Badger Blogger

We need more cops like this!

FOX TV Stories
A routine domestic call Sunday evening turned into a suicide attempt. When Milwaukee Police officer Cory Harris and his partner arrived to a house on the city’s southside they found a distraught man. Angry over an argument with the mother of his four children, the man covered himself with charcoal lighter fluid and held a lighted cigarette and lighter close by — threatening to ignite himself. As the four children watched, Harris approached the man despite a threat to light himself and take the officer too if he came closer. After 10 minutes of emotional negotiating, Harris convinced the man to drop the lighter. The man was taken into custody and evaluated at a mental health facility. The second district commander is nominating Harris for department commendation. Cory Harris became a Milwaukee police aide at age 18 after graduating from Madison High School in 2000. He’s been an police officer for the past three years.

I seen an interview with Officer Harris, he is a modest soft spoken young man, a true role model, and even though he dismisses the label, he is a hero.

JS Online: DayWatch
A group of about 50 people, mostly off-duty Milwaukee police officers, gathered at MacArthur Square this morning to protest the decision by District Attorney E. Michael McCann to file homicide charges against officer Alfonzo Glover, who later killed himself.

Several speakers said McCann, who is retiring at the end of this year after 38 years in office, needs to better answer questions about how he handled the case against Glover, who was charged with killing Wilbert Javier Prado in March 2005.

Glover killed himself on May 30, hours after he was charged with first-degree intentional homicide and perjury.

“We believe (McCann) was furthering his political agenda at the expense of Officer Glover,” said Linda Haynes, a police captain, who like the others was off duty and did not appear in uniforms.

McCann was not immediately available for comment.

As I mentioned yesterday, an aid to Alderman Michael McGee/Jackson was busted by the Sheriffs Department, we learn more details. He was stopped for a suspended registration, but deputies found marijuana, an open ontainer of alcohol, and a gun.

The truth-challenged Alderman claimed that this staffer no longer worked in his office… But as of yesterday, he was still on the payroll. This guy just can not lie!

JS Online:McGee aide faces drug charge

Drugs, gun, open liquor found in his car during a traffic stop

An aide for Milwaukee Ald. Michael McGee was charged with a misdemeanor count of possession of marijuana after sheriff’s deputies found drugs, a pistol and an open container of alcohol in his car during a traffic stop Sunday.

Sheriff’s deputies stopped Manquis Daniels, 25, on Lincoln Memorial Drive for a suspended vehicle registration and found the other items inside the car, said Kim Brooks, Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman.

In a news release , Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. said three passengers were arrested.

“The occupants of this vehicle obviously came down to the lakefront for the wrong reasons,” Clarke said in the release.

McGee issued a statement Tuesday that said Daniels had ended his employ Friday, but City Clerk Ron Leonhardt said Daniels was still on the payroll Tuesday.

Milwaukee’s out of touch elected officials are now proposing that we tripple the county sales tax.

“We’ve got a budget crisis not because we don’t have enough money, but because we spend too much in the wrong areas, like pensions and health care costs.”
-Scott Walker

JS Online:Supervisors propose 1% sales tax hike
Three Milwaukee County Board supervisors on Tuesday proposed an advisory referendum on a 1-percentage-point increase in the county sales tax that they say will shore up shrinking county funding for parks, cultural institutions and the bus system, while lightening the property tax load.

Someone tell me why the Superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools is concerned about the County Transit System losing money, his job is doing what is right for MPS.

JS Online:County, MPS in bus spat
Additional Milwaukee County bus fare increases or service cuts - which are almost certain to be considered, according to County Executive Scott Walker - could force Milwaukee Public Schools to pull its students off the buses at a cost of $6.6 million to the transit system, MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos warned Monday.

The transit system “may soon be uncompetitive with yellow bus service providers, and the school district will be forced to take its $6.6 million elsewhere,” Andrekopoulos writes in a letter to the editor in today’s Journal Sentinel. “This will only further contribute to the transit system’s decline, but our district just doesn’t have an option. We must put as many resources as possible into the classroom - the most important place.”

