Wisconsin Circuit Court, according to court records.
Chief Koval said he does not think Mr. McLay, who in Madison was outranked only by an assistant chief and the chief, was ever disciplined during his nearly 30 years on the force.
Chief Koval called Mr. McLay a man whose ethics were never in doubt. The chief said Mr. McLay used vacation days and compensation time to do his consulting work with the International Association of Chiefs of Police while he worked on the Madison force.
"There were never any questions about it," Chief Koval said.
He described Mr. McLay as a man who will likely encourage officers to maintain their individuality while working, to form relationships with residents and to be the sort of officer who, if things remain orderly during a celebration after a sports victory, will high-five the people who are cheering in joy.
Madison is a city where officers pride themselves on doing non-traditional work, such as helping residents dig plots in the garden at Vera Court, where they planted okra and jalapeno peppers, among other things.
In the eyes of some, that's a mindset to which departments aspire. To others, it's a little laughable. Chief Koval jokes that his colleagues in other departments in Wisconsin refer to him as "Kumbaya Koval."
Whether those tactics used in Madison -- and by Mr. McLay -- will be welcomed by officers in Pittsburgh remains to be seen.
The vice president of the Pittsburgh police union said earlier this week that the union's executive board had voted not to speak to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette because it was angry about a cartoon mentioning police officers.
Stephen Mastrofski, a professor at George Mason University who has studied reform in police departments, said, "The chief's ability to deal with the union will be critical." The Pittsburgh police union and city officials are expected to negotiate their contract soon, and issues such as officer discipline and residency are likely to factor into those talks.
Mr. Mastrofski said equally important will be the sort of training Mr. McLay provides his officers, noting that some say if a chief tries to "change their attitudes, that's like trying to change their religion."
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