After two days of testimony about a traffic stop that ended in a drug arrest, a Milwaukee County judge had heard enough.

“You can stop,” Judge Paul R. Van Grunsven said last fall, interrupting the defense attorney who was still cross-examining a West Allis police officer.

The judge recounted inconsistencies in the officer’s testimony and body camera footage shown during an evidence suppression hearing.

“This witness has lost any credibility with this court,” Van Grunsven said. “I find none of his testimony to therefore be truthful.”

The officer, Michael Lazaris, left the stand. 

He had been found untruthful by a judge, yet he does not appear on a list of officers with credibility concerns, findings of dishonesty or bias, or past criminal charges.

He’s not the only one. 

The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has strict criteria to place officers on the list and only does so if officers have a pending criminal charge, a past conviction or an internal investigation “that brings into question the officer’s integrity.”

Legal experts who reviewed the policy suggest it is improperly narrow, depriving defendants of crucial information for a fair trial. 

The list omits officers whose testimony has been found not credible by judges and who have cost taxpayers millions in misconduct lawsuits, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch found.

Experts said any one of those officers could be included on a “Brady/Giglio” list, so named for two landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings. Such lists are maintained to help prosecutors fulfill their legal obligations to share information favorable to the defense.

In practice, the decision about who gets on — and taken off — the list often comes down to one person: Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern.

Lovern has maintained his office is fulfilling its legal obligations while striking “the appropriate balance” with adding officers to the list.

Lovern took office in January. Prior to that, he served for 16 years as the top deputy to his predecessor, John Chisholm, and was responsible for maintaining what is formally known as the “officer status list.”

“I respect that other jurisdictions may apply different parameters to their respective Brady lists,” Lovern said. “At the same time, we know many jurisdictions do not even maintain a list.”

It’s dishonesty, he said in an interview, that gets officers on the list. He has drawn a distinction between overt deception and credibility rulings, when a judge determines an officer’s testimony does not match the evidence.  

Those rulings most often occur in suppression hearings with judges finding officers did not meet their legal burden for obtaining evidence, he said.

Veteran defense attorneys say judges can and do throw out evidence when an officer cannot articulate reasonable suspicion or probable cause, but that it is different — and rare — for a judge to plainly call an officer’s testimony not credible.

“It’s the reason the judge found them not credible: It’s testimony that didn’t line up with physical evidence or what the evidence was in the case,” said Jeremy Perri, deputy trial division director for the State Public Defender’s Office.

An officer’s placement on the Brady list does not guarantee his or her past will come up in court. It’s up to the prosecutor to disclose it, the defense attorney to raise it and a judge to find it relevant to a specific case. 

At least two dozen people on Milwaukee County’s list remain employed in law enforcement, an investigation from the Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch found.

“Brady is not designed to punish the officers,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former federal prosecutor.

“Brady is designed to ensure people get fair trials,” she said.

A wrongful homicide conviction

William Avery’s homicide conviction hinged on the word of other people.

Jailhouse informants and two Milwaukee police detectives said he had admitted to killing 39-year-old Maryetta Griffin.

Avery always maintained his innocence. In 2010, he was exonerated after DNA evidence linked Griffin’s homicide to serial killer Walter Ellis. Avery had served six years of a 40-year sentence and was one of three people charged in homicides later attributed to Ellis.

Avery filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and seven Milwaukee police detectives. This time, a jury believed Avery’s word and awarded him $1 million in damages.

Jurors considered reams of evidence, including a handwritten report from then-detective Gilbert Hernandez. Hernandez and Daniel Phillips, another detective, interviewed Avery soon after Griffin’s homicide in 1998.

Hernandez wrote that Avery admitted selling drugs to Griffin and later fighting with her after he woke up to her going through his pockets.

Hernandez asked Avery how he had killed Griffin.

“Subject states, ‘I’m responsible, I just don’t remember,’” according to the report, which Avery had refused to sign.

The next day, Hernandez filed another report that said during further questioning, Avery had denied killing Griffin. 

