Telling stories
A City on the Edge[1] tells the story of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin in 2020 from the perspective of then and current Mayor Dennis McBride. It’s shelved in history in the Wauwatosa library, but it’s the highly specific history of how Dennis McBride experienced and understood 2020; it should also be read as memoir. Despite being thickly padded with 600+ notes, predominantly links to national, legacy media articles from that year, the theme of his story is narrow and simple: what Dennis McBride as mayor did throughout 2020 was not only correct and justified, but essential, nationally and historically significant, Lincolnesque even.
Histories, like all narratives, are intentional creations, necessarily built of distortion by omission and perspective. A City on the Edge lacks narrative self-awareness, in regards to McBride’s own unexamined ideologies (centrist, capitalist) and in how his point of view is specific to and limited by his status in the socioeconomic world (a white, male, physically able senior citizen; straight married, advanced-degreed, property owning son of property owning parents). In his narrative, McBride enters the mayoral office in March of 2020, alone and in the footsteps of the Great Men (RFK, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas More), into a Wild West of pandemic and unrest, with a (possibly[2] terrorist) organization driving too fast along the genteel streets of Wauwatosa. He makes tough calls, endures crude insults, calms fears, makes national news. At the end of the story, he blows smoke from his mayoral pen, holsters it, and gazes out on the town,calm restored. “Some officials” of the DNC tell him he was responsible for winning the presidency for Biden.[3] Lincoln, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, nods down his approval.[4]
Another story, same events: state sanctioned violence perpetrated against Black people (and accepted or ignored by (almost) all others) by armed patrols including police over three centuries of US history continues apace in 2020 but the advent of phone cameras and internet means hundreds of millions of (white) people are made newly unavoidably aware of it; a global pandemic compounds growing wealth disparity everywhere. In response to violence and pandemic, many people coordinate mutual aid and protests, others react in fear and anger. Municipal, state, and national governments try a variety of responses to the pandemic, the violence, and the protesting of the violence with mixed results. An enormous network of scientists, healthcare providers, food system workers, HVAC experts, educators, historians, activists, students, IT and admin support assist. Wauwatosa’s police department, correctly assuming the District Attorney will not charge Officer Mensah for his third killing, asks the mayor for a curfew in October, invites in numerous other law enforcement agencies to enforce it with blockades, chemical agents, non-lethal munitions. Dozens are arrested! …for violating that curfew. By the end of 2020 the story has shifted. Scientists have made progress on vaccines. Public health practices and shifting norms limit the spread of the virus.[5] Milwaukee County government honors The People’s Revolution for their 200th consecutive day of marching for civil rights and the inclusivity of their campaign. Thanks to protests and lawsuits and calling and emails and many committee meetings of alders and citizen volunteers Mensah resigned and Chief Barry Weber retired, although Weber is replaced by someone of very similar experience and Mensah goes to work in the next county over. Trump’s response to the pandemic is so abysmal that he loses the popular election by an even wider margin than his first campaign[6]. This narrative is not a Great Man biopic, it’s an enormous ensemble series with many seasons and spin-offs.
Why it’s worth paying attention to this book now
Now Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are inserting ICE patrols into communities. Law enforcement agencies have opaque and variable practices of data collection sharing and usage. They publicly lie about their actions. Sheriff and police departments undertake relationships of varying levels and types of cooperation with these agencies. Wisconsin’s legislature passed and the governor vetoed a measure coercing sheriffs to involve themselves in policing federal immigration status. A huge chunk of Wauwatosa’s ever-rising property taxes continues to fund the police department. In this context, McBride’s book is an urgent invitation to consider that we - residents, voters, tax payers, and elected officials - may not control the police departments who work for us and are paid by us and we - residents, voters, tax payers, elected officials, and the judicial system - may not have the capacity or official will to hold them to account. Meanwhile, after hundreds of years, the ongoing reality of police violence continues and even expands,[7] particularly against non-white people as does the meta-violence of policing protestors of police violence.
McBride’s book is significant as a firsthand documentation of the utter and dangerous muddle around who controls the police and how, and to whom the police are accountable. Insofar as this book leads to thoughtful concern and debate about who can or should direct and hold accountable various law enforcement agencies, it is as Tom Barrett blurbs, “a must-read for anyone who wants to understand where America is headed”.
