A fourth grader in Maize, Kansas, drove his parent’s pickup truck to school after he missed his school bus, reported KSN News.
According to the article, someone saw the child driving the truck around 8:10 a.m. Wednesday and called the police. Responding officers could not immediately locate the pickup, until someone waved them down and pointed them to Pray-Wood Elementary School.
Police said the child drove the pickup about three miles from his home to the school. Officers added the child parked better than many adults.
Police reportedly did not ticket anyone and allowed the boy’s parents to handle the situation.
When a journalism nonprofit asked the Wisconsin Department of Justice in 2020 for the names and work histories of all law enforcement officers in the state, the agency initially appeared ready to grant the request.
But the department received pushback from law enforcement groups, and the records were not released.
This new information came to light in documents recently obtained by The Badger Project in its lawsuit against the state DOJ. The suit is seeking the names and work histories of most law enforcement officers in Wisconsin. The Badger Project’s co-plaintiff in the suit is the Invisible Institute, the journalism nonprofit that made the 2020 request.
Other news organizations, including the Washington Post, had seen similar requests rejected by the Wisconsin DOJ in preceding years.
In 2024, after the state DOJ denied another request for police names and work histories, this time from both the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project, the organizations sued for access.
In March, as part of the regular evidence exchange in the case, called discovery, the state DOJ released hundreds of documents to the two journalism nonprofits.
Among the documents was a letter sent by Assistant Attorney General Paul Ferguson, who heads the state DOJ’s Office of Open Government, to every police chief in the state. The letter indicated that the state DOJ intended to fulfill the request and release a list of all law enforcement officers in the state, but asked the individual agencies to identify any undercover officers who should not be included in that list.
The Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association responded with a letter to Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul the next day and urged the department to reverse itself, according to the documents obtained by The Badger Project.
Kenneth Pilegge, the association’s vice president, wrote that he had “significant concerns” in the letter.
“We have had contacts with members within our membership that have very serious concerns with this release and adamantly oppose this release without a court review,” he continued.
Neither the state DOJ nor the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association gave a comment for this story when offered the opportunity to do so.
Kaul assumed the position of attorney general, the head of the Wisconsin Department of Justice, in 2019. The department previously rejected the request for a full list of law enforcement officers’ names and work histories several times before he became AG, according to the released documents.
Dozens of states — including Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa — have released a full list of their law enforcement officers to a nationwide reporting project, which includes the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project.
The Wisconsin DOJ has, in response to repeated requests, released a list of “flagged officers,” those who lost their jobs due to termination, resignation in lieu of termination, or resignation prior to completion of an internal investigation.
This list, however, does not include officers who were fired or forced out of law enforcement jobs in a different state before taking a position in Wisconsin.
In previous denials, Ferguson has cited concerns that a complete list could “endanger” undercover officers and pose a general risk to officers and their families in a “volatile environment.”
The state DOJ says it isn’t able to identify undercover officers and redact their names.
Wandering officers
In Wisconsin, police and jailers who were fired or forced out of a previous job in law enforcement only to get hired at another one, called wandering officers, increased by 50% from 2021 to 2024.
The total number of law enforcement officers in Wisconsin is sitting near record lows, according to investigations by The Badger Project. So the pressure to hire previously fired or forced-out officers can be high, experts say. Chiefs and sheriffs need to fill positions, and officers fired or forced out from previous jobs already have their certification, which costs law enforcement agencies and new recruits time and money to obtain. Wandering officers are more likely to again commit misconduct on the job, studies have suggested.
A full list of names of law enforcement officers, including those separated from jobs outside of Wisconsin who now hold positions in the state, would alleviate a considerable information gap, the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project argue in their lawsuit.
The records requested would not include home addresses or family information.
The lawsuit
The Badger Project’s lawsuit is being funded by The National Freedom of Information Coalition, through grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Legal Defense Fund.
The Wisconsin Transparency Project, a law firm dedicated to enforcement of the state’s open records laws, along with the University of Illinois First Amendment Clinic, filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs.
The parties are submitting written arguments, called briefs, to Dane County Circuit Court, and then the judge will likely rule on the case, said Tom Kamenick, lead attorney for the Wisconsin Transparency Project.
This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.
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Prosecutors nationwide must provide the defense with information that could call into question the credibility of police officers or anyone else who might testify — whether that’s a history of criminal activity, dishonesty or some other integrity violation.
In many cases, prosecutors track such information through what’s called a “Brady list” of officers. No clear Wisconsin or federal standards exist for when officers should be listed for disclosure.
The consequences for failing to disclose Brady material can be dire, even leading people to be incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit.
Brady list policies elsewhere range widely, with some jurisdictions more meticulous than others. Such policies should consider the rights of police and citizens, experts say.
Arizona and Colorado have developed statewide disclosure systems.
When someone is charged with a crime, law enforcement testimony can play a crucial role in court, even determining whether the defendant lands in prison.
That’s why prosecutors nationwide must provide the defense with information that could call into question the credibility of officers or anyone else who might testify — whether that’s a history of criminal activity, dishonesty or some other integrity violation.
But how do prosecutors determine what to disclose about whom?
That’s where it gets complicated, and it’s the subject of an ongoing investigation by Wisconsin Watch, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and TMJ4 News called Duty to Disclose.
Many district attorneys maintain lists of officers accused of acting in ways that erode their credibility. These are often called Brady or Giglio lists, named for two U.S. Supreme Court rulings related to disclosure.
How do prosecutors across the rest of the state and country disclose such information and what best practices do experts recommend?
Here’s what to know.
What are the standards for Brady lists in Wisconsin?
No clear state or federal standards exist for when officers should be listed for disclosure.
It’s up to district attorney’s offices, which are responsible for prosecuting crimes, to maintain such records.
The district attorney should know when an officer is referred for potential criminal charges. But when officers face non-criminal internal violations, prosecutors rely on law enforcement to share that information for consideration. That’s the case in Milwaukee County, according to District Attorney Kent Lovern. If such sharing doesn’t happen, his office may be left unaware.
Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern makes decisions about which officers to put on — or take off — his Brady list. He is shown being interviewed by reporters for Wisconsin Watch, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and TMJ4 News in January 2025. (TMJ4 News)
The accuracy of a Brady list hinges on clear communication between law enforcement departments and prosecutors, said Rachel Moran, an associate law professor at University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis who has researched Brady systems nationwide.
“That is where a lot of the sloppiness happens is that prosecutors don’t set up a good system with the police for even learning about the information,” Moran said.
In Duty to Disclose, reporters asked 23 law enforcement agencies in Milwaukee County for policies governing how to handle Brady material.
Only seven provided a written policy. The Milwaukee Police Department and eight other agencies said they lacked a written policy, while the remaining seven did not respond.
What do Brady lists look like in Wisconsin?
A 2024 Wisconsin Watch investigation found some of Wisconsin’s counties keeping spotty Brady records. Records requests to 72 counties turned up more than 360 names of officers on Brady lists. The tally was incomplete since 17 counties either denied a records request or said they didn’t keep track.
Another 23 district attorneys said they had no names on file, although some said they would reach out to local agencies to update their list.
Milwaukee County disclosed incomplete information at the time. But after TMJ4 News made its own request and threatened to sue, the county released a full list of 192 officers listed for a wide range of conduct — from a recruit who cheated on a test to officers sentenced to federal prison for civil rights violations. Some officers were listed multiple times.
Of more than 200 entries on the Milwaukee County list released in September, nearly half related to an integrity or misconduct issue, such as officers lying on or off duty. About 14% related to domestic or intimate partner violence, and nearly 10% related to sex crimes, including sexual assault or possessing child pornography. Another 14% involved alcohol-related offenses.
What can go wrong if Brady disclosure doesn’t happen?
The consequences for failing to disclose Brady material can be dire, even leading people to be incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit.
In one extreme case in 1990, an Arizona woman was convicted of kidnapping and murdering her 4-year-old son based largely on the testimony of a Phoenix police detective who had a history of lying under oath — details prosecutors did not disclose. As a result, Debra Milke sat on death row for 22 years before a judge vacated her conviction in 2014.
What are other benefits of consistent Brady list disclosure?
The lack of consistent disclosure has prompted some defense attorneys to maintain their own internal Brady systems based on information they learn, said Alissa Heydari, director of the Vanderbilt Project on Prosecution Policy and a former prosecutor.
That extra scrutiny makes it even more important for prosecutors to be aware of witness credibility issues.
“From a strategic point, you want to know the weaknesses in your own case and in your own witnesses,” Heydari said.
Consistent, transparent tracking of Brady information could also improve trust in police, Moran said.
“I don’t think this is an attack on police,” she said. “If anything, I think it could help the credibility of law enforcement to be more transparent about the officers with histories of misconduct.”
Some police unions have sought to influence how Brady lists are created or maintained — including in Los Angeles, Brooklyn and Philadelphia, according to Moran’s research.
Little federal enforcement and a lack of political incentive to challenge police power often prevent state or local tightening of Brady standards.
“Police misconduct disproportionately impacts communities that are often not heard and not represented in media investigations and not represented as well in politics and in places of power,” Moran said.
Following publication of the first Duty to Disclose installments, the Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police criticized Milwaukee County’s Brady list release, saying officers could face “significant career and reputational damage.”
“We appeal to the legislature to establish a standardized, transparent process that ensures the protection of officers’ due process rights, while maintaining the public’s trust in the integrity of our law enforcement agencies,” the police group said in a March 4 statement.
What are best practices for maintaining Brady lists?
Brady list policies elsewhere range widely, with some jurisdictions more meticulous than others. Such policies should consider the rights of police and citizens, Heydari said.
Prosecutors are increasingly recognizing the importance of crafting such policies, but “my guess is that it’s a pretty small minority of offices that are doing it,” Heydari added.
John Jay University’s Institute for Innovation in Prosecution in 2021 highlighted 11 jurisdictions nationwide —from San Francisco to Philadelphia — that clearly spell out their policies.
The institute offers a variety of recommendations, including collecting as much information as possible from police departments about misconduct, providing staff with training, designating a group of people responsible for deciding when to list officers and crafting clear criteria for additions.
The lack of consistent disclosure by prosecutors has prompted some defense attorneys to maintain their own internal Brady systems based on information they learn about law enforcement officers’ histories. (Andrew Mulhearn for Wisconsin Watch)
“You don’t want to be frivolously adding police officers who, for instance, have unsubstantiated allegations against them,” Heydari said.
Moran cautions against making that criteria too narrow.
The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office uses strict criteria, listing officers only when they have a pending criminal charge, a past conviction or an internal investigation “that brings into question the officer’s integrity.”
That has left off, for instance, some officers who a judge found to lack credibility.
Last year, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis expanded the type of conduct
that may qualify as Brady material, announced specialized training for attorneys, created a new tracking system for judicial orders related to witness credibility and hired staff to exclusively focus on Brady compliance.
Are there any statewide Brady disclosure systems?
Arizona and Colorado have developed statewide disclosure systems, although government watchdogs have called them imperfect.
Colorado became the first state to mandate standards for tracking dishonesty in law enforcement in 2019. But a Denver Post investigation later found inconsistencies in the tracking system.
A bipartisan bill in 2021 expanded disclosure requirements, making Brady list policies and mechanisms transparent to the public. The legislation requires minimum disclosure standards for counties, with options to disclose more than is required.
Colorado maintains a searchable Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) database that includes decertifications and disciplinary files including untruthfulness. The 2021 law required dishonesty flags be made public. However, the POST website emphasizes that the database itself is not a Brady list.