Avery was not charged with homicide then but was convicted of a drug offense. Years later, after the jailhouse informants came forward, Avery was charged with Griffin’s homicide. At the criminal trial, Hernandez and Phillips testified that Avery implicated himself, and Hernandez’s report was admitted into evidence. 

The federal civil jury not only found in Avery’s favor but concluded Hernandez and Phillips had falsified reports saying Avery admitted to the homicide. The jury found the other detectives named in the lawsuit had not engaged in improper conduct.

At the time of the federal verdict, Phillips was retired, but Hernandez was still working as an investigator at the Wisconsin Department of Justice. 

Lovern, the district attorney, said the state agency never referred the well-publicized jury finding to his office for potential inclusion on the Brady list.  

“Our office has determined not to add him to our database,” Lovern said in an email, responding to follow-up questions from the Journal Sentinel. 

Avery’s Chicago-based civil attorney, Ben Elson of the People’s Law Office, was stunned to learn Hernandez and Phillips were not on the list.

“They sent an innocent man to prison based on a fabricated confession,” Elson said. “If they don’t belong on a Brady list, who does?”

The state Department of Justice said Hernandez resigned as a sworn special agent for the Division of Criminal Investigation in February 2016, after the civil jury finding. He continued working in a series of non-sworn office roles at the department until his retirement in December, an agency spokesman said. 

The state would share any Brady/Giglio information about Hernandez with district attorneys or other law enforcement agencies “upon request,” Riley Vetterkind, the spokesman, said in an email.

Hernandez declined to comment recently when reached by a Journal Sentinel reporter. In the federal civil trial, he denied any wrongdoing, as did Phillips. 

Hernandez remains on a witness list for prosecutors, identified as a “DCI investigator,” in at least one pending homicide case: Maxwell Anderson, who is charged with killing and dismembering Sade Robinson.

A traffic stop ends in a search without cause

Lewis Moore went to prison, accused of a crime never proven in court.

On March 2, 2019, Moore got pulled over while driving. A Milwaukee officer, Chad Boyack, told Moore he had been “flying” and asked him to step out of the car. 

Moore, then 22, did so and raised his arms.

He was sure he had not been speeding. His license was valid. The car was not stolen or wanted. It was his girlfriend’s car, he told the other officer, Anthony Milone, as he sat in the back of the police squad.

She has her concealed-carry permit, he said, and her gun might be in the car.

Boyack did find a gun in the center console. Moore maintained he did not know it was there. He was on probation for a low-level felony and legally barred from having a gun.

Boyack and Milone arrested him. A prosecutor charged him with being a felon in possession of a firearm. As a result, Moore was revoked from probation and put behind bars — his first experience in prison.

“I don’t deserve this,” Moore said he remembered thinking at the time. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

His case got stuck in the court system during the COVID-19 pandemic. He even considered pleading guilty just to get it over with. 

But his public defender, Caitlin Hazard Firer, had reviewed the reports and officers’ body camera footage. She believed the officers had conducted an illegal search. So she filed a motion to try to get the evidence from the search thrown out.

Moore finally had his day in court in 2021. Inconsistencies piled up from the officers. 

Boyack and Milone gave different estimates of his speed that day, the highest being 60 mph. Video footage showed the officers turning on their squad’s lights and driving 32 mph to pull him over.

The officers said Moore took a while to stop, which factored into their decision to get him out of the car. Video showed Moore stopped within 30 seconds, spending much of that time navigating the busy intersection of North 27th Street and West Capitol Drive.

The officers differed on whether they smelled burnt marijuana from the car. Boyack testified that he did, though he did not mention the smell when he first spoke with Moore during the stop. Milone testified he did not smell it.

Boyack also testified he did not see marijuana until he searched the car, turning up the equivalent of a few grains of rice. Milone testified he did not see or smell it when he approached the car.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Glenn Yamahiro heard the testimony, reviewed the video footage and determined the evidence had been unlawfully seized. He also noted there was no independent evidence of speeding, like a radar gun.

“So bottom line here is I don’t find these officers credible in this case,” Yamahiro said, according to a transcript.

“I do not find the reasoning here for why he got put in the squad car legitimate,” the judge said later in the hearing, adding: “I do not find the actions of the officers here lawful.”