Who controls the police
Publicly in 2020, and in the book again and again, McBride stated that only the appointed Police and Fire Commission (PFC) can fire a police officer or chief, and then only after a formal hearing process.[8] And yet, McBride divulges the astounding information that he and City Administrator Archambo and city attorney Kesner had been negotiating a resignation package with Mensah’s representatives (paid by the city) for months. This was after the common council drafted a resolution in July directing Chief Weber and City Administrator Archambo (not the mayor!) ‘to facilitate Mensah’s transition’ from the WPD.[9] Archambo, per the city municipal code, perhaps does have this power, and maybe city employee Weber and the PFC should have heeded that resolution back in July. The duties of the City Administrator include:
Directing, coordinating, and expediting activities of all city departments, divisions, and offices, including the fire and police departments, subject to statutory and ordinance limits which may apply (Wauwatosa municipal code 2.08.20)[10].
Was McBride involved in the employment negotiations for Officer Mensah to lend atmospheric executive gravitas? Keep Archambo company?[11] Neither of them seems to have been reporting back to the PFC or the alders. Or did the mayor actually wield influence he publicly claimed not to have? McBride says he and Archambo also were involved in lengthy negotiations with chief Barry Weber to retire.
McBride recounts that he and his wife spent anxious evenings alone in their home that summer, television on loud to drown out the sound of protestors outside, afraid of the protestors, afraid to leave and afraid, after the police department’s internal High Value Target list was revealed with McBride’s name on it, that the Wauwatosa police would not come to their aid if protestors did worse than make noise and write bad words on the sidewalk. He explains that one reason he didn’t push Weber to do more than slap the hand of the officer responsible[12] for that list (besides of course that as mayor, as he has reminded us, as the police chief reminded us, as the Police and Fire Commission very pointedly and publicly complained in 2020, the Mayor doesn’t have the power to tell the police chief what to do) is that he was concerned doing so would jeopardize the retirement negotiating. The mayor lacked confidence in the police and was apparently powerless to do anything about it except try not to piss off the police chief (further).
Weber, he writes, had proven untrustworthy.
Weber, hired in 1990 following the scandal of racist ‘MLK parties’ in the police department, who promoted an officer named in those scandals.
Weber, who asked the mayor for the curfew, which the mayor dutifully signed as drafted by the city attorney[13].
Weber, under whose leadership the police department’s Operations Bureau communicated with the US Marshal Service and other agencies to invite them into Wauwatosa, at least as early as August,[14]
Weber, who put in writing that the police were expecting the DA to decline to charge officer Mensah in the killing of Alvin Cole and would give them, the Wauwatosa police, 7 days advance notice.
It was this untrustworthy person at the head[15] of a heavily armed force, calling in multiple outside also heavily armed forces, who had previously demanded publicly that two different Black men (and the only Black men) chairing citizen committees be removed - Weber, a city employee, who refused to communicate directly with the Ad Hoc Committee as requested by his employer, the City, because nobody would remove the particular Black man chairing it.[16]
Police were out in the community that first week of October telling business owners that the decision and curfew were coming, while the elected city council had no idea.
It’s a little eerie, now, to watch the October 6, 2020 Committee of the Whole and Common Council meetings of Wauwatosa, held back to back on zoom that evening. Towards the end of the Committee of the Whole, a question is offered, “Anybody wish to bring anything up at this time?” Everyone remains on mute.
After pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, the Common Council works through a very normal agenda, reviewing appointments, entering a couple notices of claim. The mayor, police chief, and city administrator are all there. Unbeknownst to the entire common council, McBride and Archambo and city attorney Kesner, at the request of Weber, have already put in motion an emergency order, a 5 day curfew starting at sundown, and scheduled an armed occupation of the city that will begin in less than 24 hours. That the mayor, who says he cannot tell the police what to do, and the city administrator who maybe can but who serves at the pleasure of the Common Council would enter into agreements with the police department (or simply take direction from the police department) without any input from the elected Common Council renders the elected city council completely impotent, and the office of mayor superfluous.
