The late Jonathan Brostoff, photographed during his time as a state representative in the Wisconsin Assembly. The Assembly and state Senate approved a resolution in Brostoff's memory March 18, 2025. (Photo by Greg Anderson)

Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.

On a day of contentious legislative debates and an annual ceremonial custom to recognize Wisconsin’s tribal communities, members of the Wisconsin Legislature united to remember a former colleague this week.

More than one lawmaker made clear it was an event they fervently wished would not have been necessary.

Former State Rep. Jonathan Brostoff took his own life on Nov. 4, 2024, with a gun he had purchased just an hour earlier. He was 41 years old. Brostoff served in the Assembly for eight years, leaving in 2022 after he was elected to the Milwaukee Common Council. 

Tuesday, the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate each voted unanimously to pass a resolution in Brostoff’s memory. The votes were cast in each chamber in a two-part secular memorial service of sorts, with heartfelt eulogies from Brostoff’s former colleagues. Many wore green ribbons in recognition of mental health awareness.

“Jonathan was well known for his honesty,” said Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer. “He never held back if he thought we were heading in the wrong direction or missing something important — often crossing his eyes and staring you down. With Jonathan, you always knew where you stood, and he helped us grow as a caucus and as individual legislators.”

Sign language bill

One story was told repeatedly: Brostoff’s campaign to pass a bill that would tighten state standards for American Sign Language interpreters. The legislation established a tiered licensing system to ensure that people interpreting between doctors and patients or lawyers and clients had a higher level of skill, Brostoff said at the time.

Frustrated when the legislation stalled, he vowed not to cut his hair until it was signed into law. In an April 2019 Wisconsin Public Television interview, Brostoff — who normally favored a close-cropped cut — sported a curly afro that surrounded his face.

It wasn’t a protest, exactly, he told interviewer Frederica Freyberg. “Especially for the deaf community, it’s a visual indicator saying I’m with you and we’re not going to stop until we get this done,” Brostoff said.

“I would send him pictures of Richard Simmons,” Rep. Lisa Subeck said on the Assembly floor Tuesday. “He sent me back pictures of Bob Ross.”

Gov. Tony Evers signed the bill in July 2019. Sen. Dianne Hesselbein was a member of the Assembly at the time. In the Senate Tuesday, she recalled Brostoff’s Assembly floor speech on the day the measure finally passed.

“He signed the entire thing, and it was long, and he could do sign language of the entire thing without looking at notes,” Hesselbein said. “He knew what he wanted to say, and he was careful, and there was silence, absolute silence and respect.”

Colleagues described the diminutive Brostoff as intense, funny, passionate about causes and smitten with his four children.

In the Assembly, Rep. Jodi Emerson recalled hearing Brostoff break into the “Itsy bitsy spider” song while changing a diaper in the midst of one of their phone calls discussing their work in the Capitol.

Those phone calls were a regular feature of her drives home to Eau Claire from Madison at the end of a busy week in the Capitol. She said she spoke before Tuesday’s session with Brostoff’s father about those calls.

“I was thinking about that last week, and really wish I would have been able to talk to Jonathan last week,” Emerson said. “I had my own version of a conversation with him,” she added wistfully, “but the reception wasn’t clear from wherever he was.”

Passion and compassion

Brostoff was first elected to the Assembly in 2014. Rep. Christine Sinicki related a memory from Brostoff’s campaign that year. She had not endorsed him in the four-way Democratic primary, and at a neighborhood parade both attended that summer, a Brostoff volunteer sidled up to her and made a “snide remark,” she said.

“I went over to Jonathan and I said, ‘I really did not appreciate that.’ The next day, that volunteer was at my door, apologizing,” Sinicki recalled. “That was the kind of man that Jonathan was. He had so much integrity.”

Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde, who met Brostoff when both were at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, nicknamed him “JoBro.” But Brostoff had his own self-applied nickname: Honey Badger, after a viral YouTube video and internet meme — “Honey Badger Don’t Care.”

“He’s getting into like, messing with bees and snakes and all types of things, because Honey Badger don’t care and he’s gonna do what he wants to do anyway. That’s Jonathan Brostoff,” Omokunde said.

Brostoff was passionate about the causes he adopted, his colleagues agreed.

Omokunde referred to a comment moments earlier, when Subeck “called him tenacious.” He paused. “However, let’s be honest,” he continued. “Jonathan was annoying … and everybody in this body who ever came across him knows he was annoying.”

Affectionate laughter greeted his candor.

“Sometimes he could make me crazy,” Sinicki said. “That’s only because he had such passion and such conviction for the things that he wanted that nothing was going to change his mind, nothing at all.”

For all his fervor as a Democratic lawmaker, Brostoff endeared himself to Republican colleagues.

GOP Rep. Paul Tittl found Brostoff, who was Jewish, to be “a deeply spiritual person” who asked to attend a regular Capitol Bible study that Republican lawmakers, all Christian, organized. “He always added to the  conversation.”

In the Senate, Sen. Andre Jacque recalled both Brostoff’s participation in the Bible study program as well as his enthusiasm for the gaming community. “One thing that always struck me about Jonathan is that he was somebody who was unafraid to put himself out there and have conversations,” Jacque said. “I’m going to miss him.”

