Surf Cat

The $56,000 contract with the Madison-based Nehemiah Community Development Corp. promises coaching for city leaders, listening sessions with residents, recommendations for police and other assistance. Nehemiah is led by Rev. Alex Gee, who launched the Justified Anger initiative in 2014 to address deep disparities between Black and white Madisonians in various quality-of-life measures. City administrator Bryan Gadow said it was the only firm the city reached out to.

Last month, the City Council approved a $34,000 contract with the The Riseling Group — led by former UW-Madison Police Chief Sue Riesling — to review the June 2 incident and make recommendations by the end of October.

The contracts fulfill two of the five actions city leaders promised to take a day after a woman called police to report a man might be burglarizing a home in the 5000 block of Arrowhead Drive. It turned out the man, 23-year-old Keonte Furdge, was staying at the home as the guest of a friend, Toren Young, who was renting the home from Mark Rundle, who used to coach both of them in football at Monona Grove High School.

At the time, Young described the woman who called the city’s non-emergency line as white. Police reports released later, however, show the woman identified herself as Latina. And while Young said Furdge had permission to be at the home, police reported that Rundle told them Furdge did not have permission to be at the house because the two had had a falling out years earlier.

Rundle last month said he had been letting Young, his girlfriend and her child stay at the home rent-free for two months, but that he, Furdge and Young didn’t want to talk about the June 2 incident anymore, and he declined to say whether Furdge had been allowed to stay there.

Police body camera video shows that the first officer who arrived at the Arrowhead Drive home announced his presence and waited for backup before entering, after getting no response from anyone inside.

Two officers entered with guns drawn and a cooperative Furdge was briefly handcuffed before officers determined he was not burglarizing the home. Police have said the officers did not know Furdge was Black until they saw him emerge from a back room, and Furdge’s race does not come up in the dispatcher’s call to the officer who was assigned to the call.

Furdge and Young went to the police department on the day of the incident asking to file a complaint over how Furdge was treated, which police say an officer wrote out for Furdge. Furdge has not yet signed the complaint and did not respond to multiple attempts by police to follow up with him to get his signature, according to police reports and Police Chief Walter Ostrenga.

The other actions the city promised to take involve reviewing existing police department policies and training methods for any bias, and gauging the department’s alignment with the so-called 8 Can’t Wait changes to police use-of-force practices. Mayor Mary O’Connor said the city’s Public Safety Committee is in the process of reviewing police policies and procedures. As for the 8 Can’t Wait reforms, she said last month that “it turns out we already do follow almost all of them.”

Gadow said the timeline for Nehemiah’s work has not yet been determined. A Nehemiah official did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Fewer than 100 of Monona’s 8,175 residents are Black, according to census data.