GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – The Green Bay Police Chief stopped by the Local Five studio Thursday morning to discuss how the police department interacts with and handles public demonstrations.
Over the past year, a number of these planned public demonstrations have taken place. Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis says that when learning of these public demonstrations in advance, the department reaches out to the organizers to find out how officers can be helpful.
I have learned that it significantly reduces the risks of something going wrong if we’re able to make that contact with organizers early on and just tell them that we’re there to help them express their First Amendment rights.
Chief Davis adds that a lot of times, these events end up being larger than the organizers expected. Police are there to help make sure everyone is getting in and out of the event safely and, in some cases, making sure the event itself is protected.
Officers on bikes, or the department’s Mobile Response Team, can often be seen at these planned demonstrations. Chief Davis says it was created ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft and states that it is “a great resource to have officers on bikes because they can get places a lot more quickly in a crowd, it’s a little more unobtrusive presence.”
The Chief also states that they have seen that officers on bikes tend to be viewed or perceived as being more approachable than normal.
Green Bay is said to have been very lucky with these planned public demonstrations so far, as they have come and gone without problems, something he says attests to the planning and the early communication between the police department and the organizers of the event.
Chief Davis says the police are not there to get in the way of anyone’s free speech event, as everyone is entitled to their First Amendment right to free speech.
Protesting is not a crime. You have a right to do that, and we (the police) react to behavior, not the content of speech. Crime is not protest. We’re not going to tolerate things that, fortunately, we haven’t really seen, you know, if people choose to get outside the lines.
