New Info on Ruiz Shooting, Blood Donation Shortage, and Madison Black Restaurant Week

For more than 50 years, Outreach LGBTQ Plus Community Center has proudly served the greater Madison community, working to advance equity and improve quality of life for LGBTQ plus people through community building, health and human services, and advocacy. Join Outreach at Magic Pride Festival on Sunday, August 16th at Warner Park for a day of entertainment, family activities, vendors, and community celebration. We can't wait to celebrate with you. This is CityCast Madison. I'm Bianca Martin, and here's what Madison's talking about. Good morning, Madison, and happy election day. It is executive producer Haley Spurling here, sitting in for your host, Bianca Martin. I hope you have a plan in place to vote. Here on CityCast, Madison, we'll be covering the results of today's election on tomorrow's show. But in the meantime, we've still got a lot to talk about today. updates on the police shooting of Corey Ruiz, a nationwide blood shortage emergency, and some good news. It's Madison Black Restaurant Week. With me now to dig into all of these stories is Madison 365 executive editor and CityCast Madison contributor. Rob Chappell. Hello, Rob. Hello, Haley. How are you? I am doing well. It is... Another day in Madison, and we're here to talk about the highs and lows of the city, right? Right. It's been, you know, roughly three weeks since a Madison police officer shot and killed Corey Ruiz on Madison's near East Side. And as we all have been witnessing, the fallout has continued. The site of the shooting had become a memorial and an encampment for unhoused individuals. But city staff and law enforcement moved to clear it out last week. We talked about that on the podcast. But this led to more than 20 arrests over the course of the day. And that same day that the. intersection was getting cleared out. Independent police monitor, Eramid Glass was injured in a clash with police. There's been a lot of inflammatory rhetoric going in all directions. So I really want to try to sort through that all and put the facts on the table. Rob, that's why we have you here. So I know we've got some updates on this story. What is the latest news here? Well, the DCI, the Division of Criminal Investigation at the State Department of Justice did put out its first update on Monday morning. There was not very much new information in that, except that they did name the officer who was kill.

Bedinger Peterson, who has 10 years and 10 months of law enforcement experience, according to that release. The other new bit of information there is that DCI says that two officers attempted to use their taser, quote, without success. We knew that there was one. We knew there was one officer had tried to use a taser and then kill Badinger Peterson open fire about three seconds after that taser was deployed. But DCI is saying that there were two officers who both attempted to use a taser and both were not successful. So we will hopefully get some more detail on that at some point. We still don't have any official video from the police department, which, as we know, Madison doesn't have the body cams, but they do have dash cams on all those police cars that were around there. We'll have some video. Nobody except. the police department and DCI has seen those videos, nor do we have any statements or reports from the officers involved. And we should say that the officer of the independent monitor does not have any of that MPD evidence either. So the biggest news here is we have the cop's name. And I do want to set some context here because I think people have probably heard this name before. You know, protesters have been saying it in their movements and inactivations. But, you know, in the media side of things, we have not put that out because it was not confirmed by an official source. Now we have it confirmed by the DOJ. I want to. ask you like why more evidence hasn't been released. You know, when it came to the altercation between the independent police monitor and law enforcement, MPD was able to release drone footage of that incident on the same day it happened. So it is proven by them that they do have the capability to act quickly here. Oh, no doubt, no doubt. First of all, that, that drone footage of that altercation was completely under control of MPD. It's not a criminal investigation. There's not another agency that has taken anything. Basically, the legal opinion of the city attorney, Michael Haas, and everybody else I've talked to, is that once that third party investigation starts, that that third party takes control and custody of all the evidence and therefore has complete control over all that evidence. And in the case of that drone footage of the... altercation between the police and army glass or any other incident whatever that doesn't involve a third party mpd can just release it anytime they want to as soon as there's a critical incident is what the mpd calls it which is a death of a person involving a police officer that