Moore’s attorney had been practicing law for decades. It was the first adverse credibility ruling against an officer in any of her cases.

“This is incredibly rare,” Firer said. “In my experience, judges will find another reason to suppress the evidence.”

“A judge has found them not credible, and that is Brady material,” she said.

Lovern, the district attorney, disagreed. He said the prosecutor on the case did not tell him about the judge’s finding and did not need to do so.

Lovern said the judge’s decision related to a specific set of circumstances at a suppression hearing and did not find the officers had been dishonest.

Chief Judge Carl Ashley echoed his comments, saying: “The judge didn’t say they were lying.”

Yamahiro declined to comment to the Journal Sentinel. 

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said he was unaware of the judicial ruling. The department did not investigate the circumstances of Moore’s arrest because no one made a complaint, he said. 

Norman praised the two officers, saying they had earned many meritorious awards for their service. In a follow-up email, the department said the chief agreed with the district attorney and chief judge that the judge’s credibility finding was only for testimony at a suppression hearing, “which is different than the integrity or credibility of an individual.”

Boyack and Milone did not respond to interview requests from TMJ4 News. The Milwaukee Police Department declined to make them available for an interview.

Years later, Moore still finds it difficult to capture how that traffic stop upended his life.

“You guys took time away from me and my family and my business,” he said in an interview with TMJ4 News.

Milwaukee County’s policy appears ‘improperly narrow,’ expert says

Prosecutors in other states do things differently.

The Cook County State’s Attorney Office in Chicago tracks judicial rulings on officer credibility. So do prosecutors in New York. When Brooklyn prosecutors first released a Brady list in 2019, local media reported it included 53 cases involving similar judicial findings.

These judicial rulings do not mean an officer purposefully lied or committed perjury. 

Last year, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis expanded the type of conduct that may qualify as Brady material and created a new tracking system for judicial orders related to witness credibility.

In Milwaukee County, there is no comprehensive tracking of such decisions. Asked if such a system should exist, the county’s chief judge said, “there’s always a transcript of the proceedings.”

Attorneys cannot ask for a transcript if they do not know a ruling was made in the first place. Legal experts say such rulings should be disclosed and underscored that Brady protections help prevent wrongful convictions. 

Official misconduct has played a significant role in about 54% of wrongful convictions, according to a 2020 study from the National Registry of Exonerations.

“It is a staggering number that runs the gamut of witness tampering, misconduct in interrogations, fabricating evidence, concealing exculpatory evidence and perjury at trial,” said Rachel Burg, director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project.

Most cases involving misdemeanors and lower felony offenses are rarely reviewed after conviction.

Rachel Moran, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, has extensively studied Brady lists. 

She reviewed Milwaukee County’s policy and said it appears to have an “improperly narrow reading of what types of misconduct could count as Brady evidence.”

The district attorney’s Brady list included 191 officers, as of late February. Thousands of officers have worked in the county since the list was started 25 years ago.

“The fact that the list dates back so many years and has relatively few officers suggests that it is probably missing a lot of Brady material,” Moran said.

Levenson, the Loyola Law School professor, said when a system fails to track officers with credibility problems, patterns get missed.

“The real concern is it’s not an isolated mistake, it becomes part of the culture,” she said.

A drug charge dismissed after officer found not credible by judge

The 22-year-old man stopped by Lazaris, the West Allis police officer later scolded by a judge, faced a felony drug charge.

The man’s attorney, Justin Padway, looked at the body camera footage.

In the video, Padway saw his client being polite and cooperative with the officer who had pulled him over. Lazaris peppered the driver with questions, including if he had guns or marijuana in the car. The man said no and kept his hands visible during the encounter. Lazaris got him out of the car and frisked him anyway.

Padway believed the officer had unlawfully searched his client and extended the traffic stop. He filed a motion to suppress the seized evidence, which included cocaine.

At the suppression hearing, Lazaris contradicted himself and the body camera footage, according to a transcript. 

