Milwaukee cop brutality is ‘business as usual’

Local, state, and federal officials, working in concert with influential big business interests, like to portray the Milwaukee police department as “friends of the community.” When a cop makes a “mistake” like shooting someone dead, they all march in lockstep in a well-orchestrated plan to either outright lie about the circumstances, often using racist language or symbolism, or paint the cop as a “bad apple.”

But this is becoming a bigger challenge for them as cops rampage through Arab, Black, Latin@ and poor white communities beating, harassing and shooting mostly people of color.  

Since big business and its political servants have no concrete solutions to the economic and social semi-apartheid conditions in mostly communities of color, cops—often working with other repressive state forces such as the DEA and the FBI—are increasingly being used as savage occupation forces in an attempt to terrorize working class and oppressed people into submission so they don’t resist their conditions.  

The Milwaukee police department since its inception has had a long history of oppression in communities of color, and no matter what departmental changes are made, this continues today. Many of the most glaring examples of police terror in Milwaukee, like the Frank Jude Jr. and Ernest Lacy cases, continue to receive national and international attention.

Most recently, 25-year-old Larry Ellis was shot dead by a cop Oct. 23 in Milwaukee’s North Side. The cop said Ellis “charged” at him with a knife and refused to drop it, so he shot him. Just a few weeks prior, a Milwaukee cop killed a still-unidentified 50-year-old man whom the Police Department claims “charged” at cops with knives and refused to drop them. That same morning cops shot a 17-year-old man in the arm after cops from the “Violent Crime Reduction” unit said he tried to ram a squad car with a stolen vehicle.

All of this and more follows a summer of extreme repression for people of color in Milwaukee, where tens of thousands of mostly poor Black youth were issued citations or arrested for so-called “crimes” like staying after posted hours at the lakefront. Reminiscent of “Black codes” and chain gangs, many of these youth—unable to pay often exorbitant fines—are either locked in the viscous cycle of jail and poverty or are working for free or significantly below minimum wage in jails and communities to have their fines “absolved.”

Many of these youth might have had union jobs in local manufacturing plants before imperialist policies such as NAFTA forced them out; or had access to vocational or postsecondary education, but these options are now limited as well. The bosses are working fast on downtown rebuilding projects and neighborhood gentrification, but no matter how hard they try, they can’t hide the grinding oppressive conditions of the working class and oppressed in this city—once an epicenter of union manufacturing, now a non-union oasis for transnational corporations and temporary scab services like the Milwaukee-based Manpower Inc., the largest “temporary service” in the world.  

The statistics don’t lie. Just a few from the U.S. Census Bureau and various state sources: The Black infant-mortality rate is 19.4 per 1,000 live births, four times the rate of whites; the statewide prison population is well over 50 percent Black while the state’s Black population is 5 percent. W-2, the so-called “welfare reform program,” has devastated whole communities; public-sector unions such as AFSCME are continually under attack by the bosses’ attempts to privatize and/or cut jobs and services; while at the same time corporations continue to receive tens of millions of dollars in tax “incentives” and giveaways paid for by the taxpayer. And of course the U.S. war on Iraq has sucked millions from the city and the baleful effects of Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and similar foundations and think tanks are acute city and statewide.

There have been many forms of resistance to these conditions, but the savage beating of Frank Jude Jr. and subsequent acquittal of three white cops by an all-white jury last April have ignited a tinderbox of protest and resistance rooted in the above oppressive conditions.

Justice for Jude and other victims!

In the Milwaukee City Hall Rotunda Oct. 24 the Justice for Jude Justice for All! coalition sponsored a community gathering on the two-year anniversary of Jude’s beating to demand accountability from the police department and city, get updates on Jude’s case and others, get updates on efforts to end pay for terminated officers, and disseminate information on efforts to end exclusion of people of color on juries. Featured speakers included community and national activists including Mary Peeler, the NAACP’s national membership field director.

On Oct. 24, 2004, Jude and his friends, while attending a party in a Bayview neighborhood, were accused of stealing a police badge from the bedroom of a cop in the house where the party was taking place. Jude was attacked by at least a dozen cops and beaten unconscious. He was hospitalized for days and required reconstructive surgery. No badge was found and Jude was never charged with anything.

As a result of efforts such as a 4,000-person demonstration in April, in early October U.S. Attorney Stephen M. Biskupic brought federal civil rights conspiracy charges against five cops—Jon Bartlett, Daniel Masarik, Andrew Spengler, Ryan Packard and Ryan Lemke—in the beating of Jude and his friend Lovell Harris.

A sixth cop, former officer Joseph Stromei—who lied on the stand at the original trial, saying he didn’t see or do anything when he did—was charged and agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice. Two other officers have signed plea agreements.

Joseph Schabel—the first on-duty officer to respond to a 911 call about Jude’s beating—eventually admitted to the feds that upon his arrival at the scene he kicked Jude in the head as he lay prone on the sidewalk. He lied on the stand in the original trial.

Jon Clausing said that he and at least five other officers from the party beat Jude and that Clausing cut Harris with a knife. Schabel could get 20 years and Clausing 10 on the federal charges, but they will probably receive much less for their “cooperation.”

Although Biskupic claims the feds are attempting to get at the truth of the matter in Jude’s beating, they are taking the heat off Milwaukee District Attorney E. Michael McCann and attempting to deflect the simmering rage in the community, specifically in light of the current economic and social conditions.

The cops in Jude’s beating have become a liability, as those ruling the city know too well. They had hoped soon-to-be-retired McCann—who has for 38 years covered up dozens if not hundreds of police brutality and murder cases for his bosses—could get the job done once again. Despite mounds of evidence in case after case, not one cop was ever indicted during McCann’s reign.

But the Jude case was so nakedly barbaric, even to large segments of the white working class communities, that in this case three cops—Spengler, Masarik and Bartlett—were originally brought to trial for various charges. When they were acquitted by the jury, the feds stepped in, but only after being forced by community outrage and national and international pressure.

Jude himself continues to fight back with his allies. On Oct. 23 he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and eight former and current cops, claiming that they intentionally tortured and beat him because he’s Black, in violation of his civil rights; and that the city didn’t train, supervise and discipline officers. Jude and his wife are seeking unspecified compensation for past and future medical expenses, lost wages and disability, and punitive damages, as well as reforms in the police department. In a notice of claims filed earlier with the city, their attorneys listed damages of $30 million.

In an Oct. 24 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel interview Jude said: “Police brutality has to stop. ... The City of Milwaukee, (Mayor) Tom Barrett, he’s responsible. It’s his city. I lost a lot. I am not the same Frank Jude Jr. Whatever they took from me, I want back.” (www.jsonline.com)