An open letter to state Rep. Polly Williams on police brutality in Milwaukee and GOP gay-bashing in Madison.
by John-David Morgan
March 17, 2005

Dear State Rep. Williams,

Holding court on race, justice and equality in the face of another maiming of a minority male in Milwaukee by three off-duty police officers — possessed of a particularly perverse brand of viciousness, a confederate flag reportedly unfurled in the wings — is a bit like judging a community with a trial-by-inferno. To then spark up the community-wide prosecution with a trash-talking alderman, Michael McGee, Jr., is like gassing the flames. We might as well bang the gavel on World Wrestling Entertainment’s Smackdown.

Has the story of police brutality in the inner city ever been different in Milwaukee? We have been through this drill before, many times. Two generations of police excessive force stories — many of them involving fatal shootings — have come and gone. The Oct. 24 beating of Frank Jude, Jr., is getting more attention in this community than any incident of police brutality in more than 20 years. It’s also the first time since the beating of James Schoemperlen (a white male) in the early 1980s that the DA has filed charges against officers accused of excessive force. Charges have never been filed against Milwaukee police in a wrongful death case; and, over the years, innumerable abusive acts by police officers have all but escaped notice, save for the out-of-court settlement amounts approved by the city’s Fire and Police Commission.

Rarely, State Rep. Williams, if not ever in my experience writing about the Milwaukee Police, has the discussion been so base and in the gutter as it has been with the Jude case. We have seen and heard better, many times. Perhaps that is a sign of the times. Yet, this time we also see, in the faces of officers Jon Bartlett, Daniel Masarik and Andrew Spengler, a visage of white hatred in Milwaukee that has seldom appeared so mutant and malicious.

Perhaps it was frustration that filled Ald. McGee, a powerless sort of rage that had grown in the months that followed the beating, as District Attorney E. Michael McCann prepared his case against the officers, when he spoke at the Justice for Frank Jude rally last month. Remembering then, at the microphone, that Bartlett, Masarik and Spengler had stripped Jude, cutting off his pants after they had him down, kicking at his head as Bartlett tormented him with a knife, McGee reached for the now infamous taunt. Anyone who would do such a thing to another human being, the alderman said, are “straight up sick faggots.”

We cannot truly know what was going through Ald. McGee’s mind when he barked the insult into the microphone, just as we cannot know what Mark Belling was up to when he referred to Mexican-Americans as “wetbacks” on his WISN radio show just prior to the elections last fall, the very week of the Jude beating. The cops, of course, were not there to hear the alderman’s playground challenge to their heterosexuality, but it was duly reported, recorded and became the talk of the day.

About a week after the rally, State Rep. Williams, you put out a press release that stated: “The issue should not be the choice of words of Alderman McGee, Jr., but the near fatal beating of Mr. Jude.” You stood with McGee’s father many times over the years as he was being vilified in the media, and your support of Ald. McGee, Jr., is admirable and forgiving. Yes, McGee’s words stole focus from the nightmare that Frank Jude endured last fall, providing fodder for conservative radio-talk and editorials to help Milwaukee “lose sight of the real enemy,” as you suggest in your press release. However, just as the images of Jude’s tormentors are etched in our minds, so too are the words of Ald. McGee.

But let’s not rush to lay the blame on the media. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Journal Communications are media with a long history of downplaying, burying, and even misreporting police brutality and murder cases. But the Journal Sentinel has done some fine work in reporting on the Jude case, even to go so far as to question DA McCann’s decision not to prosecute Bartlett, Masarik and Spengler under the state’s hate crime laws. We cannot blame the media for paying attention to McGee’s “choice of words.” Nor should we ignore the confrontation about those words between State Sen. Tim Carpenter (who is gay) and McGee at City Hall. We do not live in an atmosphere where acceptance of public insult is the rule, with the possible exception of WWE’s Smackdown. WISN-Radio and WISN’s parent station, Clear Channel, are under fire for Belling’s “wetback” slur; Republicans in the state Legislature voted recently to condemn University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill because of h!
is writings on the 9-11 tragedy, when he referred to the victims as “little Eichmans.” And now your colleague, state Rep. Pedro Colon, is gathering support for legislation that would condemn Belling’s words.