Curfew
When the city of St Paul enacted a curfew on May 29 2020, in the midst of ongoing actual damage to structures and a police station being overtaken, the city council convened an emergency virtual meeting within two days to affirm the order. Wauwatosa also had a curfew that early June weekend, and within a couple of days Common Council convened and voted on it - actually, to end it,[17] and to affirm the order for the previous couple days. The city of Milwaukee, however, declared a curfew at that time entirely without Common Council ratification. And when the city was sued,[18] it ultimately settled, with an agreement from the city attorney’s office that the mayor cannot unilaterally declare curfews without action from the Common Council (page 19). The city of Milwaukee dismissed all the tickets issued for curfew violation.
McBride has often cited ‘Kenosha’ as his justification for ordering the curfew, despite that the decision from the DA regarding Mensah’s killing of Alvin Cole was pending since June and ‘Kenosha’ happened in August. Wauwatosa’s city attorney said they/he/McBride/Archambo made and kept the order secretly because if they went to Common Council they couldn’t keep the plans confidential, but also believed going into closed session was not an option. Consider Kenosha in August 2020: in the midst of large and destructive protests, the city council - the governing body - still managed to meet and affirm the curfew; in fact they met in closed session to discuss tactics. When their mayor sought additional emergency powers for 21 days, the city council granted them but only for 72 hours. The comparison isn’t one to one: Kenosha was acting during a sudden and unexpected crisis (the shooting of Jacob Blake) while Wauwatosa was grappling with an 8 month old repeat crisis (Joseph Mensah killing three people).
Lawsuits
More than a thousand people are shot and killed by police nationally every year, and vanishingly few of those responsible are ever charged or prosecuted.[19] As in the case of officer Mensah, the police department, its close neighbor department, and its connected district attorney - its own overseeing office - are the ones who investigate and decide when and who to prosecute for crimes. Mensah was cleared by his own department, and even awarded a medal following one of his shootings, and was cleared by the district attorney’s office each time. Civil suits are the legal avenue available to victims and their families. Twice now[20] a jury has been unable to decide if Mensah was justified in shooting Alvin Cole; the details uncovered by that trial conflict in many significant and damning ways with what the police public relations version was (which is also the version McBride refers to even though the very chief has proven untrustworthy.) A third trial ended in a confidential settlement. A jury can’t decide, in days of testimony and hours of deliberation, if the split-second decision was necessary or justifiable.
As to the other civil suits against the city, mayor, and police departments from 2020, there were a staggering number of claims and plaintiffs. That the claims were dismissed does not mean they were invalid, or that everything that happened to people at the hands of the police was justified or legal. It just means the claims didn’t make it into court to be heard and argued.
Regarding the rulings on the validity of the curfew of October 2020, McBride’s recounting that it was upheld is incorrect. On three occasions people filed a claim that the curfew was illegal, arguing that it violated the first amendment right to free speech and also arguing that it was issued in violation of state statute[21] (primarily that the mayor improperly acted as the governing body, but also that the imminent threat of disaster was insufficiently evidenced). In federal court, it was heard as a possible civil rights violation of freedom of speech. In one instance the judge determined that the curfew allowed that single plaintiff to exercise free speech during the day so it didn’t violate freedom of speech, and so did not rule on the legality of the order. In another instance, a federal judge ruled that the question of the validity of the curfew order was a matter for state court and so declined to rule. And finally, when a state judge ruled on it, he decided for the city and McBride, that because the claim that the curfew order was improperly issued had already been taken to federal court it couldn’t be raised again, although, he noted, the arguments that the curfew order DID violate state statute held up.[22] Curfew violation citations in Wauwatosa in October for over $1000 each (also a wild violation of a state statute that caps them) were finally, in 2025, reduced to about $200 or waived with proof of 10 hours of community service.