That investigation has to be taken over by a third party. And that is state law. There is a separate third party, in this case, DCI, that has to do that investigation. That investigation is looking for criminality. They're trying to gather enough facts so that a prosecutor can decide whether there was a criminal act done by the police officers. In that altercation with police, that's not a consideration. And PD can just release it if they want to. And they did. I'm not sure if they thought that that drone footage made it look better for them or not. I don't think it did. But, but, you know, and maybe they just wanted to be transparent, which is, you know. Hey, we love the transparency here, right? We'll leave it to the people decide. We do. I want to get a little bit deeper into this because it's sounding like what you're saying is that the more cooks in the kitchen, the longer this process takes. Oh, yeah. And there's a lot of, like, legalese to sort through here. Yep. So you kind of dug into that. Like, what can you tell me about, like, the state statutes that folks need to be aware of when it comes to this investigation? When you ask and when every glass asked, they just kind of say state law says we can't share the evidence with the independent monitor. We can't. And I've gotten that before when I've asked for evidence that they always say it's an ongoing investigation, therefore we can't release it. Okay, fine. Now, we should say John Patterson, the police chief said the day after the shooting, we are not going to let open an investigation be an excuse not to share. He didn't put any qualifications on that. So I'm trying to hold him to that. He talks a lot about transparency and trust and everything. And he's absolutely right when he talks to that way. But basically what they've said is, We're not denying the office of the independent monitor access to the evidence. We're just saying that it's a matter of timing. You will have complete access to the evidence after DCI is done with it. So the question is when the independent monitor is trying to conduct an independent, time-sensitive investigation is not right now the same as no for her purposes. I think she would say, yes, it is the same, that they are obstructing, whatever. The law that the police department first cited to me is statute 175.47. I would encourage people to go read it. It's very short and actually pretty comprehensible as state statutes go. Okay, because I'm not a lawyer. Nor am I. And this is why I keep asking about it, because the plain text of that statute doesn't say anything at all about sharing records of any kind. Yes or no. It just doesn't address it. All it says is that... law enforcement agencies must have a policy to deal with a critical incident or an officer involved death. And it lays out some minimal requirements for those policies, namely that the policy has to include an impended investigation by at least two investigators, neither of whom can be employed by the agency. That's where you get the whole third party thing. It also says specifically that an internal investigation may happen simultaneously to that criminal investigation, like an employment. Basically, are we going to fire this officer? It's a different question as to whether this officer committed a crime. It explicitly allows that internal investigation. It doesn't say anything about sharing evidence of any kind and doesn't say that the order of operations, doesn't say you have to wait for this one, doesn't say anything about that. But what Michael Haas put in the FAQs on the city website is saying that that's what this law says. In practice, what that means is.

DCI has full custody and control over the evidence. What I'm trying to get is, too, is does the state law say anything about that practice? can change. Or is that just, that's how we do things, because that's how DCI wants us to do things. And it's, it doesn't, that's not what it says in the statute. We're awaiting. Carmelo Glenn, the vice president of the Common Council, has asked for sort of an official opinion on this from Michael Haas. I have asked some very specific questions. He has promised a memo sometime this week, I guess. So we'll wait and see what it comes up with. Yeah, I guess we'll be waiting with bated breath on that one. I mean, I do. think, you know, folks have been probably feeling like they've waited a long time for this cop's name to come out for this information to come out. But I do think, like, the fact that the DOJ released the name of the officer responsible for Ruiz's death almost three weeks to the date after the incident is kind of a big deal. Because to put this into context, as the Cap Times noted in some of their reporting on this story, in the death investigation of Richard Johnson, who folks might remember died after being taken into Madison police custody. in 2024, the DOJ didn't release the officer's name. And the Cap Times had to file an open records request to get that info. So we at least see a little bit more proactivity, I guess, here from the Justice Department. And obviously then we know the independent monitor came out with their report on that incident as well. So a little bit more attention here. I do want to take a step back, too, because we've been talking about the Wisconsin DOJ's investigation here. And you've mentioned it too, but there's also the matter of the Madison's office. of the independent police monitor and their tangential investigation, which you've kind of mentioned is, you know, being held up by this lack of information being released. Like, what's going on there? I just checked in with the monitor glass this morning. She said this, there's no real updates at this point. She is conducting an investigation. It's not like she has nothing, right? She has all the cell phone videos that we've all seen. She's got witness statements. She's got other stuff like that. But. So in the end, it might, you know, is this a big deal for this investigation? Are the dash cam videos really going to add anything to her investigation? Probably yes. But that doesn't mean she can do nothing until she gets those. The question for me is one of precedent that what happens when there aren't cell phones around? What happens like you mentioned in the case of Richard Johnson, which that happened in a hotel parking lot on the east side? And then he died basically in the back of a squad car where there's no witnesses other than the squad car video. So. When you're talking about a future investigation where there isn't, where maybe she couldn't do anything until she gets the evidence from DOJ. That's kind of a bigger question for me. But in terms of the court of reason investigation, the independent monitor did issue a subpoena, which I think you've talked about. The thing is that state law actually defines some differences in access to public records between an authority and a requester.