THE LONG FIGHT
State Rep. Williams, you asked the community to “stand with Alderman McGee, Jr. to bring justice for this savage act because if there is ‘NO JUSTICE,’ there is ‘NO PEACE.’” The stand for justice has been taken many times, for Leonard Young, for Isaiah Bell, Kenneth Hart, Tommy Jackson and so many others whose names are not as well remembered as those of Daniel Bell, James Schoemperlen and Earnest Lacy. Lawyers such as Tom Jacobson and Robin Shellow, and the late Terry Pitts; organizations such as the Benedict Center and the cops’ own League of Martin; and, yes, Ald. McGee’s father and you, have long fought for change and for solutions. It has been a long fight, a long history, one that I will attempt to address in this open letter, if there are words for it all.

Even as we recall this past, Rep. Williams, and demand justice for Frank Jude, another fight for justice and equality rages in the state. It is a fight that you have not joined. The Republicans who control the state Legislature are forging ahead with the second phase of their Constitutional amendment to ban marriage of gay couples in Wisconsin. As I’m sure you are well aware, the “Defense of Marriage Act” goes well beyond banning “marriage” — it threatens to take away many of the recognized common law rights of gay Wisconsin citizens. These rights include access to health care and equal treatment in hospitals, schools and many other sectors of society in which gay couples care for their families. The amendment proposed in Wisconsin is one of the more strictly worded bans in the nation; the legal community of Wisconsin says it’s unconstitutional. By any measure, the ban is politically divisive and cynical, driven by the same type of malice that you see on the faces of office!
rs Bartlett, Masarik and Spengler.

One year ago, in Round One of the two-session amendment process, you voted with Republicans and the 68-27 majority to approve the “Defense of Marriage” ban. Since then, we have seen an unprecedented surge of support for gay rights in the state. In Milwaukee, many Democrats have taken up the cause of equality. About 800 people attended the Valentine’s Day Rally in the City Hall rotunda last month, including state Reps. Jon Richards and Tamara Grigsby. Yet there were many empty seats at the dais. One of those empty seats might have been filled by you, state Rep. Williams. Your constituents have asked you time and again to join equality advocates in their fight — to reverse your vote of last March. In light of Ald. McGee’s regrettable comments, and your staunch support of the alderman after those comments, I again ask that you join your Milwaukee colleagues in the Legislature in voting ‘No’ on the amendment when it is taken up in the Round Two vote, expected to be held this su!
mmer or fall.

The fight for justice for Frank Jude, against police brutality in Milwaukee, and the fight to protect equality for gay citizens of Wisconsin, state Rep. Williams, is the same fight. It is the long fight for equality and justice in our community. It is a fight worth standing for.

It is a long fight, in which the faces have changed but much has remained the same. Twelve years ago, the face was not Frank Jude’s, but Isaiah Bell’s and Leonard Young’s. Isaiah Bell, 17-years-old, was shot to death during the manhunt in early September, 1994, for the killers of Milwaukee police officer William Robertson. Leonard Young had been murdered on a rainy morning a year earlier. As the police bunkered down to defend themselves in the Bell killing, the officer who shot the unarmed Leonard Young at pointblank range was returned to active duty. The officer’s name was Mark Buetow. You will remember, Rep. Williams, that, in 1993, when an inquest jury found no cause to file charges against officer Buetow, the community erupted in rage. Michael McGee, the former alderman, your longtime friend and father of Ald. Michael McGee, Jr., led a mob that overturned a police car in the ensuing melee.

WatchdogMilwaukee.com editor John-david Morgan covered police, courts, schools and politics under five editorial regimes at Milwaukee’s newsweekly, Shepherd Express, 1994-2000. His reporting on the Milwaukee Police Department broke new ground, and featured many exclusive interviews with victims of police brutality and the families of those killed by police. While building a reputation for hard-nosed journalism, Morgan also developed many relationships within law enforcement, writing regularly on criminal justice and policing policy, interviewing judges, District Attorney E. Michael McCann (who provided much friendly guidance over the years), sheriffs, police chiefs and scores of officers on the force. In 1997, he conducted the first major print interview in Milwaukee with Police Chief Arthur Jones, the city’s first black chief of police. In 1998, he wrote the exclusive “Monica Ray Story,” a look at the career of Milwaukee’s then-under-fire deputy police chief who, prior to the hiring of current Police Chief Nanette Hegerty, was the highest ranking female officer in MPD history. In 2000, he published a 519-case study on sentencing trends in Milwaukee County’s drug courts; and, through 2001, conducted arrest trend and county jail and House of Correction population research for the justice advocacy nonprofit, The Benedict Center, as well as for local news publications. Prior to starting WatchdogMilwaukee.com, Morgan was editor and publisher of ThePRESS, Milwaukee’s News and Arts Monthly.