In court, Lazaris said he pulled the man over for window tint. He said he believed he had thwarted a drug transaction and that the driver was involved in drug trafficking. In response to Padway’s questions, he admitted he saw no evidence of drug trafficking or a drug transaction.

Padway asked him to confirm his earlier testimony in the hearing, that he saw cocaine in the car. The officer said yes.

Padway played body camera footage in court. Lazaris could be heard telling another officer there may or may not be “shake” in the car. “Shake” typically refers to leftover, loose marijuana.

Lazaris, on the witness stand, said the term could be used for either marijuana or cocaine. Soon after, the judge, Van Grunsven, interrupted the questioning and said he was ready to rule.

“This guy testifies under oath he saw ‘shake’ in the vehicle,” the judge said. “That’s what he tells the K9 officer. That’s what’s truthful. That’s what’s honest. That’s what’s credible. The fact that he tries now to say that it was cocaine shake is incredible.”

The judge cited the other inconsistencies and ruled the search was unlawful, meaning the seized evidence could not be used. Prosecutors dismissed the charge against Padway’s client, who had no prior criminal convictions and has not been charged with any other offense.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel requested an interview with Lazaris or a West Allis Police Department official. In an email response, West Allis Deputy Chief Chris Marks defended the officer and said the department does not believe the judge’s finding should be considered Brady material.

“An officer losing a motion hearing can occur during the course of an officer’s career but is not indicative of deceit,” Marks said in an email. “The officer is a highly valued member of our department. We support the officer’s actions.” 

Lovern, the district attorney, said the case illustrates why his office generally will not add officers to the Brady list for credibility determinations made in court hearings.

The judge’s finding stemmed from what he thought the term “shake” meant, Lovern said.

“In fact, the term ‘shake’ has long been used to refer to both particles of marijuana and cocaine, particularly by law enforcement investigators,” Lovern said in an email.

Lovern did not address other inconsistencies cited by the judge. The Journal Sentinel left several messages for the judge but did not hear back.

To Padway, placing such an officer on the Brady list is “essential for maintaining the integrity of the justice system.”

“It ensures that both defense attorneys and prosecutors have access to crucial information about an officer’s credibility, protecting the defendant’s right to a fair trial and upholding public trust in law enforcement,” he said.

This story is part of Duty to Disclose, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 and Wisconsin Watch. The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided financial support for this project.

Falsifying reports. Found ‘not credible.’ Why aren’t they on Milwaukee’s list of police officers with integrity issues? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A deputy falsifying jail logs. Officers stealing during a search warrant. An off-duty officer hitting a parked car after leaving a bar, then lying about it.

Imagine one of them arrested you. 

Would you want to know about their past?

Under the law, you have a right to that information. How and when you get access to it depends on prosecutors, who file criminal charges and bring a case in court.

The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has a system for tracking officers with credibility concerns, allegations of dishonesty or bias, and past criminal charges. But it is inconsistent and incomplete and relies, in part, on police agencies to report integrity violations, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch found.

After reporters provided Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern with their analysis and raised questions about specific cases, he removed seven officers from the database and acknowledged one officer should have been added to it years earlier.

The haphazard nature of these tracking systems fails officers and people defending themselves, said Rachel Moran, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, who has extensively studied the issue nationwide.

“It does lead to wrongful convictions,” Moran said. “It leads to people spending time in jail and prison when they shouldn’t.”

Many criminal cases come down to whether jurors believe a defendant or a law enforcement officer.

The system of flagged officers — often known as a “Brady/Giglio list,” so named for two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases — is meant to help prosecutors fulfill their legal duty to share evidence that could help prove someone’s innocence.

Wisconsin does not have statewide standards for how such Brady information should be gathered, maintained and disclosed. It falls to local district attorneys to decide how to gather and share information about officers’ credibility, leading to inconsistencies across the state’s 72 counties.

Lovern maintains his office is fulfilling its obligations. By compiling the spreadsheet, his office already is doing more than required, he said in an interview. Just because an officer is on the list does not mean he or she was necessarily convicted of a crime or had a sustained internal violation.

“The database is complete to the best of my knowledge and belief,” he said in a follow-up email in February, adding it always is subject to change with new information.