You and I are requesters. We can request any public documents we want, and there are some restrictions about what can be released to us. Okay. Not a lot of restrictions, but some. Like regular people. We're regular people, right? Sure. An authority is like a city agency or an elected official. State law presumes that an authority has more access to certain types of public records. So for now, at least the city of Madison and Madison Police have been treating Air Macon Glass as a requester. rather than as an authority. It seems to me. Interesting. Yeah. And they keep referring to the subpoena as your request. Hmm. You know, words matter, you know. But a subpoena is not something you can just ignore. You have to either try to quash it or, you know, go to court. So there is an independent attorney that's working with the independent monitors. There will be legal actions. She hasn't said specifically what those will be. But, yeah, it's going to end up in court probably before too long. Well, we've got a long road in front of us here. I know that's for sure. I really appreciate you bringing all this context here, Rob. We have got more stories just around the corner, but we do want to hear from you folks out there listening. What questions do you have about this story? Who would you like to hear from next? Is that the mayor, the police chief? Let us know, you can text us or leave us a voicemail on the city cast Madison hotline. That's at 608-38-38-3367. Stay close and we will be right back.

Sun Prairie, you know, those donor centers are there just about every day of the week. And all you need to do is I said, go to red crossblood.org. You can come in. We do take walk-ins, but certainly appointments are a better way to go if you can. Now, are there any restrictions on who's allowed to donate? I'm old enough to remember when you couldn't donate blood if you'd been to England in the last couple years or something like that from but mad cow disease times in the 90s. Are there any similar restrictions like that on who can donate? There are restrictions for some folks with travel. I always say to folks, if you ever questioning that, I know the CDC is the one that kind of dictates on, you know, what countries or areas in the world if you've been to. But if you ever have questions on that, again, red crossbled.org, or you can call 1-800 Red Cross and ask if that particular area is an area that, you know, you... you'll be restricted to. But typically, a lot of that's been lifted, Rob. That's changing and updated every day. So, you know, make sure you double check that. All right. That's really, really good to know. And I want to bring this conversation back locally, too, because as we said, this is a nationwide emergency. But, Kyle, I'm wondering if you can kind of help paint us a picture here of what does the part of Wisconsin that your chapter covers? Like, what are we looking like here? To be honest, Wisconsin in general is really an exporter state for blood. But, you know, right here in Wisconsin, we have seen a tremendous drop-off that had hit us. You know, just think about for our area, like you just said, in April, we had some major tornadoes and also flooding that hit our communities. You know, Janesville area and up near Portage, and, you know, our areas were hit with these disasters, and we had to cancel drives. Right now, the American Red Cross, we're responding to the tornado that hit. Appleton, Nina Manasha, you know, there are drives that were scheduled up there that were canceled, obviously, because, you know, we can't operate in those neighborhoods that have been impacted. And many people are out because they're not, they're working on, you know, cleaning up their homes and trying to find a place to live. So those things happen and impact us here locally as well as nationally. Yeah, you keep bringing up things happening within our environment and the climate. And perhaps it's naive of me to say, like, I never really thought that, you know, a tornado or a heat wave or illness, you know, more or less. But like things like that would impact. blood supplies here in the nation. Is this something that like is really only going to be more prevalent as we continue to see the effects of climate change? Like I'm not trying to get too political here, but this is a reality that we're all dealing with. Well, again, I would just say that I know as from our disaster services workforce and team, we are seeing much larger disasters that we're responding to. nationally. We're responding to them more often. We used to say that a billion-dollar disaster operation, it would cost to the Red Cross when we respond used to be 18 months. And now today, it's almost like every two weeks. So it's a very big difference in what we're seeing when we're responding to disasters. And that has, again, an impact with the need for blood. Because, again, there's two pieces to that. One, where we see is we have to cancel drives. And where do you make that up in the system?