Arizona lacks state mandates for tracking and disclosing Brady lists. The Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys’ Advisory Council does, however, publish a statewide database of listed officers — an effort that followed a 2020 investigation by ABC15 that found some prosecutors failed to keep accurate Brady lists. The council also publishes best practices for such disclosure.
Milwaukee County Supervisor Justin Bielinski said a statewide Brady standard and database could help the county manage liability in hiring. As Milwaukee County police departments aggressively recruit officers from other jurisdictions, those with a history of questionable policing may slip under the radar, he said. The problem of “wandering officers” is well documented.
“A state law change that would centralize this kind of record keeping or at least standardize the process for how the locals go about doing it could be helpful,” Bielinski said, adding that the county board lacks power to craft such standards for the sheriff’s department.
But Bielinski, who also serves as the communications director for state Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, doubts legislation to create Brady list standards would advance in a Legislature controlled by Republicans who more often back police groups and “tough on crime” platforms.
Larson has a different view, saying that legislation for consistency standards across law enforcement agencies and a statewide database housed at the Wisconsin Department of Justice could garner bipartisan support.
“Even Republicans would want to have consistency with their law enforcement so that they’re held to the highest standards,” Larson said.
Wisconsin state Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, is photographed during a state Senate session on June 7, 2023, in the Wisconsin State Capitol building in Madison, Wis. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
Asked if he supports statewide Brady standards, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said district attorneys should retain their discretion, which depends on a range of factors and the circumstances of the cases.
“It’s not as simple as whether somebody is on a list or not,” the Democrat told the Journal Sentinel. “There’s more analysis that needs to go into it.”
Still, Kaul said any Brady lists should be accessible and include “as much consistency as possible.”
Ashley Luthern of the Journal Sentinel and Ben Jordan of TMJ4 News contributed reporting.
This story is part of Duty to Disclose, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch. The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided financial support for this project.
Pro-Trump protesters gather on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Capitol Police chief testified Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon people convicted of assaulting police officers on Jan. 6, 2021, had negative repercussions on morale within the department and for police across the country.
“I think there was an impact, not only to the Capitol Police, but an impact nationwide when you see folks that are pardoned — and I’m really referring to the ones that were convicted of assaulting police officers,” J. Thomas Manger said during a hearing on the department’s budget request.
“I think that’s what bothered most cops and it did certainly have an impact on the USCP,” Manger added. “We’ve got so much change that officers are experiencing over the last four years, so I’m trying to keep them focused on moving forward. But it certainly did have a negative impact. For cops all over this country, you wonder when you put your life on the line every day, and does it matter?”
On Trump’s first day in office, he pardoned nearly 1,500 people who were convicted of crimes related to attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while members of Congress moved through the process to certify President Joe Biden’s win of the Electoral College vote.
Many of those people went to the Capitol after attending a rally near the White House where Trump repeated false claims about winning the 2020 presidential election, despite numerous failed court cases and no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Manger testified during the House Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee hearing that the department has made numerous improvements since the attacks, but that its nearly $1 billion budget request is necessary to hire more officers and continue updating equipment.
“I recognize that there are other police departments of a similar size whose budget is not as large as ours. But we’re not an ordinary law enforcement agency,” Manger said. “The USCP is unlike any traditional police department. In fact, our mission incorporates elements similar to the FBI, U.S. Secret Service and the federal protective service.”
Manger said that in the four years since the Jan. 6 attack, USCP has made substantial changes to how it operates and that many of its “mission requirements simply did not exist four years ago.”
Authorities in Washington are investigating a badly damaged Tesla Supercharger.
They believe that an arsonist might have planted a bomb to destroy the station.
FBI joins local investigators to determine if Tesla station was deliberately targeted.
Just a few years ago, the idea of someone targeting a Tesla charging station in a bombing attack would’ve seemed unthinkable. Today, it’s just the latest sign of growing anger aimed directly at Elon Musk. Authorities in Washington State believe an explosive device might have been planted at a Supercharger station, destroying part of the site and taking the entire location offline. Now, Tesla, the FBI, and local law enforcement are all trying to figure out what happened.
According to Lacey Police, a call came in around 1:30 a.m. reporting a “loud noise in the Sleater Kinney area.” When officers showed up at the local Target on 655 Sleater Kinney Rd, they found a severely damaged Supercharger station. Photos from the scene show one of the main cabinets of the charging station in several pieces. A Supercharger stall also has a piece missing.
The Lacey Police Department is calling the incident “malicious mischief” and said that it’s working with the FBI to sort out exactly what happened. In response to news of the event, Tesla itself responded on X to say that it’s working with the LPD and FBI to provide security camera footage. “Don’t mess with critical infrastructure,” it concluded.
Restoring Power—and a Bit of Normalcy
Notably, Tesla says it’s also working with Puget Sound Energy to get the Supercharger station back to full functionality so hopefully, those who rely on it won’t be without power for too long. This is, sadly, far from the first example of this sort of damage in recent months.
Protests span across not just the USA, but the world at this point. While most have been peaceful, a growing handful of incidents in the States and abroad are violent and or dangerous. Elon Musk has blamed the surge in Tesla-related vandalism on backlash to his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has become a lightning rod thanks to deep federal budget cuts and significant government job losses. He has also claimed that criticism from Democratic leaders has fueled hostility toward Tesla and its supporters.
It’s becoming clear that some protesters see Tesla as a proxy for Elon Musk himself—an easy, visible target to vent frustration. Unfortunately, that means owners, many of whom have no connection to Musk’s politics or public persona, are getting caught in the crossfire. In response to the uptick in vandalism, the FBI has launched a task force to investigate attacks on Tesla property. Even so, the broader wave of unrest shows no signs of slowing down.
We're on-site with @LaceyPolice and @FBI, and reviewing camera footage. Also coordinating with @PSETalk to get the Superchargers back online asap. Don't mess with critical infrastructure.
A school bus aid in Howard County, Maryland, was accused of sexual assault against students, reported WBAL TV 11.
