Let’s see… they advocate lenient sentencing – particularly on juveniles – and enact a “no chase” policy for stolen cars. Did they not expect any consequences?
Another stolen vehicle, another crash. Another fatality.
This one involved a 16-year-old Milwaukee boy who was driving a stolen Toyota Camry when it T-boned another car at N. Port Washington Road and W. Capitol Drive on Saturday morning.
It is part of a dangerous trend in Milwaukee that drew condemnation from Mayor Tom Barrett on Sunday afternoon at the District 3 police station, where he and other city leaders spoke out against the rise in car thefts, carjackings and crashes involving stolen vehicles.
[…]
In the six weeks before Milwaukee police created a task force on Dec. 1 to investigate the skyrocketing number of carjackings and stolen vehicles, a total of 94 cases were reported, said Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn. Since last March, nine people have been killed in crashes involving stolen vehicles.
Just last week, Milwaukee police arrested 14, including 10 juveniles, in four carjacking cases in an 18-hour span.
Attorneys for Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and the investigators who conducted the John Doe probes into Gov. Scott Walker’s campaigns say the Wisconsin Supreme Court is jeopardizing their right to a fair trial.
Chisholm, two other prosecutors and three investigators in his office are being sued in federal court by Cindy Archer, a former Walker aide. In the lawsuit, filed in July, Archer alleges that Chisholm and the five others “carried out a campaign of harassment and intimidation” and violated her constitutional rights during their investigation.
In the latest memorandum filed Monday, attorneys for Chisholm and the other defendants argue that the state Supreme Court’s recent decisions regarding evidence from the John Doe investigations are preventing them from defending themselves in court.
Even if you support the John Doe process, which I don’t, the entire purpose of the process is to keep the collected evidence secret to prevent damaging the folks being investigated until they are charged with a crime. If the court releases all of the collected evidence for the civil suit, those records become subject to discovery and public disclosure – thus invalidating the Doe process that collected the information.
Remember that if Chisholm had chosen to investigate with the normal process, those records would be readily available to him. The fact that he chose a secret investigation has its consequences.
Two top law enforcement leaders in Milwaukee County took aim at the state’s concealed carry law as a possible contributing factor in Milwaukee’s spike in gun violence this year.
“Since that law has passed, almost every single year, the number of crime guns seized by this department has gone up and the time-to-crime on our most frequently used weapons has decreased,” Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said Wednesday.
“Now that’s correlation not causation, but it’s a pretty strong correlation.”
The average time-to-crime, which is derived from the date of a gun’s original purchase to the date of recovery, has dropped from 10.6 years in 2012 to 8.6 years in 2014 for all guns, according to the department.
In each of 2013 and 2014, 20% of the handguns recovered had a time-to-crime of less than six months.
Flynn made his remarks during a Milwaukee Community Justice Council meeting, which focused on rising numbers of nonfatal shootings — 552 people have been shot this year in the city of Milwaukee as of Nov. 11 — and homicides, which already have reached a decade-high this year.
Couple things… first, this would be pretty easy to prove. Once someone is convicted of a crime, we would know if they were a concealed carry permit holder or not. The police have these numbers. Why not show them? Do concealed carry permit holders commit more gun crimes than the rest of the population? That’s not the case in other states, but perhaps Milwaukee is different. In any case, this is very easy to prove or disprove and the fact that Flynn and the corrupt Chisholm aren’t releasing these numbers tells us what they really reveal.
Second, the concealed carry law applies to the entire state, yet only Milwaukee is seeing a spike in crime. I would be willing to bet that there are far more people in Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee counties who legally carry a weapon compared to Milwaukee County, and yet, again, only Milwaukee is seeing a spike in crime. Why would that be?
This is simply a couple of guys who are failing at their primary job of crime control in Milwaukee trying to pin the responsibility on something else.
Over the weekend, the prosecutors upped the ante. It was reported that Governor Walker questioned the constitutionality and the motivation of the prosecutors. In response, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm implied that Walker might be criminally prosecuted for criticizing the investigation and questioning the motivation of the prosecutors. “As to defamatory remarks,’ Chisholm said, “I strongly suspect the Iowa criminal code, like Wisconsin’s, has provisions for intentionally making false statements intended to harm the reputation of others ….”
I am going to repeat that. The elected District Attorney of Milwaukee County actually suggested that someone who criticized him should be charged with a crime.
For the family of “Rachel” (not her real name), the ordeal began before dawn — with the same loud, insistent knocking. Still in her pajamas, Rachel answered the door and saw uniformed police, poised to enter her home. When Rachel asked to wake her children herself, the officer insisted on walking into their rooms. The kids woke to an armed officer, standing near their beds.