And then two, you'll also see an increased need many times with these large-scale disasters. I'm curious to know a little bit more if you're able to to know more about like blood in general. Like I know that type O donors are especially needed right now because O negative blood can be given universally and O positive blood can be given almost to everyone. I'm sure that type O folks, you know, they know how special their blood type is and how important it is to donate, of course. But like. How can people find out their blood type? Does the Red Cross do that? Is that something you have to go to your doctor for? I personally have a very big fear of needles, so I'm outing myself here as a non-donor, but I am curious to learn more. Yeah, typically that's something that you would find out your blood type through your local medical provider. But I do want to just say that you're absolutely right. Right now we are taking all different types of blood. So it doesn't matter what blood type you are. We're taking all blood types. But to your point, Type O is the most highly sought after type, whether it's negative or positive. That is the one that we're most looking for. So if you are a donor and your type O, we're giving you a lot of calls and emails asking you to come in every 56 days so that we can make sure we've got that blood on hand. I always tell folks, make sure to make an appointment because that will guarantee that you get in and get through on time. It takes about an hour to make a blood donation, a whole blood donation. Make sure that you're well hydrated. Make sure that you've had a meal or a breakfast. Just make sure you're feeling well and... There's also some things that you can do to help speed up the process. One of the quickest things to do is if you have downloaded the Red Cross blood app, it's free on your smartphone. You can prepare a lot of the online stuff to help to speed up the process for your blood donation. So there's some questions and things that they're going to ask you that you can kind of do sometimes in advance if you've got the blood donor app or they call it the rapid pass. So those are some things that you can do to help speed that up. I would say, too, if you have a fear of needles or if you're like, oh, I don't know if I want to go. I've always told folks, bring a friend, bring a family member with you to kind of go through the process together. That kind of takes some of that anxiety away and kind of helps you go through the process. And besides, I mean, great snacks at the canteen, whether it's cookies and juice. So, I mean, it's just some great things afterwards which you give blood. All right. You're tempting me with the snacks here. Kyle, this has been super, super helpful. I'm really glad that you're able to explain a lot more about this situation. Before we let you go, is there anything else that folks should know about the Southwest Wisconsin chapter of the Red Cross, about this blood shortage, anything else that you'd like to share here?

Yeah, I do want to just mention that during the month of August, if you come in and make a blood donation, you will afterwards receive an email from the American Red Cross with a $20 Amazon gift card. So another little incentive for you to give blood. You know, I know a lot of folks are getting ready for going back to school. And so, hey, 20 bucks, we could all use an additional 20 bucks. But I do just want to mention that it's... It's really critical at this time. We need folks to come out and donate. But if you're not able to do it today, tomorrow, or this week, make that appointment for next week or, you know, the next few weeks ahead. It really is critical that we have folks if you're able to to come in and give blood. And again, you can go to Red Crossblood.org or call 1-800 Red Cross to make your appointment. Kyle Kriegel, thank you so much for taking the time to tell us all about this and to give us the update here. I really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Coming up next, we've got some good news in the neighborhood. It is Madison Black Restaurant Week. So stay tuned for that. But first, we're going to take a quick break.