Some of those changes were prompted by this investigation, which found multiple inaccuracies in the Brady list released last fall. One officer was described as being involved in a custody death but he was not. Two were listed with the wrong agency. Another was listed for a criminal case that was expunged in 2002. At least five officers on the list were deceased. 

After reporters raised questions, a West Allis officer who resigned after admitting he had sex with a woman while on duty at a school was removed from the list because, Lovern said, he did not lie about what he did. That officer was hired at another agency in the county.

The inconsistencies in Milwaukee County’s Brady list have frustrated defense attorneys and advocates for police officers — one union leader called it the “wild, wild west” — and are another example of a nationwide problem for legal experts like Moran.

“It’s just an ongoing travesty of constitutional violations,” she said. “It is a huge national problem that should be a national scandal.” 

Who is on the Milwaukee County Brady list and why?

The district attorney’s office started tracking officers with documented credibility concerns more than 25 years ago.

The full list has not been made public — until now.

The move came after years of pressure from defense attorneys, media outlets and a lawsuit threat. The decision to release the list was harshly criticized by Alexander Ayala, president of the Milwaukee Police Association, the union representing rank-and-file officers in the city.

“It’s only going to be detrimental to police officers or even ex-police officers because they’re trying to move on,” he said.

The district attorney’s office first released the list to media outlets last September in response to public records requests. At the time, Assistant District Attorney Sara Sadowski wrote, in part: “This office makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of the record.”

She also said that some criminal cases may have “resulted in an acquittal, that charges were dismissed, or that charges were amended to non-criminal offenses.”

That list, dated Sept. 20, contained 218 entries involving 192 officers and included a wide range of conduct, from a recruit who cheated on a test to officers sentenced to federal prison for civil rights violations.

The Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 and Wisconsin Watch spent five months tracking down information about the officers through court documents, internal police records and past media coverage. 

Milwaukee police officers made up the largest share of officers on the list, but nearly every suburban police agency in the county was represented, as well as the Wisconsin Department of Justice and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

At least a dozen officers kept their jobs after being placed on the Brady list, then landed on the list again.

One of them was Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputy Joel Streicher. 

Back in 2007, Streicher and five other deputies searched a drug suspect’s house without a warrant, according to a previous Journal Sentinel article. It wasn’t until 2019 that Streicher was added to the Brady list when he was caught up in a prostitution sting and pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.

A year later, Streicher was on duty when he ran a red light near the courthouse and killed community advocate Ceasar Stinson. He resigned and pleaded guilty to homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle. Streicher declined to comment when reached by a reporter last month.

Criminal cases like Streicher’s represent three-quarters of the entries on the Brady list. The other quarter are tied to internal investigations.

The news organizations also found:

• Of the 218 entries on the list, about 47% related to a direct integrity or misconduct issue, such as officers lying on or off duty. The allegations vary: One officer pleaded guilty to taking bribes for filling out bogus vehicle titles and was fired. Another former officer was charged with pressuring the victim in her son’s domestic violence case to recant. A lieutenant was demoted after wrongly claiming $1,800 in overtime. 
• About 14% related to domestic or intimate partner violence, and nearly 10% related to sex crimes, such as sexual assault or possessing child pornography.
• Another 14% involved alcohol-related offenses, most often drunken driving. At least six cases involved officers, most off duty, who were found to be driving drunk and had a gun with them.

Nearly 7% involved allegations of excessive force. One of the officers listed in the database for such a violation was former Milwaukee officer Vincent Woller, who was added in 2009 after receiving a 60-day suspension for kicking a handcuffed suspect in the head, according to previous Journal Sentinel reporting.

Woller remained on the force until last year. He recently told a TMJ4 reporter he had testified “hundreds” of times in the past 15 years and never knew he was on the Brady list.

When asked to respond, Lovern, the district attorney, removed Woller from the list, saying Woller’s internal violation was not related to untruthfulness.

Lovern, who served for 16 years as the top deputy to his predecessor, John Chisholm, said he reviews any potential Brady material brought to his attention from the defense bar. 