According to the news report, 80-year-old Albert Rice, Jr. was charged with sexual assault and a fourth-degree sex offense after he was accused of hurting two students.
Police said detectives received reports that Rice allegedly hit a non-verbal student on a school bus. Surveillance video was pulled and police found evidence of Rice hitting a 13-year-old non-verbal student and inappropriately touching another 13-year-old student.
According to charging documents obtained by local news reporters, video of the incident showed the teen first struck Rice, who responded by hitting the teen in the face while she was secured in a seatbelt. The charging documents also state that Rice admitted to investigators that he was frustrated with the victim when he hit her.
Detectives stated via the article that Rice is an aide for a school bus that transports students to to the Linwood Center, a non-public special education program in Ellicott City. He is reportedly not employed by the school but by transportation company Bowen Bus Services. Rice has been an aide for two and a half years. The school declined to comment further.
It is unclear when the incident occurred. However, back in February, Rice was reportedly suspended over an unspecified incident. Police say via the article there are no indications of other victims but anyone with information can contact the department. The investigation is ongoing.
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The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has strict criteria to place officers on its Brady list, meant to help prosecutors fulfill their legal duty to share evidence that could help prove someone’s innocence.
The list omits officers whose testimony has been found not credible by judges and who have cost taxpayers millions in misconduct lawsuits. That includes two Milwaukee police detectives who were found to have falsified reports that led to an innocent man’s homicide conviction.
Experts call the criteria improperly narrow, depriving defendants of crucial information for a fair trial.
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 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.
Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern, far right, often makes the decision about who gets on — and taken off — the Brady list. With him from left are Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita R. Ball, Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman and Chief Judge Carl Ashley. (TMJ4 News)
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.
“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.
“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.
Lewis Moore spent two years in prison accused of a crime never proven in court. (TMJ4 News)
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.
Police Chief Jeffrey Norman, left, alongside Mayor Cavalier Johnson, speaks on June 10, 2022, at the Milwaukee Police Administration Building in Milwaukee. (Jovanny Hernandez / Milwaukee 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 awardsfor 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.
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.”
Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern in his office on Jan. 15, 2025. Lovern maintains his office is fulfilling its Brady list obligations. (Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
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.
A man attacked a Cybertruck on camera while the truck’s owner stood just a few feet away.
Rather than confront the vandal, the owner alerted police to their whereabouts.
Officers arrested the man in a new and very swift case of Tesla attackers being held accountable.
Tesla owners need to be more diligent now than ever before. With Elon Musk as the public face of the brand, emotions run high on both sides of the fence, and sometimes those feelings get misdirected. In California, someone attacked a Cybertruck, not knowing that its owner was mere feet away at the time. Now, the attacker is trouble with the law.
The incident took place near a Cinemark theater in San Jose. After the Cybertruck owner parked and stepped away, a Hyundai Ioniq 6 pulled into a nearby spot. Several people climbed out, including a man in a pink and grey sweater. He then approached the Cybertruck and, for reasons unclear, kicked it twice—hard—while recording the act on video.
It just so happened that the owner, Instagrammer Tigran Gertz, was standing so close he appears in one of the videos. He called out to the man, but got no response as the suspect walked away. In a post about the incident, Gertz says he followed the man into the theater and called the police. He gave officers his account of what happened and showed them the footage from the Cybertruck’s cameras.
Not long after, officers allegedly paused a movie screening to locate and arrest the suspect. Gertz filmed the moment police escorted the man out of the theater and into a patrol car. “Most people get away with vandalism, but not this guy,” Gertz said in his post, confirming that he plans to press charges.
No doubt, the video from the Tesla’s Sentry Mode played a large role in the arrest, as officers didn’t have to take Gertz’s word because they could plainly see what had transpired.
President Donald Trump speaks at the Justice Department March 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — In a rare appearance by a president at the U.S. Justice Department, Donald Trump delivered a meandering speech Friday promising a “proud new chapter in the chronicles of American justice” and drumming on his campaign trail refrains of the department’s “weaponization” against him and his supporters.
Less than a year ago, the president was a defendant in two Justice Department cases and made history after becoming a convicted felon in New York state. Trump told the crowd of department officials, law enforcement officers and lawmakers his administration is “restoring fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.”
“It’s going to be legendary,” Trump said.
The president also insinuated he may keep the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Washington, D.C., after a drawn-out battle over whether it would move to Maryland or Virginia.
Calling out law enforcement officers in the room, Trump said “with me in the White House, you once again have a president who will always have your back.”
Republican senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana were among the crowd, even though the Senate had not yet voted to extend government funding that was set to expire in less than eight hours.
Trump’s hour-long speech in part addressed crossings at the southwest border and deaths from illicit fentanyl. At one point he invited to the stage a mother who lost her son in 2022 to a pill laced with a deadly amount of fentanyl.
But the president’s remarks often meandered into topics unrelated to the Justice Department’s mission, including several minutes about his reelection endorsement from Indiana basketball legend Bobby Knight.
Classified documents case
At numerous points during the speech, Trump lambasted the DOJ’s investigations into his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Florida estate and his attempted conspiracy to overturn former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
He said department officials “broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home, Mar-a-Lago, and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.”
The government, following the election, dropped its appeal of Trump’s classified documents case, citing a longstanding DOJ policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents.
Florida federal District Judge Aileen Cannon had tossed the case on the grounds that the Justice Department had unlawfully appointed and compensated special counsel Jack Smith.
“The case against me was bullshit, and she correctly dismissed it,” Trump said.
Smith also dropped the 2020 election subversion case against Trump, which probed his alleged role in inciting the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump granted clemency to the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants just hours into his second presidency, undoing the largest-ever investigation executed by the Justice Department.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has since overseen the firings and demotions of FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors who undertook Jan. 6 investigations and the two cases against Trump.
During his Friday remarks Trump thanked his former personal lawyers. Todd Blanche, who defended Trump in the Justice Department cases, is now No. 2 at the agency.