All right, we are back. And this week marks the start of the 11th annual black restaurant week here in Madison. Y'all should know about this because it's actually something that Bianca shouted out in our August guide episode. And it's finally here. The event kicked off over the weekend. So here's a quick rundown of what folks need to know in case you missed Bianca's quick information. There are participating restaurants across the city who are featuring unique dishes and specials. that will run through August 16th. And all week during Black Restaurant Week, diners can vote on their favorite restaurants and culinary businesses. And the winners of the community favorites will be announced at the end of the week. And I learned this from Madison 365. When Madison Black Restaurant Week started back in 2016, it was the first such celebration in the nation, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it was innovative. And our reporter, Omar Raheed, is always on the Black Restaurant Week beat. I think he's just a hungry guy. So he, like, enjoys the food. But also this year, there are 16 restaurants, 17 food trucks and caterers, and there are a lot of new entrants. Okay. Which meant he had to do a little bit of extra work to write up the guide. This year, a bunch of new restaurants to profile. So that's pretty exciting. There's a lot of new places to try this year. We love new players. We love new faces. Rob, you just mentioned it. Madison 365 put together a guide to Black Restaurant Week. What do folks need to know? And are there any places that you want to shout out any of these new faces or spaces? I think folks just know there are some events. Maybe we'll get to those in a second that they should hit, besides just visiting all these restaurants. I want to note that Fyaside Kitchen, which was a food truck in the Delance, is now a restaurant on Monroe Street. I love Fyaside, but also I want to note that they are also catering the 365 liters of summit this year at the Center for Black Excellence in Culture in October, so watch out for that. But the one I want to, I'm excited to try is Vita Bella, which is a black-owned Italian restaurant. It's in Mount Horp. Nice. So my wife and my son went and tried it and a couple weeks ago and really, really enjoyed it. So I'm definitely going to, that'll be my stop for sure for the restaurant week. I always love Italian food. Like truly, I'm very basic when it comes to it, though. Chicken Parmesan is my go to. And I mean, I don't even know. Yeah, you can't go wrong. You can't go wrong. But I know I'm also really excited for this week. I really want to go to Baraka. It's a Madison classic. They've been around for a long time. Started off. I used to go there all the time when they were on State Street, would get food from their food cart. But they also have a fish fry that I've never had yet that I really. want to check out. And I know the owners of Baraka kind of like put out a call and said, guys, like, we need business. We're kind of in danger of closing down. And the community really rallied and responded and they did really well. But now they're kind of sliding back because as we've mentioned, there are a lot of fallouts from the police shooting of Corey Ruiz. And one of those was impacts on local businesses and whatnot. And so they are definitely still feeling the impacts to their business because of the shutdown of the intersection there.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it's rough. I mean, and it's a, the county is rough for everybody anyway. So your margin for error is pretty thin. So when you something like this happens, you're going to start to lose. So now, this is explicitly a week set aside for you to support these black owned restaurants. And how, how very Wisconsin, though, to have a fish fry? on Friday night. Right. It feels like a fusion dish to me almost. I mean, not like Wisconsin. I mean, I don't know. Is fish fry technically Wisconsin cuisine? I don't know. Maybe, but they're bringing their own flavor to it, right? So it's going to be fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. I love that you point out, like this is really just a week set aside for people to make a concerted effort to check out these places. I think a thing that's really... Interesting to me, too, is something that Angiana Nardine pointed out in her story for the Cap Times on Black Restaurant Week. She said that black business owners are more likely to have a catering operation than a brick-and-mortar restaurant, which I thought was just pretty interesting, considering the landscape, like you said, for businesses. It's really hard out there for anyone to be sustainable. Yeah, I mean, other black entrepreneurs are much more likely to be self-funded. Typically, the tendency, not all obviously, but the tendency is to have less of a relationship with the bank, have a harder time getting loans and investors and that kind of thing. And the biggest expense of a brick-and-mortar restaurant are the brick-in-the-mortar, right? Is that location. And once you're in a location, like, you're kind of stuck there. So which is good if you can do that, but that's a big, big step. And we've seen a few of these, M&J's kitchen, fireside, a couple other places were started as food trucks. and have now evolved into brick and mortar, which is kind of like a really great trajectory. So by supporting some of these catering businesses that don't have the kitchen of their own, because they haven't had to, they haven't been able to make that big investment, you might be helping them actually on that path to getting that brick and mortar at some point. I think it's really cool to see places like the Black Business Hub and the public market, you know, even offering spaces for these, like, not just minority-owned business, but for like a lot of minority-owned businesses to get that start and like to be sort of like that safety net of like, we will help support you and we will provide space for you. I think that's super, super awesome. And, you know, kind of on that note, too, I want to talk about the events going on. You mentioned coming up this week, there is an heirloom collard greens tasting. and business networking mixer. That's happening this Wednesday, August 12th from 5 to 7 p.m. at the hub. Folks should definitely check that out if they like collared greens and networking with folks. Rob, do you like collar greens? I love collard greens. I do. I do. The cool thing about the heirloom collard greens is that the farmers are there. Like the people who grew the greens are there at the event so you can kind of see just really wear a country, literally farm to table. And he doesn't want to talk business over some collard greens, right? Right, literally. I mean, that sounds great to me. I wish we could do podcasts over college greens. That'd be fun. The next event that I wanted to shout out to is the community favorite celebration. So as I mentioned, folks can vote for their favorite restaurant, catering, food truck business. That voting is open now and the celebration is happening September 15th. That is 530 to 730 over at Bernels. That's also a ticketed event. And it sounds like it's just going to be a great time and a great time for.

folks, again, to gather in community, celebrate food, celebrate Madison's Black community. There's so much imbued in food that is culture and community. And we always, everybody gathers around food. And that's, that's where community happens. So it's really great to see these, these events happening. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There is no separating. food from community, from politics, from who we are. And again, I'm just very thankful that the Madison Black Chamber of Commerce puts on this event every year and that they continue to do so, especially when we need it so much. So I'm super hungry. Let's wrap up this conversation. Rob Chappell, executive editor of Madison 365. Thank you so much for bringing us the news and joining me on the podcast today. Thank you so much, Haley. That's all for today here on CityCast Madison. I'm executive producer Haley Sperling filling in for your host, Bianca Martin. Don't forget, you can support this show and get some great perks by becoming a CityCast Madison neighbor at membership.citycast.fm slash Madison. Don't forget the slash Madison. If you enjoyed today's show, why not share this episode with someone you'd want to take to a black-owned restaurant after donating blood? Or... Before Donating Blood, don't forget, stay hydrated, stay full out there, and help spread the word about CityCast Madison. All right, y'all, we will be back tomorrow morning with all the election stories you need. Until then, take good care, and thanks for listening.