Aeiramique Glass, Madison’s Independent Police Monitor: On the Frontlines of Justice (Part 2 of 2)
Born and raised in San Diego, CA, Aeiramique “Meeka” Glass came to Madison via Baltimore to become Madison’s independent police monitor in November 2025
by Jonathan Gramling
Aeiramique Glass, Madison’s independent police monitor, has been thrust into the spotlight lately with events surrounding the officer-involved shooting death of Corey Ruiz on July 22nd on the corner of Williamson and Baldwin Streets.
As we stand in front of the City-County Building to take her photo, a middle-aged Euro-American males shouted out to her, ‘Keep up the good work.’ Glass has had her supporters and detractors as she has been on the frontlines seeking justice.
In the continuing saga of what the role of the independent police monitor does and the resources and access that it has to complete its work, the Office of the Independent Police Monitor sued Chief Paterson of the Madison Police Department to gain access to police records pertaining to the Corey Ruiz shooting.
Currently in the police monitor office, there is isn’t a lot of staffing.
“Currently, there is myself, Dr. Greg Gelembiuk, who is our data and forensic analyst who is part-time. And there is our office manager, Chioma, who does not work on cases other than ones that I complete a case and she sends out the determination letter because we haven’t had a case management system,” Glass said. “I finalized that this week. We should have that in place. The office has never had a case management system. We process that manually. Other than that, she does all of the admin and is in charge of office operations. One of the things that I haven’t talked about is we also, as the independent police monitor who is appointed by the Police Civilian Oversight Board, PCOB and is mandated to be their executive secretary, I also manage the different dynamics of the board and the subcommittees. There are chairs. I work directly with those chairs to implement anything that they want implemented on behalf of the board. They also have a mandate to bring concerns or complaints to the officers, things that they are seeing in the community as community representatives. And I have a duty to also look into all of that as well.”
In December 2024, Richard Johnson died while in the custody of the Madison Police Department. Glass conducted her own independent investigation with relatively few resources. But they got the job done.
“I was able to retain an independent medical expert in March,” Glass said. “And Dane County hired him months later because he is one of the best and he’s an expert. I was aware that he was in the process, but I didn’t know if he would get it. And I was only aware because once we reached out to him, he told us. We retained him and he charges between $15,000-$20,000 for his consulting. You’re talking about the top cities. And I’ve worked in some of these spaces where he has been the medical examiner. So that makes sense that he charges that much. He’s a doctor. But with that being said, my contract with him had a cap of $2,000. He ended up entering into the contract, but basically saying, ‘I’m not charging you all.’ I say all of that to say that the resources that are needed right now, we’re working with a $405,000 budget. We have a legal services piece that is only for complainants when we need to appoint an attorney for complainants or their families to take our investigation to the PFC for disciplinary or termination action. That’s where that legal services comes in. That’s $50,000. We also need an additional $50,000 because we just retained independent counsel. I’ve been trying to find the perfect person since the day I got here. And I finally found that person, Attorney William Sulton.”
Glass and Gelembiuk are very experienced in the work and so they use their time efficiently. Nonetheless, the volume of work that gets done is dependent upon community good will.
“I am able to give directives to Greg and he is able to do his job and look at the forensics in a way that like I said before is unrealistic to expect other folks to try to navigate that,” Glass said. “But I’ve been in this for a really long time. So I know also how to get those resources and the work is so respected that any time that I have reached out to a contractor, they are like, ‘This is not about the money. We’ll do it.’ Even with our case management system, they gave us a discount. Everyone has been giving us a discount. I feel like the nonprofit in the agency. I just appreciate it and I’m not out there begging. But I literally call and people are like, ‘Oh my gosh. We love the work you do. Thank you. We would like to do this. We’re dedicated to justice. We would love to do this.’ Or ‘We’re dedicated to finding out the truth. And we’ll do this.’ That’s been great.”
The purpose of the Office is to investigate and then report its findings and make recommendations. Because of the visibility of the Richard Johnson and Corey Ruiz cases, some presume that the findings go against the police. But Glass and her office follow the facts wherever they lead them.