In those cases, he said, he often has concluded that while officers’ conduct may show “poor judgment,” it did not relate to credibility or untruthfulness. 

Others have strongly disagreed with those decisions.

Three years ago, the State Public Defender’s Office asked for the full Milwaukee County Brady list, only to receive a partial list of about 150 names of officers charged or convicted of crimes. 

Public defenders then shared police disciplinary records they had obtained while investigating and trying past cases, said Angel Johnson, regional attorney manager for the State Public Defender’s Office in Milwaukee.

Johnson had expected those officers would be added to the list.

“They were not,” she said.

How some police officers can be on the Brady list and keep their jobs

The Brady list is not a blacklist. 

Eighteen officers are still employed by the Milwaukee Police Department, while five others are members of the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, according to representatives for those agencies.

In some cases, an officer’s past integrity violation or criminal conviction, such as drunken driving, may not necessarily prohibit the officer from testifying. That means they can still be useful as police officers, officials say.

“For us, it’s not about being placed on the list, it is how they will be used by the district attorney’s office,” Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said in an interview.

Norman said he does consider an officer’s ability to testify when weighing internal discipline. 

Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball said she does not, instead concluding the internal investigation and deciding discipline before forwarding any information to the District Attorney’s Office.

“Somebody can just make a mistake,” Ball said. “If that’s the case, then their employment is retained.”

Norman stressed he takes integrity violations seriously and makes his disciplinary decisions after reviewing internal investigations, officers’ work histories, comparable discipline in similar cases and input from his command staff.

Depending on those factors, officers can keep their jobs despite an integrity violation.

Officers Benjaman Bender and Juwon Madlock were working at District 7 on the city’s north side in 2021 when a man reported that he had just been shot at in his vehicle a few blocks away, according to records from the department and the Fire and Police Commission.

The man handed Bender his ID. The officers did not write down his name, inspect his damaged car parked outside, interview witnesses, or ask him any other investigatory questions, even after the man took a call from someone involved in the shooting.

Instead, Bender instructed the man to return to the crime scene by himself and told him a squad would meet him there.

“So it’s cool for people to just go shoot at people now?” the man replied.

“Just go over there,” Madlock said, as he returned the man’s ID.

Bender later told a sergeant the man had been uncooperative and that he did not see the man’s ID. Madlock told another sergeant the man had walked out on his own. Video from the lobby contradicted their accounts.

Internal affairs found both officers failed to thoroughly investigate and had not been “forthright and candid” with supervisors. 

Norman suspended each officer for 10 days. They remain employed — and on the Brady list.

The department did not authorize the officers to speak with a reporter for this story.

In rare cases, the district attorney’s office will decide that an officer can never be called as a witness. Only two or three officers in the county have received that designation in the last 18 years, and none are still employed as officers, Lovern said.

Reporters were unable to track the current employment of every officer on the Brady list because the Wisconsin Department of Justice has refused to release a statewide list of all certified law enforcement officers, a decision that is being challenged in court.

The state has released a separate database of officers who were fired, resigned instead of being fired or quit while an internal investigation was pending.

A comparison to that database showed at least four officers on the Sept. 20 Brady list were working at different law enforcement agencies in the state. 

Credibility matters whether you’re an officer or a citizen accused of a crime

There’s no guarantee an officer’s past will come up in court.

A defense attorney has to decide whether to raise it. And if they do, a judge has to decide if a jury should hear about it.

But for any of that to happen, prosecutors must collect and disclose the information in the first place. 

“We don’t monitor the Brady list,” said Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley, who added that he has never encountered a Brady issue during his 25 years on the bench.

“We get involved once the matter is brought to our attention,” he said.

Some prosecutors across the country come up with different systems to learn of potential Brady material. In Chicago, prosecutors started asking police officers a series of questions, such as if they had been disciplined before or found to be untruthful in court, before using them as witnesses.

In Milwaukee County, the district attorney’s office relies on police agencies to self-report internal violations. Lovern defended the practice, saying the local agencies are “very direct with us.”

But that approach leaves gaps. 

