Chief Morales discusses directives handed down by Fire and Police Commission
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- The attorney for Chief Morales says he is going to do what he can to "fully, completely, and cooperatively" answer all the directives that were handed down by the Fire and Police Commission last week.
Attorney Frank Gimbel joined Chief Morales Tuesday to talk about the eleven directives that range from the department providing documents about certain cases to changing policy on the use of tear gas.
"I'll start off by saying a number of people have contacted the police department to express their support and these are from the community both residential and business," said Chief Morales.
Morales says the department met the portion of the directives that was due Monday and is working on the directives due in the coming days .
"There are many statements that essentially assert that the Chief has not been forthcoming or providing information on a number of subjects, we believe that is not an accurate statement," said Gimbel.
As part of the directives, the Fire and Police Commission stated, "The Chief's responses to the requests of the Board of the Fire and Police Commissioners has been unduly delayed or outright ignored," and listed several examples.
"We believe in almost each of the incidents -- which will be demonstrated in a writing prior to the 6th, the next meeting of the Fire and Police Commission -- that we will show that there were stream of information paths either directly or indirectly through emails and other sources for the predicate for the directives."
Gimbel said his office also wrote a letter and contacted Griselda Aldrete, the executive director of the Fire and Police Commission, about the deadlines on the directives.
"Relative to what appeared, at least to our office, to be a short window of time to respond to these matters, and a couple of days after that request was made, I received a correspondence from the director, again saying that the commission would have to take up the issue for the request for continuance or enlargement of the time, and to this date, no such meetings have been held, and no such invitation has been offered and we are proceeding on the assumption that the dates set forth are kind of committed to concrete."
"We sent a letter back to his attorney on behalf of the commission, that the commission would entertain if there were specific extensions for specific directives but we have not received any response back from them," Aldrete said outside of a Fire and Police Commission meeting Tuesday, "We are moving forward with the dates on the directives, and any other questions should be given to commissioners directly."
Aldrete also stated that there have been open lines of communication and "information is flowing rapidly between both of our offices" regarding the directives.
Morales said he is committed to the people of Milwaukee and members of the Milwaukee Police Department.
"I have a tremendous amount of love for the city of Milwaukee. This is the city I was born and raised in, being the chief is something -- I’m the 19th chief in the history of the city of Milwaukee -- what I mean by that is, I’m committed to the residents here in Milwaukee, I'm also committed to the sworn, the men and women of the department, that come to work every day regardless of a disease that's going out there, COVID, or regardless of protest demonstrations, some of them turning violent, coming to work. My obligation is to those two entities, the community and to the department."