CITY OF MILWAUKEE SETTLEMENT AGREEMENTMilwaukee Settlement Agreement • March 1st, 2018
On July 23, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin entered an order adopting a Settlement Agreement (SA) among the Parties to Charles Collins, et al. v. City of Milwaukee, et al.1 The Plaintiffs in the case alleged that there had been racially disparate and unjustified stops, frisks, and other unconstitutional police actions. As required by the Settlement Agreement, the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) revised their Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to reflect constitutional policing standards specific to the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. SOP 085 (“Citizen Contacts, Field Interviews, Search and Seizure”) defines reasonable suspicion as “objective, individualized, and articulable facts that, within the totality of the circumstances, lead a police member to reasonably believe that criminal activity has been, is being, or is about to be committed by a specific person or people.” Additionally, for frisks to be war