Out of 23 law enforcement agencies in Milwaukee County, only seven provided a written policy detailing how they handle Brady material in response to a records request sent in November. 

The Milwaukee Police Department and eight other agencies in the county do not have a written policy, and the other agencies did not respond or the request remains pending.

Regardless, prosecutors have a constitutional requirement to find and disclose potential Brady material, whether the records are located in their office or at another agency, said Moran, the law professor.

“Prosecutors still have the ultimate obligation for setting up information-sharing systems,” she said.

Sometimes, officers slip through the cracks.

Before Frank Williams landed on the Brady list, the Milwaukee police officer had a history of misconduct allegations dating back to 2017. He had been investigated for excessive force, improperly turning off his body camera and interfering with investigations into his relatives, according to internal affairs records. 

His harshest punishment, a 30-day suspension in 2021, was for an integrity violation after he falsely reported he had stayed at home on a sick day when he instead played in a basketball tournament.

But Williams was not added to the Brady list until last year, when prosecutors charged him with child abuse. He later pleaded guilty to lesser charges of disorderly conduct and was forced to resign. Attempts to reach Williams and his attorney by phone and email were not successful.

When asked why Williams was not placed on the list earlier, Lovern said the Milwaukee Police Department did refer Williams for Brady list consideration in May 2021 after the integrity violation, and Williams should have been added then.

Lovern said he should have forwarded Williams’ information to a staff member to include him in the database. He found no record that he actually did.

As a result, Lovern’s office is now contacting anybody who was convicted in cases where Williams was a named witness in the three-year period he should have been in the database.

Officials with the State Public Defender’s Office said they appreciated Lovern’s decision, but said the case shows what can happen when a Brady list is incomplete.

“The ability to question those witnesses against our client and their credibility is fundamental,” said Bridget Krause, trial division director for the State Public Defender’s Office.

If the information is not disclosed, it can have devastating consequences.

“You can’t go back and unring some bells,” Krause said. “Somebody who served 18 months in prison and now you’re finding out this could have impacted their case, they can’t not serve that time.”

Criminal defense attorneys who regularly practice in Milwaukee County say they rarely receive disclosures about officers’ credibility.

One said he had been practicing for nearly 20 years and had never received one. Another said the district attorney’s office practices amounted to a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Johnson, a manager for the state public defender’s office in Milwaukee, has practiced in the county for 10 years and tried numerous criminal cases.

She said she’s received two Brady disclosures related to officers’ credibility.

Both came this year.

Duty to disclose: Gaps found in Milwaukee County tracking of officers with credibility issues is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

For more than 25 years, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has maintained a list of law enforcement officers who have been accused of dishonesty, bias or crimes.

Often known as the “Brady list,” it is meant to help prosecutors fulfill their legal obligation to turn over evidence that could help defendants.

But a joint Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin Watch and TMJ4 News investigation found that the list is inconsistent and incomplete, raising questions about how useful it is in practice.

Here’s what to know about Brady lists.

What is a Brady list?

The Brady list is a compilation of law enforcement officials who have been accused of lying, breaking the law, or acting in a way that erodes their credibility to be a witness. It’s also sometimes known as the do-not-call list or the Brady/Giglio list.

The name comes from the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, which ruled that prosecutors cannot withhold material that might help the defense at trial.

What kind of behavior gets you on the Brady List?

The type of misconduct that can land a law enforcement officer on the Brady list is broad, ranging from violent crimes to workplace issues. An officer does not have to be found guilty of a crime or even charged with a crime to be placed on the list. 

Of the names on Milwaukee County’s Brady list, the majority involve criminal cases. Roughly a quarter involve internal investigations. 

The offenses range from crimes like domestic violence or drunken driving to integrity issues like falsifying police documents or cheating on police training tests. 

How does the District Attorney’s Office find out about potential Brady material?

The District Attorney’s Office is responsible for prosecuting crimes. If a law enforcement officer is referred for potential criminal charges, prosecutors would know about it because they make charging decisions.

But if an officer is facing an internal violation and not a criminal charge, it is up to the officer’s law enforcement agency to report the information to prosecutors, according to Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern.

