Equity commissioners "disheartened" with resignations, determined to continue work on race and arrests report

The commission, established two years ago as a nine-member panel, met with just four of its remaining members after commissioners Brad Backer, Derrell Greene and Mimi Yang all resigned within days of each other earlier this month.

“It’s … obviously, disappointing, you know, to lose members that were with us from the very beginning. It’s disappointing,” said Commissioner Justin Crosby to a crowded auditor’s meeting room, which barely held the 30 people in attendance. “I’m not gonna lie. It’s disheartening because it’s kind of leaving it in the air of `Where’s this committee gonna go?’ to be honest with you.”

Five vacancies

With five vacancies now to be filled, according to Crosby, the prospect of jump-starting the commission with more than half of it missing doesn’t appear encouraging.

“It doesn’t get the motor going,” he said.

Supervisor Daniel Gaschke, who along with Supervisor Brian Thomas are County Board representatives on the commission, reminded the panel and audience that Friday (March 17) was the deadline to apply or nominate candidates to apply for the newly vacant positions.

Commissioner Elizabeth Garcia said she imagined County Executive Samantha Kerkman would also be drawing from a previous list of applicants in addition to the most recent call for nominees.

“I really hope that the people in the room that keep coming to meetings, telling us how much they have so many thoughts and exciting ideas, apply … I hope people take this seriously and apply because we need support and we need members,” she said.

Gaschke said that he did not fault the commissioners for resigning, adding that they all had different perspectives and that “everybody has to do what the need to do.”

Displeasure over nominees

Backer and Greene resigned March 3 citing displeasure over County Executive Samantha Kerkman’s recent nominations to appoint A. Brian Gonzales and Xavier Solis, one a retired Kenosha Police officer, the other a Bristol attorney. Her nominations have yet to be confirmed by the County Board. On March 23, the Executive Committee is expected to consider and vote on Kerkman’s nominations before they go to the full County Board for consideration in April.

The resignations, however, have led to public outcry from local religious and civil rights leaders who have challenged the county executive and the board to reconsider the nominees. Before and during last week’s County Board meeting, Congregations United to Serve Humanity, Leaders of Kenosha and Black Leaders Organizing Communities protested the nominations saying they represented “extremist” interests seeking to take over the commission responsible for coming up with solutions to the disparities racial and ethnic groups face in the county.

The groups have especially questioned her recommendation of Gonzales pointing to his statement to the County Board in 2021 opposing the need for an equity and diversity coordinator and saying he had not experienced the racism they talk about. Gonzales, who ran unsuccessfully for sheriff, was directly involved in the police shooting of Michael E. Bell in 2004 and wrote a book detailing the violence that led to a libel lawsuit by Bell’s father. Solis previously represented the attorney of a foundation that initially raised the $2 million bail for Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who was later acquitted in the shooting deaths of two men and injury of a third, during the riots in August of 2020.

Backer, a local attorney, and Greene, a retired county veterans affairs division director, have criticized Kerkman for not taking racism seriously, accusing her of not filling the two vacancies in a timely manner after commissioners Brian Martinez, the former chair, and Tyler Arentz resigned last year before their terms were to expire at the end of 2022. Backer has said Kerkman attempted to “whitewash” the problem of racism, while Greene pointed to her selection of two men when the commission has never had a Black woman on it.

Yang, a Carthage College professor who was the vice chair and had been splitting her time between Kenosha and Boston, cited her research and increased travel as reasons for why she chose to step down. Backer’s commission was to expire at the end of this year, while the terms for Greene and Yang positions end Dec. 31, 2024.

Thomas said that filling the three latest vacancies “theoretically” might not occur until June as they would undergo the same selection, vetting and committee process as the two that will come before the Executive Committee next week.

May re-do report

At Thursday night’s meeting, the commission also discussed the presentation of the race and arrests report that went before the Executive Committee in February. The committee unanimously rejected the commission’s findings and recommendation to hire a consultant to investigate countywide arrest disparities by race. Comprising the Executive Committee are the chairs of the county’s standing committees.

Among the commission’s findings was that Black adults were 6.7 times more likely to be arrested than white adults, while Black juveniles were as many as 5.5 times more likely to be apprehended by law enforcement than their white peers countywide. The commission’s report based its data on the state’s uniform crime report summary.

The committee turned down the report after raising a number of questions about the data and indicating it wasn’t complete enough, as it lacked dis-aggregation of figures for arrests of Hispanics, considered an ethnicity and not a race. The committee also asked whether the report considered mandatory arrests and questioned the commission’s premise for reviewing race-based arrests countywide as Kenosha County has no jurisdiction over those made by other law enforcement agencies. In the county there are four other independent police agencies: Kenosha, Pleasant Prairie, Twin Lakes and University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

Thomas, who joined the commission in August, had previously presented more demographic data to his colleagues, but it had not been considered in the report.

“Talking about this, I think we should probably … once we have more than four (commissioners) … review those numbers and that we present them from a county law enforcement standpoint the best we can instead of a countywide (perspective),” he said.

Thomas said it would be helpful to re-do the report “and restore some of the confidence that the community needs in how our county law enforcement is handling their efforts.”

Garcia said that the report to the committee should have also been able to include the personal anecdotes of the people they heard from at the listening sessions held over the last year.

“We’ve done a lot of good work already,” she said.

Lack of leadership

Garcia said the commission has lacked leadership needed to act on its mission, something that became more evident as data-laden reports were prepared for members, but devoid of synthesis in promoting the community engagement from the listening sessions.

“It’s even more frustrating because one of the parts of our report should be that we are lacking leadership of some sort,” she said of the quarterly reports the commission presents to the committee.

Thomas said that Garcia was referring to the internal leadership of the commission and not that of the administration or the Executive Committee. He said the commission is self-run with some guidance from the committee.

“It was a commission issue with the chairperson not fulfilling the responsibilities he agreed to when he took the job of chair,” he said. “That’s led to lots of other things, like being frustrated, because we weren’t getting things done and it is a little disheartening.

“I think there’s still a lot of the core of us here,” he added. “I think, obviously, we still want to get things done because we’re here, while being patient while this gets done.”