“I have exonerated officers,” Glass said. “I have released findings where it was unfounded or where part of it was true and part of it wasn’t. It’s pretty nuanced in a lot of cases. There was a complaint made, but with my findings, there was a situation there, but what the complainant said may not have been that situation. There was a different thing that was found in that investigation, a different violation. Or there are so many times that I have to tell people, ‘I know what happened to you. It was wrong. But I can name that, but I also have to acknowledge that it is not outside of policy. What I can do is look at and evaluate the policy, take it to the PCOB and the chief and try to change that policy.’ That’s where I start to look at the patterns and the data and pull data and pull information. I also look at the history of an officer, their disciplinary history and what they have done in the past because that provides a lot of context. That also allows me to see, ‘Okay, you cussed somebody out, but this is your first time. And I’ve seen that you went to several really hard risk calls this week. At some point, there should have been an intervention for you and you should not have been taken to another high risk call. You haven’t had this behavior before. So this is my recommendation.’ There are folks who protect the police no matter what they do. There are folks like the police union who again don’t care what the police say. They will allow for excuses to be made for behaviors. But what I have found is that there are so many officers — there are even officers who bring us complaints. When I released the Richard Johnson case, I received flowers from officers saying, ‘Than k you for revealing what’s happening.’ Like I can send you the pictures of the flowers that were sent. I don’t take stuff, but I couldn’t send them back.”
The Office recently proposed that it receive the equivalent of one percent of the Madison Police Department budget. What would that mean for the Office?
“We should have an investigator,” Glass said. “We should be able to pay our attorneys. We should be able to pay any medical examiner expert\, whether they are a medical examiner or they are an expert in a particular area that goes beyond my expertise or just to get a second opinion. Those would be contractors or consultants. If we had a full-time investigator in office, that would be wonderful because right now, I’m doing all the investigation as well as Greg helping out beyond the forensic and data analysis. He’s also doing investigative case management. He’s taking those intakes. We need a case manager, which I call a complainant advocate. They stay with the complainant throughout the process and help them navigate the process. They show up for them because we take a trauma-informed approach.”
Glass would also have the data analyst position go to full time, hire a board liaison to service the board and a records clerk.
“When we get these big records requests because people do like to scrutinize and look at our investigation, we have to pull everything,” Glass said. “When officers are trying to create a defense for themselves, the police union reaches out to get everything that we have. We went up against the DA, the medical examiner and everyone in the Richard Johnson case. We said that there were findings omitted and things that should have been looked at that weren’t. And ultimately, it was a homicide in that MPD was responsible for the death of Richard Johnson. All of those things come with when we would release a report, so much controversy would happen to the point where people felt they needed to start their defense. So we would get all of those records requests.”
Glass would also like to increase their professional fees fund to hire outside contractors.
“Right now, we’ve been taking out of our legal services fund to pay for our case management system,” Glass said. “So that’s also what the money would get us, a case management system. The legal services fund is for complainants to go to the PFC. So we shouldn’t have to but we have to do other parts of the administration. Consultants, contractors, all of that, there needs to be a special fund for just contracting with experts. And then even if we have a full-time investigator, if I wanted to do homicide cases, hire a special investigator for the more nuanced cases when we are coming out to the scene.”
And as people find out more of what the Office does, it ends up making more work for and already stretched out staff.
“Every time we do community engagement, people are like, ‘I didn’t know this office existed,’” Glass said. “’I had this happen to me and I did this. But it never went anywhere. I started in internal affairs or I started in the mayor’s office and I nothing ever happened.’ ‘This happened here to my neighbor and they said the same thing. Our whole neighborhood has had a complaint. Where have you been?’ We get that and then we get so many cases that come in. We have a backlog plus.”
Glass would also like to see the board get more training.
“The Board needs to be able to get training and attend conferences,” Glass emphasized. “The board is in the most stable and one of the most powerful boards now. And they need, with Maia Pearson as our chair, go to NACOLE, National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, every year which is where all experts and folks doing independent civilian oversight go to convene and get trainings and have conversations and workshops. The whole board should be able to go.”
Almost by its very mission, the Office of the Independent Police Monitor will be in the midst of controversy. Aeiramique Glass wants the resources to do the job right and seek the truth. The metropolitan area that the city of Madison is becoming hangs in the balance.