‘We have to keep on showing up’
At a press conference afterward outside the department, Democratic Maryland U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, alongside a police officer who was at the Capitol on Jan 6 and former DOJ officials, struggled to talk over a heckling protester. The event was livestreamed on C-SPAN.
Raskin, who sat on the House select committee to investigate the Capitol attack, described Trump’s speech as a “tirade” and praised Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn for “defending democracy.”
“He pardoned everybody and let them know that it’s OK. Now listen, I don’t know what accountability looks like, I don’t know what this fight is going to continue to look like, but we have to keep on showing up,” Dunn said.
One of Biden’s last acts was issuing broad preemptive pardons to members of the Jan. 6 committee as well as Dunn and three other officers who testified before the panel.
Over 140 police officers were injured in the riot.
Brendan Ballou, a former DOJ prosecutor who investigated the Jan. 6 attack, said while the administration is “perfectly happy to talk about the pardons, it is less willing to talk about some of the things that are happening in this building right now.”
He alleged DOJ officials are dismantling or weakening other divisions, including antitrust and anticorruption.
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond for comment.
The last time a president made a public appearance at the department was former President Barack Obama in 2014.
The FBI has issued an alert related to attacks on Tesla cars and dealerships.
Warning instructs Americans to be vigilant, especially near the brand’s showrooms.
The attacks are rooted in the vandals’ upset at CEO Elon Musk’s DOGE activities.
In a sign of how serious attacks on Tesla vehicles and Tesla-related property has now got, the FBI has waded into the furore. The Bureau this week issued a public alert over the violence, which the government says counts as domestic terrorism.
In an announcement titled ‘Individuals Target Tesla Vehicles and Dealerships Nationwide with Arson, Gunfire, and Vandalism,’ the FBI warns the American public about recent incidents that have occurred in at least nine states these past few months.
“These incidents have involved arson, gunfire, and vandalism, including graffiti expressing grievances against those the perpetrators perceive to be racists, fascists, or political opponents,” the alert says. “These criminal actions appear to have been conducted by lone offenders, and all known incidents occurred at night.”
The bureau gives no weight to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s claim that the attackers are being funded by leftist organizations and says the vandals are operating alone, not in coordinated groups. It warns members of the public to ‘exercise vigilance’ and be on the lookout for suspicious activity in areas where Tesla dealerships or facilities, such as depots, charging stations, and plants, are located. The alert asks anyone aware of a threat against Tesla to contact their local FBI field office.
For the past two months, we’ve become used to seeing and hearing media coverage of people spraying graffiti on Tesla cars, shooting them, and setting them on fire. Some of the automaker’s dealerships have also come in for similar treatment.
The attacks aren’t specifically related to Tesla itself but are the result of anger at CEO Elon Musk’s work for the new Trump administration. As head of the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Musk has been responsible for thousands of federal employees losing their jobs.
Last week US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced charges against three people for the “violent destruction of Tesla properties” using Molotov cocktails. Around the same time, Musk revealed that Tesla was activating the camera-based Sentry Mode security system on all its parked cars in an effort to identify vandals.
The Milwaukee County Jail. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
A 49 year-old Shorewood man who had been in custody at the Milwaukee County Jail died in a hospital Tuesday, the Milwaukee County Sheriff said in a statement. The Waukesha County Sheriff is investigating.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation
Shorewood Police brought the man to be booked on three criminal charges, according to the sheriff’s statement. He had been in the custody of the jail since Friday.
On Monday evening, a nurse with Wellpath, the jail’s health care provider, observed the man experiencing a health crisis and initiated emergency protocols, the sheriff’s office said. Efforts to stabilize the man, including the use of NARCAN, were unsuccessful.
The man, who had a pulse and was breathing, was brought to an area hospital and then a second area hospital, where he died.
The Milwaukee County Sheriff is not investigating itself, in accordance with Wisconsin law, the statement said. It directed all inquiries to the Waukesha County Sheriff.
An audit of the jail found “systemic issues ranging from dangerous suicide watch practices and a mental health challenge to critical staffing shortages and occupant overcrowding,” the Examiner has reported. During a 14-month period from 2022 to 2023, the jail saw six deaths in custody.
The Waukesha County Sheriff did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
The Department of Justice is targeting those behind Molotov cocktail attacks on Tesla.
Three individuals face charges and could face up to 20 years in prison for the attacks.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi recently called attacks on Tesla “domestic terrorism.”
Attacks on Teslas have become a common occurrence and now the federal government is getting heavily involved. As part of this effort, U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi has announced charges against three people for the “violent destruction of Tesla properties” using Molotov cocktails.
While the Department of Justice didn’t release many specifics, one of the defendants was involved in an attack on a Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon. The government says this person was armed with a suppressed AR-15 rifle and was arrested after throwing approximately eight Molotov cocktails.
The second individual was arrested in Loveland, Colorado after allegedly attempting to light Teslas on fire with Molotov cocktails. The government also claimed the “defendant was later found in possession of materials used to produce additional incendiary weapons”.
Lastly, a person in Charleston, South Carolina allegedly wrote “profane messages against President Trump” around Tesla charging stations. They then lit the chargers ablaze with Molotov cocktails.
Salem Police
Attorney General’s Statement
Attorney General Bondi was direct in her response to the situation, stating: “The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended. Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.” Her office added they’re “committed to ending all acts of violence and arson directed at Tesla properties and otherwise.”
The news comes two days after Bondi released another statement saying that “The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism. The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences.”
As for the three people charged in this latest round, they now face prison sentences ranging from five to 20 years, depending on the specifics of their actions.
Several other police departments throughout California and using EVs.
A Palo Alto police captain says the R1S is more spacious than the Ford Explorer.
It’s unclear if the agency will purchase any other EVs from Rivian.