Vetting candidates and repairing the world

Brostoff took it upon himself to vet prospective candidates.

One was Rep. Robyn Vining, ahead of her first election to the Assembly in 2018. At a Colectivo Coffee near UWM, “Jonathan grilled me with questions, and was very clear on his priorities,” Vining said. “He was also very clear that he would not be supporting me if I did not pass his test.”

They talked. “What I didn’t realize was that after I did pass that test, Jonathan was going to jump on board and fight for me, which is exactly what he did,” Vining said. “We finished my vetting, and he said, ‘OK, let’s go knock some doors.’”

First-term Rep. Sequanna Taylor was another such candidate. Friends from before she decided to run for the Assembly, she and Brostoff and their families were dining together early in her campaign.  

“In the middle of him eating, he was like, ‘Give me your spiel,’” Taylor said. She was caught off guard, but he persisted.

“And so, you know, I went into my little spiel, and he took a moment and he looked at me. He was like, ‘You’ll be good,’” she said. “Then he was like, ‘Next time somebody asks you this, though, I want you to be able to say this in 30 seconds flat.’”

Brostoff was always straightforward, Taylor said. “You never had to worry about a gray area with JoBro, because there was no gray area with him.”

Sen. LaTonya Johnson recalled a riot in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood, part of her district, after an officer-involved shooting 10 years ago. She was visiting the scene the second night of unrest — “I was not brave enough to go that first night,” she confessed — when Brostoff showed up with big packs of chewing gum.

“This is de-escalation gum,” Johnson recalled him saying. She was skeptical, “but lo and behold the longer we were out there, when things became confrontational, Jonathan would walk up and he said, ‘You want gum?’ And people would stop, and they would take it.” And, she said, it helped redirect people’s attention.

Subeck said she and Brostoff were two of three Jewish members of the Assembly when they both took office in 2015. She described the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam, to repair the world.

“This is a concept that is built on our guiding principles of social justice, of making the world a better place, of taking care of our world and taking care of its people,” Subeck said. “And Jonathan, more than just about anybody else I know, lived up to that principle.”

Acknowledging struggles, seeking change

Brostoff was candid about his own mental health history, Subeck added. “He brought his own struggles, and he shared his very personal struggles with all of us here in the Legislature, and I believe that they made me, and hopefully made many of you, a better legislator.”

There were also calls to address directly how Brostoff’s life had ended.

“I hope that we will recommit ourselves to preventing needless deaths in this state and to doing what Jonathan would want us to do, and enacting policies that will save other lives, even though we are too late to save his,” said Sen. Mark Spreitzer. “I will miss my friend Jonathan Brostoff, may his memory be a blessing.”

“Jonathan’s story is one that too many Wisconsin families know the pain of,” said Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin. “In 2022 alone, 530 Wisconsinites died by suicide with firearms.”

Habush Sinykin read to her colleagues a statement from Brostoff’s widow, Diana Vang-Brostoff, and his parents, Alan and Phyllis Brostoff. Earlier, Rep. Deb Andraca read the same statement in the Assembly.

“Once again, we want to thank the Wisconsin Legislature for today honoring the memory of our husband and son,” the statement began.

Their statement recounted the circumstances of Brostoff’s death as well as a commentary Brostoff wrote in October 2019 that was published in the Wisconsin State Journal and Urban Milwaukee about his failed suicide attempts as a teenager. Brostoff had just served on a Legislature task force on suicide prevention. 

They quoted Brostoff’s column, in which he wrote that access to a firearm for someone contemplating suicide “is like having your own personal permanent delete button.” In the essay he had acknowledged that if had had access to a gun at the time of those teenage attempts to kill himself, “I would not be here today.”

“Our family believes that had Jonathan been required to wait perhaps a day or two or any amount of time after entering that gun store last November to make that purchase, his life may have been spared,” their statement concluded.

“And so now, in the interest of saving other lives at risk for mental health issues, domestic violence or other circumstances, it is our hope that you find the collective will to reinstate a reasonable waiting period for finalizing gun purchases. Doing that would enhance your thoughtful and kind honoring of his memory today.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

The Wisconsin Assembly voted along party lines Tuesday to pass legislation penalizing counties with sheriff's departments that don't cooperate with ICE, the federal Immigration Customers and Enforcement agency. (Photo via ICE)

Legislation passed the Assembly Tuesday that would claw back state aid from counties where the sheriff doesn’t cooperate with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement service (ICE).

The legislation would require sheriffs to check the citizenship status of people being held in jail on felony charges and notify federal immigration enforcement officials if citizenship cannot be verified.

The state Senate, meanwhile, approved a bill that would block a judicial investigation of a police officer involved in the death of a person unless there’s new evidence or evidence that has not been previously addressed in court.

The immigration-related bill, AB 24, passed the Assembly on a straight party-line vote.

In addition to requiring citizenship checks, the bill would also require sheriffs to comply with detainers and administrative warrants received from the federal Department of Homeland Security for people in jail. Counties would be required to certify annually that they were following the law and would lose 15% of their shared revenue payments from the state if they were not.

