Milwaukee Police Rough Up, Arrest State Lawmaker, ACLU Staffer

On Tuesday evening, a group of about 30 or 40 people gathered in the Sherman Park neighborhood, near the site where police had shot and killed Sylville Smith. This killing had led to a couple of nights of racial unrest in an already volatile neighborhood.

A frustrated resident in the area had a go in with the group and called police. They showed up in force and arrested about ten people for disorderly conduct and resisting an officer.

A couple of hours later, Wisconsin State Representative Jonathan Brostoff and ACLU organizer Jarett English went to the neighborhood to speak with residents about public policy and to deescalate tensions.

That's when things went bad quickly:

"I was having a nice conversation with some folks," Rep. Brostoff told the Daily News on Wednesday. "As that conversion was going on, the police kind of rush over, tell me to get over by a car."

He said the officers told him and Jarrett English, a youth organizer for the ACLU, that they heard cursing. Officers threw English to the ground and handcuffed him, Brostoff said. He also said he started recording the incident on his cellphone, but police took his phone and threw him to the ground.

Brostoff said he was "totally compliant" and did nothing wrong. He said he was only in the neighborhood to help. When other people recognized him, cops let him go, and he convinced them to let English go as well.

The lawmaker told The News he saw a doctor Wednesday because his wrist was injured when he was slammed to the ground, and is awaiting test results. He said he wants to talk to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Police Chief Edward Flynn about what took place.

The ACLU issued a statement blasting the police and their aggressive policies:

“The Milwaukee Police Department has once again demonstrated its preference for occupation, excessive force and belligerence over genuine engagement, civil dialog, and de-escalation,” said Larry Dupuis, Legal Director of the ACLU of Wisconsin. “People have a right to stand on a street corner – to observe and record the police, as Jarrett was doing, or for any other reason. Unfortunately, rather than protecting people and their rights, law enforcement in this community all too often engages in the sort of destructive behavior to which Jarrett and Jonathan were subjected last night. Although no one deserves to be treated like this, the police made the mistake this time of abusing people who were in a position to insist on their rights.”

Jarrett English said, “The situation was confusing, because I really did not know what I was being arrested for. It was embarrassing and dehumanizing, and I did not feel that I was being treated with the dignity and respect that should be afforded any individual. But I was mostly thinking about all of the young people this happens to every day who don’t have anyone to call to get free. We cannot continue doing this to our people. It has to stop.”

A spokesman for the Milwaukee Police Department said that the incident was "under investigation" to make sure that proper procedure was followed. He then went on to blame Brostoff for not making his identity and his profession known to them earlier. He said that because they didn't know Brostoff, that led to "confusion." This is ridiculous since Brostoff has been in the area several times before and the police knew who he was.

Brostoff called their statement "unbelievable" and pointed out some of the real issues related to this incident:

On Wednesday, Brostoff said it wasn't right that he and English were arrested in the first place because they had done nothing wrong. It also was not proper, he added, for police to give him a break because he is a state rep.

"It doesn't matter what my job is," Brostoff said. "That's ludicrous."

Indeed, what happens to the hundreds of people this happens to and don't have the authority or the ability to speak out for their rights like Brostoff and English do?

I had the chance to briefly speak with Brostoff on Wednesday evening.

He told me that he still hasn't gotten the results of the tests taken on his wrist.

But being the kind of person that he is, Brostoff said that he did not want the focus to be on the incident or what happened to him or English. Instead, he wanted the discussion to be around the serious problems facing the community and ways to effectively address them.

Brostoff identified some of these issues as the need for better funding for Milwaukee schools so that children can receive quality educations so that they can improve their lives and their community. He also cited the need for good jobs with livable wages to come back to the area, which was once a thriving industrial/manufacturing hub. Brostoff also said that the police need to back off of their punitive policies and adopt a more preventative approach.

Brostoff also said that the City of Milwaukee's Office of Violence Prevention needs to be fully funded to carry on their mission.

As Brostoff also pointed out, with Walker and the Republicans in charge of the state government, Milwaukee cannot expect any substantial help from them. That makes all the more imperative that the people of Milwaukee take action locally to address these issues.

Walker Supporter Thinks Terrorist Attack On Milwaukee "Not A Bad Thing"

On Thursday, April 4, the Joint Finance Committee held their first public hearing on the state budget.  Wisconsin Eye was there and taped all of the statements offered by the citizens.

I would point the gentle reader's attention to Part 3 at the 2:28 mark.

At about that time, a man named Rudy Gomez speaks.  Gomez, who apparently is a member of the Milwaukee Police Department, supports Walker's budget , especially the removal of residency requirements.

Fair enough.

But during his statement, he says this:

Terrorists might attack Milwaukee - maybe that's not a bad thing, OK- but the cops, the firemen, we will be there.

It's not a good thing that someone who is sworn to protect and serve a city doesn't want to live there, but to say it wouldn't be a bad thing for terrorists to attack goes beyond the pale.

It's not very reassuring of where his level of commitment really is.  It would be better to have someone who is invested in the community instead of just doing a job.

Corporate Media Bias? What Corporate Media Bias?

From the esteemed Dominique Paul Noth of the Labor Press:

The principal was already in hot water for abusing children and other practices that shut his school down in May. And then in June came a search warrant, a 22 page criminal record and an investigation for child enticement and harmful materials. Testimony existed how the principal led two juveniles to his home to show off the hooks above his bed used to dominate female visitors (according to the complaint) and then offered to tie one boy up, which sent them running from the house.

You only knew about this June 22 if you watched WISN Channel 12 news – since the main newspaper hadn’t led with such details when it reported the school closing in May. That was curious. Sex scandals of any flavor sell newspapers and are prized, even exaggerated when police searches don’t immediately result in charges. So maybe the education reporter and the vice reporter hadn’t connected the dots.