The entire family was herded into one room, and there they watched as the police carried off their personal possessions, including items that had nothing to do with the subject of the search warrant — even her daughter’s computer. And, yes, there were the warnings.
Don’t call your lawyer. Don’t talk to anyone about this. Don’t tell your friends.
The kids watched — alarmed — as the school bus drove by, with the students inside watching the spectacle of uniformed police surrounding the house, carrying out the family’s belongings. Yet they were told they couldn’t tell anyone at school. They, too, had to remain silent.
Bear in mind that these tactics, which are usually reserved for violent criminals, were used against people for allegedly doing things like sending emails about political issues on government time. The tactics were clearly used to intimidate and scare people. And it worked. Chisholm successfully silenced a wide swath of conservative activists during the election cycle.
We can’t change the past. Hopefully we can hold some of the people responsible for abusing the citizens with the power of their offices accountable. What we can do is make sure this doesn’t happen again by throwing the John Doe process into the trash can of well-intentioned, but bad policies. There’s no reason that Wisconsin can’t seek justice through a normal grand jury process like every other state.
Bear in mind that this only includes money spent on outside counsel. It does not include all of the time and expense incurred by the Milwaukee DA office and GAB.
Documents obtained by the MacIver Institute show taxpayers shelled out $965,191.70 from July 1, 2013 to November 30, 2014 to six different law firms, which are defending the Government Accountability Board (GAB), Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, and other John Doe investigators. The largest sum of money – $589,523.02 – went to three law firms representing the GAB or its special prosecutors in the John Doe probe.
It is worth noting that this is also money being spent in these law enforcement budgets that is NOT going to things like reducing gang violence, victim services, etc.
MILWAUKEE —Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said the fatal shooting of Dontre Hamilton in Red Arrow Park was ‘justified self-defense.’
Based on the evidence we have, the DA made the right call. That still doesn’t excuse why the decision too so blasted long. Let’s hope that the mob will be sensible and not trash the city for a good charging decision.
But Chisholm’s aim — to have a chilling effect on conservative speech — has been achieved by bombarding Walker supporters with raids and subpoenas: Instead of raising money to disseminate their political speech, conservative individuals and groups, harassed and intimidated, have gone into a defensive crouch, raising little money and spending much money on defensive litigation. Liberal groups have not been targeted for their activities that are indistinguishable from those of their conservative counterparts.
Such misbehavior takes a toll on something that already is in short supply: belief in government’s legitimacy. The federal government’s most intrusive and potentially punitive institution, the IRS, unquestionably worked for Barack Obama’s reelection by suppressing activities by conservative groups. Would he have won if the government he heads had not impeded political participation by many opposition groups? We will never know.
Would the race between Walker and Democrat Mary Burke be as close as it is if a process susceptible to abuse had not been so flagrantly abused to silence groups on one side of Wisconsin’s debate? Surely not.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa issued a preliminary injunction, telling Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and the state Government Accountability Board they may not enforce a controversial section of Wisconsin campaign finance law.
The ruling was a win for conservatives who say Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat, and the GAB have used Wisconsin election laws to stop them from participating in state campaigns.
In issuing the injunction, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa said his urgent action was required.
“In light of the important constitutional issues at stake, the Court agrees that CRG’s proposal is the appropriate procedure to follow under such unusual circumstances,” hewrote. “The general election is only three weeks away. Any further delay threatens to negate the effectiveness of CRG’s requested relief.”
I’ll admit i was surprised to see Dan Bice on Twitter this morning. I thought for sure the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel suspended him for his remarks. I guess it’s more important for the newspaper to defend John Chisholm than to have decent moral standards.
If true, this is yet another insight into Chisholm’s character. Of course, after we have watched him run this investigation, we already know he lacks integrity.
Now a longtime Chisholm subordinate reveals for the first time in this article that the district attorney may have had personal motivations for his investigation. Chisholm told him and others that Chisholm’s wife, Colleen, a teacher’s union shop steward at St. Francis high school, a public school near Milwaukee, had been repeatedly moved to tears by Walker’s anti-union policies in 2011, according to the former staff prosecutor in Chisholm’s office. Chisholm said in the presence of the former prosecutor that his wife “frequently cried when discussing the topic of the union disbanding and the effect it would have on the people involved … She took it personally.”
Citing fear of retaliation, the former prosecutor declined to be identified and has not previously talked to reporters.
Chisholm added, according to that prosecutor, that “he felt that it was his personal duty to stop Walker from treating people like this.”
