MADISON, Wis. — A series of public safety bills are now another step closer to the governor’s desk after clearing the Assembly on Thursday.
Among them, a proposal that spells out how Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and the city should split the cost of putting resource officers in schools received a floor vote.
The bill has seen some changes as it advanced through the legislative process. The most recent tweak has the city and school district evenly splitting the cost of school resource officers (SROs) instead of MPS on the hook for 75% of the costs and the city left to pick up the remaining 25%, as previously written.
“We have a situation here where for 438 days, both the city and the Milwaukee Public Schools have ignored state law,” State Rep. Bob Donovan, R-Greenfield, told reporters during a press conference ahead of Thursday’s session.
Resource officers were supposed to be in Milwaukee schools by January of last year, based on a law enacted in 2023.
However, that didn’t happen after the city and schools couldn’t agree on how to split expenses.
Now, there could be another law that spells out a 50-50 cost split and puts penalties in place for not following it.
“Any law that’s passed that doesn’t have any consequences for breaking that law isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on,” Donovan added.
Lawmakers in the Assembly also passed stiffer penalties for injuring or killing an animal used by a police or fire department.
If the proposal clears the Senate and is signed into law, those guilty of injuring a K-9 could be sentenced to up to six years in prison, while killing an animal could result in 10 years behind bars.
“When a police dog is coming at somebody and their teeth are on you or you are in imminent or actual danger of being mauled by an animal, nobody is looking up state statutes to try to determine if it’s a Class I or Class H felony to defend yourself,” State Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, said during floor debate.
“How about the number of times that the dog has stopped a killing? The dog didn’t get shot but a crime was stopped. We need to focus on that and protect the people of the state of Wisconsin,” State Rep. Jerry O’Connor, R-Fond du Lac, responded.
Right now, under current state law, someone who injures an animal officer faces a maximum three-and-a-half-year sentence. If someone kills an animal officer, they face up to six years in prison.
Another bill that passed and will now go to the Senate would require all schools, whether public, private or charter, to give parents notice sooner if their child is a victim of sexual misconduct by an employee of the school.