But public educators read something darker and deeper, having long dealt with what they call the JS attitude to expose and attack the public education system at any turn and trumpet any hint of salaciousness or failure. Why else would JS recently report seven young deaths from fire, shootings, crashes and the like that had no connection with schooling over the last year -- with a headline that all were MPS students? Seemed quite a reach when you recall the public school responsibility to educate all who apply.

Had the child abusing school story – a K-12 filled with multiple reports of children being beaten, police called in more than 20 times, a principal accused of enticing juveniles to his home for lurid encounters – been about a Milwaukee public school, imagine how speedily reporters would have jumped to tell the tale in headlines three inches high across the top of the front page. Proof not needed. “Public school scandal” would be enough.

But this was a voucher school.

This is a must read which expands on the biases of the corporate media in regards to teachers and police and how the corporate media tries to control the public by limiting what information is released and manipulating how it's presented.

Policing The Police Numbers

Last week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel issued an extensive report regarding the way the Milwaukee Police Department categorizes crimes.  Their finding was that hundreds of cases were listed as less serious crimes than what they should have been.

Radio squawkers and right wing bloggers used this as grounds to attack Police Chief Ed Flynn and his boss, Tom Barrett.  Even Scott Walker, who one would think would not want to draw attention to cooked numbers given his made up jobs report, used this as a weapon against Barrett.

However, the police numbers that the paper reported are incomplete and could use some policing themselves.

Erik Gunn, writing for Milwaukee Magazine,  points out that the MJS story, and hence those that are using this story as a squawking point, is missing some vital information itself.

One has to wonder if the paper, which stated that it took them a year to get the information together to write their story, might have intentionally left out this information to give ammunition against Barrett or whether their reporting as just gotten that sloppy.

Vote For Vidal!

Yesterday I told you about Milwaukee Police Officer Vidal Colon, who showed his heroism by dealing with an armed thug even though he had been shot three times.

I have just found out that America's Most Wanted is now taking votes.

Please vote for one of our own hometown heroes and vote for Vidal!

Thank You And Good Luck, Vidal!

As many of my regular readers know, I used to work at the House of Correction. After going through the probationary period, I applied and was accepted into the Special Management Team (SMT), which was a dorm that held inmates that suffered from a serious mental illness.

One of the many admirable people that I had the pleasure and honor to serve with was SMT Correctional Officer Vidal Colon. Unfortunately, I only served with him for a very short time, as he was soon to become a member of the Milwaukee Police Department.

Last year, Milwaukee Police Officer Vidal Colon, showed the world that he is truly one of Milwaukee's finest:

The officer responded to a domestic disturbance complaint Saturday night. The suspect ran. The officer chased. According to the police chief, the confrontation ended in moments in a blast of gunfire.

Fresh from a spring vacation, Milwaukee's police chief took time out Monday morning to survey the scene of Saturday's shootout.

"It's really quite startling to look at it first hand and see what an extraordinarily brave act our officer committed and the extraordinarily intimate surroundings in which this occurred," Milwaukee police Chief Ed Flynn said.

Flynn said Officer Vidal Colon was chasing the suspect through a gangway when the 45-year-old man opened fire."The officer was wounded and went down. (He) continued to exchange fire with a suspect who went down, and both were on the ground shooting at each other before this gun battle ended. Mercifully, without the loss of our officer's life," Flynn said.

The officer shot the suspect five times. The suspect hit Colon twice in the legs and once in the stomach. The officer wasn't wearing a bullet-proof vest. They're not required to.

"I spoke to him yesterday (Sunday)and he had already gotten the stern lecture from his lovely wife, Tina, that he's never leaving the house again for the rest of his career without his body armor on. He did not have it on," Flynn said.

Colon is home recovering. His wife told WISN 12 News reporter Colleen Henry he has no comment.

The reason I'm bringing it up now, a year after the fact, is that I just learned tonight that Vidal is one of the eight finalists for America's Most Wanted 2010 All-Stars.

According to the AMW website, voting for the grand winner is supposed to start today, but apparently they haven't set up the program yet. I will update this when I find out how to vote.

But I would still like to thank Vidal Colon for his service and sacrifice for the betterment of the community, and wish him the best of luck in the contest.

There's A Right Way And There's A Wrong Way

From JSOnline:

A Milwaukee police sergeant has been suspended 20 days without pay for sending a text message to other supervisors urging them to tell officers to stop making traffic stops until problems with the department's new digital radio system are addressed, according to police documents.

Sgt. Willie O. Murphy is scheduled to begin serving his suspension April 15, according to a police department personnel order.

Murphy sent the text message to 33 other supervisors Sept. 23, according to a complaint filed against him. Murphy was off-duty and used his personal cell phone to send the text message, the complaint says.

Murphy sent the message "in an attempt to initiate a protest related to the slow transition to the digital radio system" and wanted to "force the administration to immediately address concerns related to the radios and officers' safety," the complaint says.

I don't have a problem with the sergeant trying to bring attention to what appears to be a faulty communications system. He was simply trying to point out what he felt to be a serious danger to his fellow officers.

Besides, it would be hypocritical of me to criticize him when one considers the multitude of posts that I have written about how screwed up Milwaukee County can be.

The problem lies in the way he did it. There are better channels that he could have chosen than to text his peers encouraging them to basically put the public in harm's way by having the police not do their jobs, even if it is hindered by a poor system.

A very interesting side note to this story is how this can make some conservatives finally realize that taking twenty days unpaid leave is hard for a family and that unions aren't all bad after all.