Milwaukee, Wis.— The combatants in Wisconsin’s historic
gubernatorial recall election brought the heat on the campaign
trail Thursday, after a newspaper story about the Milwaukee Police
Department improperly identifying hundreds of violent crimes.

Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign shifted the
spotlight on Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett after a
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found that,
since 2009, the police department misreported more than 500
incidents to the FBI as lesser offenses.

The city had reported a decline in violent crime last year, and
Barrett has trumpeted the lower numbers on the campaign trail.

“The Journal Sentinel found enough misreported cases in
2011 alone that violent crime would have increased 1.1 percent
instead of falling 2.3 percent from the reported 2010 figures,
which had their own errors,” the newspaper wrote.

Walker’s campaign pounced Wednesday, accusing Barrett of cooking
the books on crime statistics.

On Thursday morning, the governor joined a chorus of city and
state officials calling for an independent audit of the crime
statistics.

Walker said the matter boils down to trust, not just in
Milwaukee but in the state recall election.

“As a candidate, I think it’s important for the mayor of
Milwaukee to acknowledge that on the one item he highlights as an
example of leadership—the claim that violent crime has gone down in
the city of Milwaukee—the facts now in this report show that’s not
accurate,” the governor said during a news conference at the
office of the Milwaukee Police Association. The union, which
represents 1,700 law enforcement employees, has endorsed the
governor in the June 5 election.

Barrett was on the defense at a news conference Thursday morning
in Milwaukee, asserting there was no ill intent in data.

“Of course if the numbers are wrong we will correct them. I
think that goes without saying,” Barrett said Thursday. “My concern
really goes more to that the attacks on what is essentially the
rank-and-file members of the Milwaukee Police Department.”

“You’ve got a governor of the state coming in to attack the
Milwaukee Police Department,” Barrett added. “If he attacks the
integrity of the Milwaukee Police Department, if he attacks the
integrity of the beat cops or the supervisors or the chiefs, I will
call him on that.”

Walker, standing before law enforcement officials, countered
that the question was not about policing but rather about Barrett
taking political credit for numbers that appear to be wrong.


“That’s important information for not only people across the
state to know, but particularly for the citizens here in the city
of Milwaukee,” Walker said. “We should be able to question whether
that’s an example of failed leadership in the city of
Milwaukee.”

Michael Crivello, president of the Milwaukee Police Association,
said he took no offense by the governor’s comments, and that he did
not perceive Walker’s criticisms as an attack on front-line
officers.

“I see it as an affront to police officers by the mayor even
bringing that up,” he said. “Why the mayor would even suggest that
is insulting.”

Crivello said he has asked police and city leadership for the
better part of two years to check the numbers. He said said he has
suspected the data hasn’t represented the real crime picture in the
city, and that becomes a safety issue for the community and
police.

“Nothing was taken seriously,” he said. That is until the
newspaper’s crime report came this week.

This article originally appeared on
WisconsinReporter.com.