The Truman Show on the Isthmus

The Truman Show on the Isthmus

Madison doesn't fear police oversight. It fears a Black woman who won't shrink.

By Brandi Grayson, Founder/CEO, Urban Triage

On July 22, Corey Ruiz, a 38-year-old unhoused Black man, was murdered by Madison police on Williamson Street. None of the four officers wore body cameras. We know how he died because neighbors pulled out their phones.

Eleven weeks later, City Hall isn't talking about Corey. It's talking about Aeiramique Glass.

On October 6, the Common Council voted 18–2 to put her firing on the table, "effective immediately," with a final vote on October 20. Her appointment already ends in March, and she's in the middle of investigating Corey's murder. So I'll ask what every organizer in this city should be asking: Why now?

Follow the timeline, not the talking points.

In June, Glass released a report concluding that Madison officers caused the 2024 death of Richard Lee Johnson, a 32-year-old Black man who was also unhoused, through prone restraint, force and failure to render aid. An independent forensic pathologist found the medical examiner's overdose ruling was wrong, and every decision clearing those officers had rested on that ruling.

That should have been the biggest accountability story in this city in a decade. Instead it went quiet. What replaced it were memos about late budget forms, purchasing rules, an AI-generated report cover, and a "breach of contract" charge over a contract Glass says she never signed.

I'm a systems analyst before I'm anything else, so I'll say it plainly: some of those critiques are real. Process matters in systems, and Glass has publicly owned what was hers to own. But you fix process problems with support and mediation. You don't fire a department head five months before her term ends, in the middle of an investigation, in defiance of your own ordinance. That ordinance gives supervision of the monitor to the Police Civilian Oversight Board and bars city officials from undermining the monitor's independence. Breaking it only makes sense if the target is bigger than one woman.

The city held the contract, not the responsibility.

Madison passed this ordinance in 2020, years after Paul Heenan and Tony Robinson. Then it did what Madison does. It took two years to hire a first monitor and nearly two more to build a complaint form. It gave the office $405,000 and three staff to watch a police department with a budget over $98 million. Alders tried to defund the office in two straight budgets, once proposing to move its money to body cameras. This fall they voted down a $28,500 increase.

I know this movie. I've held city contracts where Madison kept the paper but not the responsibility. The city stayed hands-off until it wanted control, and then it suddenly got very interested in my "compliance." After six years of neglect, the city discovered its supervisory instincts the summer a Black woman started finding things.

Roll call.

The resolution's sponsors are Council President Sabrina Madison and Alders Will Ochowicz, Yannette Figueroa Cole, Tag Evers and Regina Vidaver. Eighteen alders voted to advance it. Only Carmella Glenn and Julia Matthews said no.

Remember those names on October 20, and remember them at the ballot box. These are some of the same progressive leaders who passed an ordinance forbidding anyone from undermining the monitor, and now they're undermining the monitor. The law, it turns out, is selective. It binds the people it was written to protect and bends for the people who wrote it.

It was never about her tone.

Yes, she said she'd burn this city down. She said it bleeding, minutes after a scuffle with police at an encampment sweep that followed a murder. People got angrier about a metaphor than about a body. That's the tell.

Then came the restraining order. A Black woman, caught on camera grieving and injured after a police murder, was recast as the violent one, and a police officer walked away with a four-year order against her. What the headlines buried is this: on the morning of the hearing, Glass asked in writing to reschedule. The court said no. She wasn't in the room, and the order was granted. A protective order won against an empty chair is not a verdict of guilt.

Now sit with this. I know Black women who begged for restraining orders while running from men who beat them. They brought texts, photos and police reports, and they still weren't believed. Yet a cop with a badge, a gun and an entire department behind her got four years of protection from an unarmed oversight official. The police, the media and the city have been working from the same script, and it has been strategic.

I don't have to imagine how this works. I've lived it.

For years, a white man has harassed Black women across this city, and I'm one of them. He went after me. He went after my board members. He made false allegations, then recruited others to spread his stories until the lies took on a life of their own. Nobody in power said a word or did a thing about it.

In fact, it was the opposite. Madison police called me more than once, asking me to give this man what he wanted, as if harassment were a customer-service issue and I was the one being difficult.

Our own Council President, Sabrina Madison, a Black woman, went to court with evidence for the same man after three years of his contact and asked for a restraining order. A judge told her it wasn't enough. She left that courtroom saying she'd have to keep documenting just to be believed.

So let's be clear about what Madison's justice system protects. When a Black woman with receipts asks for protection from a white man, the answer is "not enough proof." When a police officer asks for protection from a Black woman, an empty chair is proof enough.

Sabrina Madison and I don't agree on everything, including this resolution she's sponsoring. But we both know what it is to be told our evidence doesn't count. That's the system. It doesn't care which side of the vote you're on. It only cares that you're a Black woman.

What really offends people about Glass is that she is matter-of-fact. Certain. Unapologetic about her intelligence. She doesn't perform gratitude for the seat. Black women know this script: we're hired for our competence and punished for our confidence. I've been called "too aggressive" in rooms where I was the only one holding data. I've watched the media cover my organization's tone more closely than its outcomes.

And misogynoir doesn't need a white face to carry it out. Systems recruit all of us to police how Black women show up. You can't separate Glass's Blackness, her womanhood, and her politics from this fight, because the backlash never separates them.

Who the law is for.

Police can murder a man in broad daylight and go on paid leave while we wait for "the process." A Black mother who disciplines her child can lose that child to the system. A woman fleeing domestic violence can't get protection, and if she's Black, she isn't believed at all. Meanwhile, institutions write the laws, break them, and rewrite them whenever it suits them.

That should sound familiar. We like to pretend Madison is a different bird from the administration in Washington. But watch the actions. It's the same bird with different agenda items, and the outcome is the same.

Cameras aren't accountability.

Our answer to watching Corey die on camera was more cameras and better angles. Corey and Richard were both unhoused, yet we won't talk about the housing crisis that kept putting them in contact with police. We fund gear and patrols as "public safety," then trim the services that actually reduce police contact. That isn't a red-or-blue story. Progressive Madison does it with a smile and a yard sign.

That's our Truman Show: a beautifully lit set where everyone performs liberal values. The moment someone walks into the painted sky, the director rewrites the script.

So what now?

Show up on October 20. Tell your alder to let Glass finish the Ruiz investigation, let the Police Civilian Oversight Board do its job, fund oversight like you mean it, and reopen Richard Lee Johnson's case. Protect the institution, even if you'd pick a different monitor.

The question was never whether Meeka Glass is polite enough. It's whether Madison wants oversight that actually oversees.