Do police agencies have written policies for telling prosecutors about Brady material?

Not all of them.

The media organizations sent records requests to 23 law enforcement agencies in the county asking for any policies governing how to handle Brady material.

The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office and six other agencies provided a written policy. The Milwaukee Police Department and eight other agencies in the county said they do not have a written policy.

The remaining agencies did not respond or the request remains pending.

If an officer is on the Brady list, does that mean they can’t testify?

No. Being placed on the list only means that prosecutors have to disclose that officer’s history to the defense. If defense attorneys wish, they can raise the officer’s credibility issues with the judge.

At that point, it is up to the judge to decide whether or not the officer is credible enough to testify.

In rare cases, the district attorney’s office has determined an officer could never be relied upon to testify. Lovern said that has only happened two or three times in the past 18 years, and those officers are no longer employed as law enforcement.

If an officer is put on the Brady list, can they stay on the force?

Yes. Just because a law enforcement officer is on the list does not mean they are necessarily prohibited from testifying. That means they can still be useful as police officers, officials say.

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman and Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball say they carefully consider the facts and severity of each case before deciding whether to keep an officer on the force.

Where can I find Wisconsin’s Brady list?

In Wisconsin, there is no single Brady list. District attorney’s offices in each county are responsible for maintaining their own lists. 

But there’s no consistency to how prosecutors in Wisconsin maintain Brady lists. In an investigation last year, Wisconsin Watch filed records requests with prosecutors in each of the state’s 72 counties. Many denied the records request or said they didn’t keep track. The counties that replied disclosed a list of about 360 names. 

How many people are on Milwaukee County’s Brady List? 

You can find Milwaukee County’s Brady list here.

Nearly 200 current and former law enforcement officers are on the list, which dates back about 25 years. Some are accused of multiple offenses. Of those on the list, the majority are from the Milwaukee Police Department, but nearly every suburban police department is represented. 

Milwaukee County’s Brady list has flaws. Here’s what to know is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

For more than 25 years, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has closely guarded its list of law enforcement officers who have been accused of dishonesty, bias or crimes. In September, after pressure from defense attorneys and media organizations, the office released the full list for the first time.

This compilation of officers, known as the “Brady list” because of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, is meant to help ensure that defendants get a fair trial.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Ashley Luthern, TMJ4 News reporter Ben Jordan and Wisconsin Watch reporter Mario Koran spent five months tracking down information about the officers on the list through court documents, internal police records and past media coverage. 

The list contained scant and sometimes inaccurate information, making it difficult for reporters to ascertain why officers were placed on the list and when.

Reporters combed through all 218 entries involving 192 officers, requesting hundreds of pages of records from court cases, internal investigations, and employment records to verify why officers had been added. Reporters also dug up archived stories and past media coverage of some officers on the list.

They then categorized each entry on the list based on the type of alleged misconduct: excessive force, alcohol-related offenses, domestic violence, sex crimes and direct integrity or misconduct. For example, allegations about drunken driving were categorized as alcohol-related offenses. Cases involving lying about overtime or failing to properly investigate a reported crime were categorized as integrity or misconduct issues.

In order to verify how many remain employed as law enforcement officers with the same agencies, reporters had to consult several sources. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office and Milwaukee Police Department confirmed those who remain employed with them.

But reporters were unable to determine how many officers are employed at other law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin because the state Department of Justice will not release its statewide list of all certified law enforcement officers. Reporters instead used the state agency’s list of flagged officers — those who were terminated, resigned in lieu of termination, or resigned prior to completion of an internal investigation — to determine at least four officers remain employed at agencies throughout the state.

The analysis found multiple errors with the database, including officers who were listed with the wrong agency or incorrectly described as being involved in an in-custody death. At least five officers on the list were deceased.

After reporters raised the inaccuracies on the list with Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern, his office released a new version of the list in late February with several revisions, including the addition of one officer who Lovern admitted should have been placed on the list years earlier but had been overlooked.

Lovern told reporters the list is complete to the best of his knowledge and that it always is subject to change with new information.

How we investigated Milwaukee County’s once-secret Brady list is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.