What's going on with the police task force?
A survey recently presented reveals an interesting trend that goes beyond the Wausau PD
As April Bleske-Recheck, a psychology professor at UW-Eau Claire well versed in statistical methods, read the results of the most recent survey around policing in Wausau to Wausau’s Policing Task Force, a few things became crystal clear: Most people in Wausau really trust the police and like them; and a small minority group, not so much.
The same skew popped up in question after question in the survey, conducted by the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service for Wausau’s Policing Task Force. The vast majority of people agreed that most police officers are friendly and courteous, that they trust them. Both men and women overwhelmingly said they felt comfortable approaching police officers following a sexual assault incident.
In fact, the pattern presents an interesting example of ‘The thing we think we’re talking about is not the thing we’re actually talking about.” The most negative responses in the survey came from respondents with with a specific set of demographics: They tended to be non-white, under 30, non-heterosexual, non-homeowners, and folks with a history of police interaction. Respondents in those demographics had a much more negative view of the police. Bleske-Recheck said those demographics were very similar to her students in general.
Another on that list: Mental illness. The survey asked about mental health and 32% said they had some kind of mental health issue, and many listed more than one. They were much more prevalent in younger folks.
I’d like to say it’s a shock, but it isn’t because it’s starting to become a common narrative: younger people are much more likely to feel anxiety, suffer from mental health disorders, and feel unsafe. The Marathon County Youth Risk Behavior Survey is illustrative of that. The Marathon County Youth Risk Surveys have been trending in that direction (and that was before COVID - the latest one was delayed because of the pandemic). From a story I wrote earlier this year:
One that really stands out: The percentage of teens who have attempted suicide. In 2015 that number was 4.3% - roughly one in 25 high school students, alarming enough in and of itself. That number rose to 7% in the 2019 survey. That’s close to one in 14. To put it differently: it went from roughly one student out of every classroom to two in every classroom.
In that same survey, 15% considered suicide in 2019, a slight rise from previous years. And more than a quarter of students surveyed — 25% — reported feeling depressed.
That story was about the school district’s push for more funding via referendum to help address mental health in schools. It meant increasing the numbers of mental health staff (psychologists, counselors, social workers, etc); and that’s because the demand was there. Another anecdote from the February story:
The Wausau School District some years ago purchased a program called Gaggle, a software package that’s part of Google’s G Suite and marketed to schools to improve their safety. Gaggle allows any Google-powered school services — Gmail, or Google docs, etc — to be monitored by schools for certain keywords related to suicide, self-harm or threats to others. Words such as “kill,” “hurt” and “cut” are some examples. It ranks them in seriousness and sends on the ones considered dangerous to pupil services staff.
From September through January of 2019, Gaggle flagged 108 of these words, for pupil services teams to follow up on. In that time in 2020, it flagged 143.
The headline of that story was “The Kids are Not Alright” and while it was a reference to a The Who song, The Kids are Alright, it was a first look at what is becoming a strong trend in student mental health.
All of this begs the question, which is on the mind of city and police officials: What exactly do they do with those results?
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