The first-ever R1S police cruiser has officially made its debut in the United States, and it’s headed straight to Palo Alto, home to Rivian’s sprawling facility. The electric SUV was unveiled at a recent event at Rivian’s headquarters, where local Mayor Ed Lauing took a moment to shower the company with praise.
Interestingly, this charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County is also home to Tesla’s new global engineering HQ, which has been operating there since 2023. Yet, for some reason, Elon Musk’s brand didn’t quite make the cut.
Unlike the louder, garish designs you might expect from a police cruiser, the R1S keeps it understated. Most of the exterior is decked out in gloss black, while the front doors get a clean white trim. The department’s badge makes a neat appearance on the sides, adding just enough flair to remind everyone this is a police vehicle—not a luxury SUV on a road trip.
The R1S Cruiser Still Needs a Few Tweaks
For now, the R1S doesn’t have the customary red and blue roof light bar—it just didn’t arrive in time for the event. There’s also talk of a push bar being added, as well as other custom equipment for the cabin. Rivian’s engineers are reportedly working closely with the city to get the SUV ready for active duty.
Palo Alto’s Captain James Reifschneider spoke to Palo Alto Online, noting that the R1S offers significantly more cabin space than the Ford Explorers and Jeep Durangos currently used by the department.
“The electric car was created years before Rivian first shipped their EV, but Rivian wanted to be the best EV in the future, not the first EV of the past,” he said. “That sounds a lot like Palo Alto to me because Palo Alto is a great place to live and work and shop and play and go to school and that isn’t enough. We’re always looking to be more innovative going forward and to make our place in Palo Alto even better.”
Other Police EVs
Palo Alto is far from the only city jumping on the EV police cruiser bandwagon. Several agencies in California have started adding electric vehicles to their fleets, but the transition hasn’t been without its challenges.
The South Pasadena Police Department has replaced its entire fleet with Tesla Model 3s and Model Ys, but some departments have complained about the lack of space offered by these two Tesla models. The Rivian R1S is much larger, but it’s also much more expensive, starting at $75,900 in base guise before any expensive upgrades are made.
There’s no word on whether police in Palo Alto plan to add more Rivian models to their fleet.
Tracy Cole, the mother of Alvin Cole, surrounded by her family. (Photo by Isiah Holmes)
A federal civil trial into the killing of 17-year-old Alvin Cole by then-Wauwatosa officer Joseph Mensah five years ago began on Monday, bringing Cole’s family, Mensah, a cast of current and former Wauwatosa officers, and other witnesses into the U.S. district court building in Milwaukee. The lawsuit accuses Mensah of using excessive force when he fired five shots at Cole in 2020, killing him after a foot chase in a darkened mall parking lot.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation
During opening statements, attorney Kimberly Motley said police officers receive extensive training in use of force under Wisconsin’s Defense and Arrest Tactics (DAAT) standards. Motley said that when officers fire their weapons they must “articulate each shot” and that Mensah “did not exercise restraint” when he shot Cole. Cole’s case was Mensah’s third shooting over a five year period, although attorneys agreed to not bring up that fact during the trial. “We believe that Joseph Mensah did not have the right to shoot and kill Alvin Cole,” said Motley.
The mostly white jury of seven women and one man listened intently to statements from both Motley and attorney Joseph Wirth who represents Mensah. They recounted the events of Feb. 2 2020, a Super Bowl Sunday, when Cole and a group of his friends got into a verbal altercation with another group of boys at the Mayfair mall. Police were called and the boys fled. Officers later testified that a single gun shot was heard as the police were chasing Cole, though they did not see who fired the gun. While Cole was on his hands and knees, surrounded by officers, Mensah fired five shots, later claiming that Cole pointed a gun at him. Wirth said footchases are dangerous and unpredictable and stressed that the events leading up to the shooting took place over less time than it took the attorney to introduce himself to the jury. He appealed to the jurors saying they could be sympathetic to the Cole family, while also ruling that Mensah’s use of force was reasonable. “Put yourself in the officer’s shoes,” Wirth told the jury.
Motley said that Cole accidentally shot himself in the forearm before he fell, breaking his arm in the process. The broken arm would have made it hard for him to aim his gun at Mensah, as Mensah claimed, Motley said. Also, an officer who was closer to Cole than Mensah said that Cole hadn’t moved at all before Mensah fired.
That officer, David Shamsi, who’s now an FBI agent, was called as a witness on Monday. Another officer, Evan Olson, who said the gun was pointed in a completely different direction than Mensah claims, is also expected to testify later in the week. The contradictory statements from officers Mensah, Olson, and Shamsi persuaded U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman that the lawsuit should go to trial.
On Monday, Alvin’s father, Albert Cole, recalled dropping his son off with his friends the last time he would see him. After Alvin died, Albert became “anti-social,” he testified, Crying on the witness stand, he said Alvin’s death left a hole in his life and that of Tracy Cole, his wife of over 30 years. “That hurt was inside me,” he said.
Shamsi testified that he was “tunnel visioned” on Cole’s gun, which he said remained on the ground and didn’t move after Cole fell to his hands and knees in the dark parking lot. Shamsi hadn’t considered whether Cole was wounded and, in fact, was prepared to fire his own weapon if the boy moved again. “I did not see him point a gun at me,” said Shamsi.
During questioning, attorneys noted that Shamsi changed his story when he was re-interviewed about the shooting months after it occurred. It was during that interview that Shamsi said that he saw Cole’s arm extended towards officers. When he was deposed for the civil lawsuit and then on the stand Monday, Shamsi reverted to his original statements that he did not see Cole move after he was on the ground.
Cole family attorney Nate Cade told Wisconsin Examiner that he suspects Shamsi changed his story after meeting with Mensah’s attorneys, because “no one wants to turn around and say that a fellow officer did something wrong.” He said Shamsi’s testimony that the gun never moved “is the most damning thing.” Cole’s shooting was initially investigated by the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team (MAIT), before the Milwaukee County district attorney decided Mensah wouldn’t be charged for killing Cole in 2020. A recent investigation by Wisconsin Examiner in partnership with Type Investigations found a pattern of MAIT policies protecting officers and contradictory statements left unchallenged.
