The Madison Common Council is expected to decide Oct. 20 whether to fire the city’s interim independent police monitor, after alders introduced a resolution Tuesday accusing her of failing to complete essential duties of the job, including leading the search for a permanent replacement.
Council President Sabrina Madison is one of five sponsors of the resolution, along with Alders Will Ochowicz, Yannette Figueroa Cole, Tag Evers and Regina Vidaver. It would end the provisional appointment of Aeiramique “Meeka” Glass “effective immediately” and have the Common Council chief of staff supervise the monitor’s office staff until a permanent monitor is hired. That post is held by Karen Kapusta-Pofahl.
Ochowicz introduced the measure from the floor Oct. 6. The council voted 18-2 to introduce it, with Alds. Carmella Glenn and Julia Matthews opposed.
Glass has been Madison’s interim Independent Police Monitor since Dec. 8, 2025. The Police Civilian Oversight Board picked her after the resignation of the city’s first monitor, Robin Copley, and charged her with running the office and helping the board build a public process to hire a permanent monitor. Whoever took the interim job would not be eligible to apply for the permanent one, the city said when it announced the opening.
Origins
The Common Council created the Office of the Independent Police Monitor and the Police Civilian Oversight Board on Sept. 1, 2020, adopting Madison General Ordinances 5.19 and 5.20. The vote came near the end of a meeting that ran nearly nine hours.
The push for oversight went back years.
After Madison Officer Matt Kenny fatally shot 19-year-old Tony Robinson in March 2015, an ad hoc committee’s very first recommendation was to create an independent police monitor.
In a statement after the 2020 vote, Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said she hoped “this long-awaited effort will result in the transparency the community demands, as well as contribute to greater community confidence and trust in our police department.”
Under the ordinance, the oversight board recruits and hires the monitor, with confirmation by the Common Council. The office reviews police policies, procedures and completed investigations, monitors use-of-force incidents, makes recommendations to the police chief and reports annually to the mayor and council.
It can investigate complaints against officers but cannot discipline them; that power rests with the Police and Fire Commission. The ordinance gives the office “unfettered access” to police records and the power to issue subpoenas, both “to the extent permitted by law”.
The board met for the first time in November 2020. It hired attorney Robin Copley as the first monitor in late 2022, after at least two previously picked candidates backed out.
Copley resigned for personal medical reasons, the city said. Her last day in the office was Oct. 3, 2025, and her last day on the payroll was Nov. 4. Her resignation letter described a 2021 diagnosis of complex PTSD from “years of regular indirect yet in-depth exposure to graphic and violent police incidents.”
Glass’s record
The city’s announcement said Glass’s most recent role was chief of police accountability for the City of Baltimore, and that she was expected to lead the Madison office for about six to nine months.
In a Dec. 17, 2025, report to the oversight board, Glass said the office was working through a backlog of 19 complaints. By spring she reported closing eight of those complaint cases.
Her annual report included traffic-stop disparity analysis by the office’s data analyst, Greg Gelembiuk, and closed-case summaries.
The original cover of that report was generated with artificial intelligence and showed two state Capitol buildings overlooking Lake Monona. Glass apologized, retracted the report and issued a revised version. “I really, truly take accountability for the ignorance of not really and truly understanding how much the skyline means to this community,” she said at a news conference, WPR reported.
On June 15, the office released a report on the December 2024 death of 32-year-old Richard Lee Johnson after he was taken into Madison police custody. The Dane County medical examiner had ruled the death an accident from complications of cocaine toxicity. A forensic pathologist hired by the monitor’s office, Dr. Victor Weedn, concluded the cause was cardiac arrest brought on by the way police restrained Johnson, and city leaders urged the medical examiner to reopen the case. The monitor’s report said the death should have been ruled a homicide.
After Corey Ruiz was shot by a Madison police officer on July 22, Glass opened her own investigation.
On Aug. 4, as the city cleared a protest encampment at the site of the shooting, police drone video captured a physical altercation between Glass and officers. In a video the office’s data analyst posted to Facebook and later deleted, Glass said she would “f—ing burn this city down.” She has said she was speaking figuratively, and the office’s attorney, William Sulton, called the phrase a metaphor.
On Aug. 20, she sued Police Chief John Patterson and the department’s records custodian to get records from the shooting. She points to the ordinance’s “unfettered access” language. City Attorney Michael Haas says state law bars releasing the records while the state investigation and district attorney’s review are underway.