Lessons learned (or not)
It is wholly unacknowledged in this book that in Wauwatosa protestors and bystanders and residents were brutalized by police in the course of being at home or going to work or while protesting police violence, on sidewalks, in vehicles marked and unmarked, and in various stations. Residents were assaulted by police on their way home from work. Residents in their own yards were assailed by tear gas. Protestors were harassed and gassed and grabbed before curfew even took effect, in some instances, and for days after the curfew ended. It bears repeating: people were arrested, often with violence, by the police, for protesting police violence. And, it is also true that some people, maybe police included, felt fear of the protestors. Because it’s not in there at all, this book calls for a nuanced consideration of the gradations and differences between feeling safe, and being safe; being uncomfortable and being threatened; imagining being attacked and actually being attacked, for any or no reason. The reader can feel for the mayor and his wife at home after dark, feeling threatened, definitely uncomfortable, unsure the police would protect them, unsure the police were on their side, but actually, fortunately, safe in their home.[23] But the reader also goes along with the mayor on other nights, during the October curfew, to the command center with administrator Archambo, watching multiple screens of live footage as police and national guard, US Marshals, sheriff departments and snipers fill corners and streets around Wauwatosa. McBride says the protests “accomplished nothing.”
McBride recalls the public statements of groups condemning the curfew and the heavy handed, heavily armed enforcement of it including Indivisible Tosa, Tosa Together, and Tosa Moms Tackling Racism: “Our mayor has decided to take actions this week [October 7 2020] that show how much control the police have. They also show the escalatory tactics that our police department utilizes when controlled by fear and implicit bias against people of color. We expected more of our city leaders.” He calls the statement ‘stunningly naive’ without elaboration.
This self-preserving, myopic callousness was pointedly identified by Martin Luther King Jr as specific to “the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action..’.”
Disrespect for his colleagues (and the residents whom they represented) on Common Council manifested when McBride chose not to inform them of either his ongoing negotiations with Mensah and Weber or of the plans for a curfew and the arrival of the National Guard and other law enforcement agencies in October. In the book, he says, this was partly because ‘someone’ on the council - all of them duly democratically elected and representing the residents of Wauwatosa - was suspected (by him? Archambo? the police?) of sharing information (what information?) with The Peoples Revolution or other protestors.
McBride appears to have missed the point of the protests entirely.[24] These protests certainly did not accomplish all that the protestors hoped, but that is the nature of progress and does not mean they accomplished ‘nothing’. If we continue to ask questions about the police and their practices, to learn and try to improve from the damage done, the protests and this book will also not have been for nothing.
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[1] Not like the edge of collapse, or the edge of reason. The edge, in demographic terms, between urban and suburban. But the lurid cover photo of six heavily armed shielded police officers is giving a little edgelord.
McBride, Dennis (2025). A City on the Edge: Pandemic, Protest, and Polarization. Indiana University Press.
[2] He won’t say for sure they’re not, and the Wauwatosa police strongly suggest yes, that The Peoples Revolution were terrorists. The FBI was looking into it, as well as possible Antifa presence. The lone citation in the book from Wisconsin Right Now, an extreme right publication, is used to assert, unrelated to these events and with no credible evidence whatsoever, that one of the leaders of The Peoples Revolution is or was a gang member.
[3] He said what he said. Because of the curfew, no Kenosha-like killings or riots happened in Wauwatosa, so people in Wisconsin were comfortable voting for a Democrat, is his logic. The nail for the horseshoe for the horse for the rider for the message for the battle for the war was actually Dennis McBride’s curfew. Perhaps “some” DNC “officials” also called Kyle Rittenhouse to thank him for not coming to Wauwatosa. They may have called you or me or the proverbial butterfly, to thank us for making dinner instead of firebombing a dessert-themed chain restaurant. America, you’re welcome.
[4] Yes, he also and without irony or humility or any other feature of multidimensional awareness asserts that Lincoln would not only approve but have made the same calls regarding the October curfew. In Mr Lincoln’s day, of course, through the 1950s, Wauwatosa had statutes on its books banning any Black people from being out in Wauwatosa every night of the year, so, sure? Jefferson Davis would have likely approved of such a municipal curfew too, especially since it so pointedly cracked down on the public presence of so many (so noticeably proportionally more than Wauwatosa’s residential population) Black people after dark, so many people specifically protesting the killing and abuse of Black people by the police.