Cade said “the district attorney looked the other way” and that there were things that investigators “should have done” but neglected, such as measuring the distance between Cole’s body and bullet casings. “There are no measurements,” said Cade. “None of the officers identified exactly where they were standing.”
Attorneys also called a civilian witness who’d seen Cole’s group running from police and witnessed the shooting. The witness said that he did not see Cole running with anything in his hands, suggesting that he had not turned his body to point a gun at officers as he ran. Wauwatosa officer Dexter Schleis agreed with Cade that deadly force is allowed if an armed person turns towards an officer, he would not answer directly when asked if deadly force is appropriate when an armed person has their back to an officer, is on the ground and isn’t moving. Schleis repeatedly asked for the question to be repeated, that he didn’t understand, or couldn’t say whether the shooting complied with police protocol.
More than a dozen people were injured after a school bus crashed on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, reported CBS News.
The incident reportedly occurred March 10 at approximately 7:30 p.m., when the Rabbinical School bus from Lakewood was heading to New York to attend a post-wedding celebration.
According to the news report, the school bus was seen on its side facing the wrong way on the highway and skid marks were visible on a nearby embankment. There was no immediate information on what caused the school bus to overturn.
The New Jersey State Police said via the article that 15 people, including the 44-year-old bus driver, were treated for injuries. One of the passengers suffered serious injuries. Police said in a statement the 14-year-old boy is fighting for his life after he was pinned under the overturned bus.
The Woodcliff Lake Fire Department was the first to arrive at the scene said Mayor Mike Ghassali in a statement on Facebook. The Montvale Volunteer Fire Department and other firefighters that assisted, lifted the bus and rescued the 14-year-old boy [that was pinned under the bus] and 28 other boys along with two adults.
The 14-year-old, who is fighting for his life, the bus driver and 13 other boys were transported to local hospitals. Their current condition is unclear at this moment.
An ally of Michael M. Bell, the Kenosha father who has been campaigning for a decade for a new look at the police killing of his son 20 years ago, is suing the Wisconsin Department of Administration for records in a dispute with the state Department of Justice and the Wisconsin Crime Victims Rights Board (CVRB).
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation
Russell Beckman filed the open records lawsuit Tuesday in Dane County circuit court in response to the administration department’s denial of billing records from a private law firm that had a contract with the victims rights board.
In the lawsuit, which he filed without a lawyer, Beckman states that he “believes the Department of Administration is attempting to conceal these records because they may contain information that constitute evidence of misconduct and unlawful collusion between high ranking Wisconsin State officials and citizen members of the CVRB.”
Michael M. Bell’s son, Michael E. Bell, was killed in November 2004 by a Kenosha Police Department officer after an altercation in the driveway of the home where the younger Bell lived. A department internal investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of the officers on the scene.
Michael M. Bell subsequently campaigned for a Wisconsin law, enacted in 2014, that requires fatalities at the hands of police to be investigated by another department
Since settling a civil lawsuit with the city of Kenosha arising from the killing, the elder Bell has sought to reopen the investigation into the death of his son. The younger Bell was being physically restrained by police when an officer shot and killed him, eyewitnesses and police reports agree. The police account reported that officer fired the shot after another officer at the scene, who was standing near the 21-year-old, shouted that Bell had grabbed his holstered service handgun.
Citing discrepancies between the official police account of the incident and eyewitness testimony as well as physical evidence at the scene, Michael M. Bell has maintained that his son probably never touched the second officer’s weapon, none of the officers were in danger of being shot by the younger Bell, and that the killing was unnecessary.
The elder Bell has said the second officer may have been sincere in his assumption that his gun had been grabbed. Based on eyewitness accounts, however, he thinks the second officer was not where his son could have grabbed the gun. Bell believes the officer who fired the fatal shot was in a position to know that the second officer was mistaken and did not need to take his son’s life.
Bell’s repeated attempts to persuade authorities to reinvestigate the events of that night have been unsuccessful, including multiple appeals to Attorney General Josh Kaul.
In December 2022, Beckman, a retired Kenosha police detective who has been assisting the elder Bell for more than a decade, filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Crime Victims’ Rights Board on Bell’s behalf.
The complaint charged Kenosha police and city officials had concealed information about Michael E. Bell’s death, and in the process committed “alleged crimes [that] included the felonies of perjury, destruction of public records, misconduct in public office and conspiracy to commit these crimes.”
The complaint also charged that Kaul “and high ranking subordinates” at the state Department of Justice repeatedly ignored attempts by Beckman and Bell to bring their concerns to the attorney general’s attention.
In June 2023, Madison attorney Hal Harlow emailed parties in the case — Beckman, Bell and a DOJ lawyer — that he had been “retained to act as legal counsel to the Wisconsin Crime Victims Rights Board” in the matter.
In November 2023, the CRVB decided it lacked probable cause for the complaint, holding Michael M. Bell didn’t have “victim status” in connection with the complaint’s allegations. “The alleged conduct is against the government and its administration, not against individual persons,” the decision stated.
After that ruling, according to the lawsuit, Beckman “filed a number of public records requests with the CVRB, seeking records that may have evidence supporting his belief that Attorney General Josh Kaul and/or his staff may have colluded with the CVRB to influence their decision to dismiss the complaint.”
The board supplied records that have become part of the appeal that Beckman has filed on Bell’s behalf. The appeal is now before the Wisconsin Appeals Court District IV in Madison after being dismissed in circuit court.
Meanwhile, Beckman filed an open records request with the Department of Administration seeking attorney billing records for the Crime Victims Rights Board in connection with the Bell complaint.