On Sept. 9, a Dane County judge granted a four-year restraining order to a Madison officer who said Glass pushed and scratched her during that encounter. Glass did not appear at the hearing. Madison police referred the incident to the Green Bay Police Department for an independent investigation.
Glass’s annual salary is $147,741, and the office’s 2026 operating budget was approved at $405,000. On June 9, the council unanimously extended her provisional appointment through March 31, 2027, or until a permanent monitor is hired.
The fight over rules – and who evaluates her
In a July 31 email to the city attorney, Glass wrote: “As you know, we do not have to comply with APMs other than what we do in good faith when I feel comfortable doing so.” APMs are the city’s administrative procedure memoranda.
An Aug. 31 memo from Haas, Finance Director David Schmiedicke, Human Resources Director Erin Stenson and IT Director Sarah Edgerton, requested by Council President Madison, said Glass hired independent contractors without following city purchasing procedures, turned in the office’s budget request late, missed the mayor’s budget meeting and failed to properly notice oversight board meetings, among other complaints. The memo also said the city hired an outside firm to investigate several human resources complaints involving the office’s staff.
WISC reported on the contents of a 42-page review dated Oct. 2 that came from the city attorney’s office in response to “inquiries from the public and alders”. It describes serving as hiring manager for a permanent monitor as Glass’s primary duty and says that, nearly 10 months in, there is still no approved position description, job posting or candidate referred for consideration. It calls itself “a review only” and leaves any decision to the council, and Haas confirmed it is not an official evaluation of her job performance.
Glass told WISC she did not think the review was legitimate and that only the oversight board could review her office. The board said in a statement that other assessments of Glass are not its official performance review and should not be treated as one.
This is not the first clash between the council and the monitor’s office. Dairyland Sentinel reported in April that the council delayed proposed ordinance changes after Glass alleged in an April 21 memo that city leadership had used false statements about her office. Those amendments would have made the office follow city administrative procedure memos, required quarterly reports and required it to use the city attorney for administrative matters. The council sent them back to the oversight board, and the sponsors withdrew them after Ruiz was killed.
What happens next
The resolution is the next formal test of Glass’s appointment.
Money is part of the fight, too. Rhodes-Conway’s proposed 2027 budget, released Tuesday, gives the office $432,328. Glass had asked for about $781,000. The mayor said the office was the only agency that skipped the requested 2% cut and missed budget deadlines, so it got “a flat cost-to-continue budget.”
The oversight board, meanwhile, launched a survey last week asking residents what they want in a permanent monitor. Ochowicz told the State Journal that Glass had not told city officials about the survey.
Glass, in a WPR interview published Oct. 1, said the office is “finally doing what it was created to do, and doing it without the resources necessary, without the staffing necessary.”
Whether she stays to do that work is now up to the council that created the office six years ago.
Text of the Resolution
To terminate the appointment of the Interim Independent Police Monitor effective immediately.
WHEREAS, Aeiramique Glass has been serving in the position of Interim Independent Police Monitor on a provisional basis since December 2025; and,
WHEREAS, the Common Council extended the provisional appointment of Aeiramique Glass as Interim Independent Police Monitor until March 31, 2027, by resolution on June 9, 2026; and,
WHEREAS, the Common Council extended the provisional appointment with no change to the terms of her current appointment, including the primary responsibility to serve as the hiring manager for the posting, recruitment and hiring of a permanent Independent Police Monitor along with performing all of the duties of the position until such time as the position is filled on a competitive basis; and,
WHEREAS, the Common Council has reviewed the memorandum dated August 31, 2026, from several City agency heads and the memorandum from the Deputy City Attorney dated October 2, 2026, which identify concerns with the actions of the Interim Independent Monitor in completing her responsibilities, including but not limited to serving as hiring manager for the permanent Independent Monitor; and,
WHEREAS, the Common Council has determined that the actions of Interim Monitor Glass in failing to complete essential duties of the position constitute a breach of contract with the City and that it is necessary to terminate the extension of her provisional appointment in order to reestablish the City’s progress towards effective civilian oversight of the Madison Police Department;
NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Common Council hereby terminates the extension of the provisional appointment of Aeiramique Glass as Interim Independent Police Monitor effective immediately.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Common Council Chief of Staff shall supervise the staff of the Office of the Independent Monitor until such time as a permanent Independent Police Monitor is hired or until further order of the Common Council.
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the Common Council Chief of Staff shall work with the Finance Department to develop a scope of work to engage the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement to support the Common Council’s commitment to police oversight.
— Madison Common Council resolution file 95140
Previously at Dairyland Sentinel