[5] McBride seems to include the chapter on the COVID-19 pandemic to remind the reader of the extraordinariness of that year and to establish the mayor’s ability to enact a curfew. There were, as anyone old enough to read this book probably recalls, multiple and sometimes conflicting public health emergencies declared at each level of government. McBride seems to take a great deal of credit for various pandemic responses enacted by the city, although generally those moved through committee and council as nearly all city policy does. In Wauwatosa, the city council routinely discussed and voted on measures to respond to and limit virus exposure, all year.
[6] Wauwatosa votes for the Democratic presidential candidate, as it has since 1988. Lincoln cannot be reached for comment.
[7] More people have been killed by police in the United States each year since 2020, still as always, disproportionately Black people. https://policeviolencereport.org/
[8] It’s a state statute, and he reminds state reps, hamstrung by redistricting and unable to change that statute, when they take time to discuss protests against Mensah with the mayor, that “that [the state statute]’s your problem. Lincoln never gave this absolute mic drop of an executive retort to Congress when he was pushing through the Emancipation Proclamation, but probably wishes he thought of it.
[9] Next week, the PFC voted to suspend Mensah and retain Steven Biskupic to study what the heck had led to those three killings. Barry Weber was publicly outraged, and his principal defense of retaining Mensah was, plenty of other law enforcement officers are responsible for multiple deaths, so, it’s FINE.
[10] Although it also says in 2.08.010 The city administrator shall not have the authority to enter into any binding legal contracts on behalf of the city although, that may not mean he can’t negotiate them. Hard to say! Laws are subjective and malleable.
[11] They do seem close; Archambo is listed first in the book acknowledgements and as an early reader with significant input. He also accompanied McBride to a deposition in later lawsuits.
[12] Detective Lewandowski, who was promoted after the matter was investigated
[13] McBride has also said Governor Evers asked him for the curfew order to let Evers authorize calling up the National Guard. And he has also said he and Archambo and the police chief had talked about it throughout the summer.
[14] Remember Jim Sensenbrenner? He represented much of Wauwatosa at that time and publicly demanded federal troops come into Wauwatosa, and McBride notably refused, in August, the very month the Wauwatosa police department was emailing back and forth with the US Marshals and making plans to hang out in Wauwatosa with a lot of guns.
[15] Although, Captain Vetter was in charge of the Civil Unrest Operation Plan. Vetter was recently promoted to Deputy Chief after a glowing recommendation from Chief McGillis.
[16] McBride writes that the Ad Hoc Committee to Address Policing and Systemic Inequalities was ineffective and fizzled out because it couldn’t coordinate schedules. This is utterly false; a look at meeting minutes from that year shows the committee meeting regularly, trying to get information from the police department, and ever more and unhinged letters from the police union’s president to the Common Council demanding the Black man chairing the committee be removed. Weber said, publicly, the chairman of the committee was “racist against the police”.
[17] McBride never suggests it, but perhaps the fact that his first unilateral curfew was voted to an early end discouraged him from trying for approval in October.
[18] Supervisor Clancy v City of Milwaukee
[19] Another opportunity this book gives us to think about what McBride does not: is it ok that police kill this many people and are found to be justified, by their colleagues? What do we think of qualified immunity? Why are police allowed to react with violence out of reasonable fear but we find that unacceptable for the rest of us?
[20]
[21] 323.11 Declaration by local government. The governing body of any local unit of government may declare, by ordinance or resolution, an emergency existing within the local unit of government whenever conditions arise by reason of a riot or civil commotion, a disaster, or an imminent threat of a disaster, that impairs transportation, food or fuel supplies, medical care, fire, health or police protection, or other critical systems of the local unit of government. The period of the emergency shall be limited by the ordinance or resolution to the time during which the emergency conditions exist or are likely to exist.
[22] He found a “genuine issue of material fact as to whether the mayor impermissibly usurped the Common Council's statutory authority and obligation of exercising its statutory powers”, per the court transcript
[23] McBride suggests it’s uncivil to protest at elected officials’ homes, although he also recounts how the esteemed Father Groppi led night after night of protests at the home of a judge in Wauwatosa, in the 1960s, who was a member of an explicitly racist organization.
[24] He found the protests disruptive, loud, potentially dangerous. Martin Luther King Jr noted: “Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored… I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust… is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”