The department issued a blanket denial of Beckman’s request. DOA cited the ongoing litigation over the lawsuit against the board and asserted that “those records and that information would reveal strategy and efforts that would affect the ongoing litigation.” The department also denied a request to reconsider its denial, and a request for a copy of the contract for the outside law firm.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday argues that the denials violate Wisconsin’s open records law. The attorney billing records, the contract and its addendums are not “attorney work product” and are not privileged attorney-client communications, Beckman argues.
Beckman said in an interview Tuesday he wants the billing records and contract because they might shed light on interactions between the DOJ and the Crime Victims Rights Board, which are supposed to operate independently of each other. He said he’s learned other unexpected information in his work with Bell over the years that turned up by perusing attorney billing records.
A Mason County school bus driver was indicted after allegedly driving a bus under the influence of drugs with students on board, reported WOWK News.
The incident reportedly occurred last April, when a 911 call was placed about a school bus driver who was driving erratically and in the opposite lane with students on board. The caller also claimed that the driver made several wrong turns and was falling asleep at the wheel.
A blood analysis the police reportedly took from the bus driver, 54-year-old Leslie Watterson, revealed she had taken three different drugs that affect the central nervous system. Watterson was arrested in May of on warrants filed by West Virginia State Police.
According to the news report, Watterson was indicted March 5 on 54 counts of gross child neglect creating substantial risk of serious bodily injury and one count of DUI with minors. The three drugs in her system were identified to be Phentermine, Oxazepam and Temazepam.
A 14-year-old boy with special needs is safe after a school bus driver found him wandering the streets during cold temperatures, reported ABC 7.
The incident reportedly took place on Feb. 18, when Trey Briggs woke up and found all the doors of her family’s apartment open and her son, Urijah Heard, missing.
According to the news report, Heard is non-verbal. Temperatures that day were below zero and he was only wearing a t-shirt and underwear.
Briggs reportedly contacted the Wheeling Police Department and was told that officers had already been contacted by a passing school bus driver who saw Heard wandering and returned to pick him up.
“The fact that he [the school bus driver] stopped and put him on the bus is amazing to me. A miracle to me,” Briggs told local news reporters.
Police were able to identify Heard almost immediately because the teen had just been registered in a program started in 2022 by Wheeling Police Sgt. Richard Giltner called “Return Home Safe.” The database includes children with special needs, identified with photos and information submitted by their parents, for situations similar to this one.
According to local news reporters, the bus driver, Freddy Leon, did not want to comment on the matter. However, Heard’s mother is grateful for his act of kindness. The police department is planning to honor Leon for his actions later this month.
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The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office system for tracking officers with credibility concerns, allegations of dishonesty or bias, and past criminal charges is inaccurate and incomplete and relies, in part, on police agencies to report integrity violations.
Such tracking systems, often known as Brady/Giglio lists, are meant to help prosecutors fulfill their legal duty to share evidence that could help prove someone’s innocence.
Wisconsin lacks statewide standards for how such Brady information should be gathered, maintained and disclosed.
Of more than 200 entries on Milwaukee County’s list, nearly half related to a direct integrity or misconduct issue, such as officers lying on or off duty. 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.
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?
Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern speaks to reporters with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch. (TMJ4 News / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
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.
Ceasar Stinson is shown with his daughter, Cearra Stinson. He was struck and killed when former Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputy Joel Streicher ran a red light in 2020. (Courtesy of Stinson family)
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.
Assistant Public Defender Angel Johnson, regional attorney manager for the State Public Defender’s Office in Milwaukee, works in out-of-custody intake court on Feb. 11, 2025. (Angela Peterson / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
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
Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman and Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball speak to reporters with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch. (TMJ4 News / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
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.
Police Chief Jeffrey Norman, left, alongside Mayor Cavalier Johnson, speaks on June 10, 2022, at the Milwaukee Police Administration Building in Milwaukee. (Jovanny Hernandez / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
“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.
Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball says she does not consider an officer’s ability to testify in court when weighing internal discipline. “Somebody can just make a mistake,” she says. “If that’s the case, then their employment is retained.” She is shown giving an address at her public swearing-in on Jan. 6, 2023, at the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center in Milwaukee. (Angela Peterson / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
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.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (left) talks with Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern (right) and Milwaukee County chief judge Carl Ashley (middle) at the Milwaukee County Courthouse Complex and Public Safety Building in Milwaukee on Feb. 3, 2025. (Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal)
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.
Milwaukee police officer Frank Williams appears at the Milwaukee County Courthouse in February 2024. He was charged with child abuse, later pleaded guilty to lesser charges of disorderly conduct and was forced to resign. (Courtesy of TMJ4 News)
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.
About this project
This is the first installment in “Duty to Disclose,” an ongoing investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 and Wisconsin Watch into the Milwaukee County district attorney’s “Brady list,” a list of law enforcement officers deemed by the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office to have credibility issues. The office publicly released the list in full for the first time in late 2024 after pressure from the news organizations.
Journal Sentinel investigative reporter Ashley Luthern, TMJ4 investigative reporter Ben Jordan and Wisconsin Watch investigative reporter Mario Koran spent five months verifying information of the nearly 200 officers on the list, discovering that it is frequently incomplete and inconsistent.
Readers with questions or tips about the Brady list can contact the Journal Sentinel’s investigative team at wisconsininvestigates@gannett.com.
Project credits
Reporters: Ashley Luthern (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Ben Jordan (WTMJ-TV), Mario Koran (Wisconsin Watch)
Contributing reporter: Dave Biscobing (ABC15)
Photos and video: Bill Schulz, Sherman Williams (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Graphics and illustrations: Khushboo Rathore, Andrew Mulhearn (Wisconsin Watch)
Editors: Daphne Chen (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Tim Vetscher (WTMJ-TV), Nicole Buckley (WTMJ-TV), Jim Malewitz (Wisconsin Watch)
Digital design and production: Spencer Holladay (USA TODAY Network), Ridah Syed (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Copy editing: Ray Hollnagel (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
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.
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?
(Andrew Mulhearn for Wisconsin Watch)
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.
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.
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