Wausau Policing Task Force asking for public input

WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAW) - The Wausau Policing Task Force, with the help of the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service, is hearing from the Wausau community on their experience with the local police departments.

“We want to hear from the community on their experience with police. We want to make sure we’re tailoring our recommendations for our community, there’s not really a one size fits all with this,” Wausau Mayor Katie Rosenberg said.

The task force is using in-person and virtual meetings as well as phone calls in English, Hmong, and Spanish. Also emails and letters to receive community input. That input is used for future task force discussions.

“These are the themes we’re seeing, that how we’re going to use this. We’re going to have a more detailed questionnaire, we’ll have a more detailed discussion and panel conversations. So this is just the beginning,” Mayor Rosenberg added.

If the conversations warrant action, they could end up at the Wausau Common Council.

“Ultimately developing a series of recommendations which we will again take out to the public and ask them to comment on and take out to the Wausau City Council,” Policing Task Force chair John Robinson explained.

The task force is taking feedback until February, but their work will not end there.

“One of the things we’ll be spending time on beyond the month of February is trying to address the human services needs component. We have a lot of work ahead of us but this is the start of that process,” Robinson added.

If you are interested in sending feedback or looking at the upcoming meetings, click here.

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