After reading the column, you can just feel another tax hike coming our way, so prepare to fight!

It would be nice to recoup some of our staggering losses.

JS Online: DayWatch
Hoping to recoup at least $100 million paid out in the controversial pension deal that still haunts its finances, Milwaukee County today sued its former actuarial firm, claiming malpractice and breach of contract.

The federal lawsuit targets a deep pocket: Mercer Human Resource Consulting, the New York City-based global subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, a conglomerate with annual revenues of $12 billion. The case was assigned to Federal Judge Charles Clevert.

Mercer, under a contract signed by former county personnel director Gary Dobbert, advised the county on the costs of various pension enhancements under consideration in 2000. Some were adopted in the multifaceted package of retirement sweeteners that has contributed to soaring pension payouts, a squeeze on the county budget and a raft of retirements at the courthouse.

Dobbert was a chief architect of the pension package and served a brief jail sentence in 2004 after the state attorney general’s office charged him with lying to county officials about the deal’s costs. He was also accused of smoothing the way for approval of the pension upgrade to benefit himself. Under an agreement with state prosecutors, he pleaded no contest to one felony count of misconduct in public office and two misdemeanor false statement counts.

Just days after ‘Lil Artie Jones won an award for his leadership, another of the many law suits filed against the city because of his actions, has cost us another $170,000.

JS Online: 2 officers win $170,000 in lawsuit against city
Two Milwaukee police officers who were transferred after they sparked a misconduct investigation against former Chief Arthur Jones and one of his deputies won $170,000 on Friday in their federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.

After a four-day trial and seven hours of deliberations, the jury concluded that Jones and Monica Ray, who remains a deputy chief, removed the officers from the elite Vice Division in retaliation.

The two plaintiffs, David Kolatski and Alfonso Morales, each will receive $20,000 in compensatory damages and $65,000 in punitive damages.

In awarding punitive damages, the jury ruled that the actions of the defendants were “willful, wanton and malicious.”

And get this, here is where it gets good!

The suit stemmed from the arrest of Monica Ray’s brother, Vincent Ray, in 1998.

After Kolatski and Morales made the arrest, Kolatski shared the details with a detective while waiting for takeout at Gold Rush Chicken. Restaurant owner John Mullarkey joined the conversation, according to trial testimony.

Mullarkey told the police he had seen the wanted man not long before, while making a food delivery to the deputy chief’s house. The police chief was there, too, he said.

Mullarkey’s story led to a district attorney’s investigation of Ray and Jones. The two ultimately were cleared of harboring a fugitive and were never charged with misconduct.

But the officers say it still made their superiors angry enough to transfer them back to patrol from coveted jobs on the Vice Division.

So the Police Chief and the ever disgraceful deputy chief Monica Ray were seen in a home with a known fugitive, but when police arrested that fugitive (Ray’s brother), the cops were the ones that got into trouble… Only in ‘Lil Arties MPD!

Here is more coverage from their day in court.

Today, the paper ran a fairly interesting story on a popular T-shirt, especially in our inner city young people. It is a shirt that says ““Stop Snitching” and stems from a group of rappers and even an NBA player, it is a call for people to stop cooperating with police, or worse.

Made popular in Baltimore last year by a “Stop Snitching” DVD featuring rappers, a Denver Nuggets player and others, some wielding guns, wishing harm on police informants, the T-shirts, sometimes spelled “Stop Snitch’n,” have caught on in urban centers from Boston to Philadelphia and Denver and are now among the hottest fashion trends in Milwaukee.

I thought the story was interesting and well done, but something caught my attention. They talked to an Assistant District Attorney, John Chisholm. The name caught my attention, this is the A.D.A. that is being groomed by E. Michael McCann to run for the D.A. seat if, as expected, McCann does not run. I wonder if the D.A.’s office will be using opportunities like this to get more press time for their heir apparent?

JS Online: Authorities aren’t hip to T-shirt’s message