After missing a meeting with a University of Wisconsin student group Tuesday, the UW Police Department said they had intended to attend the meeting but were unable due to a prior commitment.

The meeting, scheduled to take place in the Memorial Union’s profile room at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, would have been the first time the Alliance for Programming Equality and police officials met to discuss event-planning procedures at the Wisconsin Union.

UWPD Lt. Bill Larson said he was involved in a biennial all-staff retreat Tuesday and was unable to be at the 4:30 p.m. meeting because the series of meetings ended at 5:15 p.m.

“I can understand their frustration, I can understand that they had planned for this to happen and that we weren’t there,” Larson said. “It’s just important for them to know that it was not intentional for us not to be there. Something else was going on and we were not able to make it.”

Amanda Green, an APE member and Memorial Union’s vice president of public relations, said the group was frustrated because they were not informed there was a conflict during the prescheduled meeting.

“I felt that if they had really cared, or at least cared about showing up, we would’ve heard something,” Green said. “If I know I’m not going to make it to something, or that I’d be late for something, I would’ve let people know.”

As a police officer, Larson said it is hard to know when meetings or incidents will run longer than expected.

“In this particular job, when something does come up, you have to handle it and be able to work until whatever the incident is over,” Larson said.

Green said that was an understandable excuse, but wished “there had been some sort of communication.”

According to APE representatives, police have imposed extra barriers during the planning stages of events in which hip-hop music would be played.

A Lambda Theta Phi Latin fraternity September event intended to celebrate the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month and Mexican Independence Day was canceled, triggering some national fraternity representatives to accuse UWPD of racial profiling.

Police said the party had excessive prospective attendees and could have represented a crowd control issue.

Larson, who represents UWPD during Wisconsin Union planning meetings, said he was unaware the Lambda party was the celebration of Mexican Independence Day, and the decision to cancel the event was made solely based on the possibility of overcrowding the Memorial Union’s Tripp Commons.

“We absolutely want to meet with the group, we want to hear their views, hear their ideas and make sure that we’re meeting what their needs are to make sure that a part of our community has their voices being heard, that we’re definitely meeting whatever their concerns are,” Larson said.

APE has outlined several goals they hope to achieve when meeting with UWPD, including creating a sense of urgency of the need to draft new cohesive policies, guidelines and procedures to approving Wisconsin Union events in the future, Green said.

UWPD and APE have agreed to meet Tuesday, Nov. 6, at 4:30 p.m.