Proponents described the measure as enhancing safety.

“We have the opportunity to emulate in many ways the best practices that are already happening across our country,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), the bill’s author, said at a news conference before the floor session. “We have seen since [President] Donald Trump took office that we have had a dramatic reduction in the number of illegal crossings that are happening at the southern border.”

Opponents said the bill would divert local law enforcement resources while driving up mistrust and fear among immigrants, regardless of their legal status.

Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) said the legislation was “big government” and interferes with local counties’ policy decisions. It also undermines the presumption of innocence for a person charged with a crime, potentially strains resources for local jails, and could lead to holding people “longer than is necessary,” he said.

But he added that those weren’t his top reasons for opposing the bill.

“I’m voting against this because it’s wrong, because this legislation rips people from our communities and families based on the mere accusation of a crime, because our Republicans colleagues’ eagerness to make themselves tools in Trump’s attacks on immigrants, refugees, visitors and those who oppose him is vile,” Clancy said.

On the floor, Vos replied that he agreed with Clancy about the presumption of innocence, and that he also agreed with other lawmakers who said the vast majority of immigrants are not guilty of any crime.

“But I would also say that there is a burden of proof on both sides,” Vos said. “It’s not entirely on just the side of the government to ensure that you follow the law.”

Claiming broad bipartisan support for the measure, Vos said Democratic opposition was “clearly out of step, even with your base.”

Rep. Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) responded that  he hasn’t heard constituents ask for the legislation or anything like it.

“They are asking us explicitly to make life tangibly easier for working class Wisconsinites,” he said, “and they have not been asking me to engage in redundant acts of political theater to satisfy the whims of a rogue president engaging in a campaign of intimidation and mass deportation that includes constituents in western Wisconsin.”

Senate approves John Doe exemption

The state Senate voted Tuesday to pass a bill that makes an exemption to the state’s John Doe law for police officers involved in a civilian’s death.

In Wisconsin, if a district attorney chooses not  to file criminal charges,  a judge may hold a hearing — known as a John Doe investigation — on the matter and file a complaint based on the findings of that hearing.

The legislation, SB 25, “simply says, if that case goes before a DA, and then the DA  justifies their actions and they are deemed to be innocent of any wrongdoing … that case is closed and it is in a file never to be seen again,” said the bill’s  author, Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), on the Senate floor.

Hutton said the legislation allows a judicial investigation to proceed, however, “if a new piece of evidence is presented that wasn’t known before, or an unused piece of evidence is found.”

But Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee) questioned carving out an exemption to the state’s John Doe law. “This bill does not apply to any other crime in Wisconsin,” she said.

Lawmakers, Drake added, should do more to address “the environment and the situations” that have led to officer-involved deaths. 

Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), said testimony at the bill’s public hearing discussed only two attempts to invoke the John Doe proceeding after a prosecutor declined to file charges in an officer-involved death — and one of them involved former Wauwatosa police officer Joseph Mensah, who killed three people in five years.

Allowing for a John Doe investigation in an officer-involved death “protects the public,” Johnson said. “What it does is put a second eye on those cases that deserve a second look.”

The Senate passed the bill 19-13. Two Democrats, Sens. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) and Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi), voted in favor along with 17 Republicans. Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), who also opposed the bill in committee, joined the remaining Democrats who voted against the measure.

Reversing DPI testing standards: On a vote of 18-14 along party lines, the Senate concurred in an Assembly bill that would reverse a change that the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) made last year to testing standards.

AB 1 would revert the state’s testing standards to what they were in 2019 and link standards to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Republicans voting for the bill said that the DPI change “lowered” standards — a claim DPI and Democrats rejected.

Direct primary care passes — but Democrats object: The Senate also voted 18-14 on party lines to pass SB 4, legislation that would clear the way for health care providers who participate in direct primary care arrangements. Under direct primary care, doctors treat patients who subscribe to their services for a monthly fee as an alternative to health insurance for primary care.

An amendment Democrats offered would have added a list of enumerated civil rights protections for direct primary care patients. That list was in a direct primary care bill in the 2023-24 legislative session that passed the Assembly but stalled in the Senate when two organizations protested language protecting “gender identity.”

After the amendment was rejected, also on a party-line vote, Democrats voted against the final bill.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

“Her life and work has impacted countless Wisconsinites, so much so that all Wisconsin students should know about and recognize her,” Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde said. Screenshot via WisEye.

The Legislative Black Caucus proposed Tuesday that Wisconsin make Vel Phillips’ birthday — Feb. 18 — a special day of observance in Wisconsin schools. 

Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde (D-Milwaukee), a bill coauthor, recognized Phillips’ lengthy list of ‘firsts’ at a press conference Tuesday morning, saying that “far too few” Wisconsinites know about her legacy. 

Phillips was Wisconsin’s first Black statewide elected official, serving as secretary of state from 1979 to 1983. She also served as Wisconsin’s first Black judge and the first woman judge in Milwaukee County and was the first Black woman to graduate from University of Wisconsin Law School.

Phillips was the first African American and the first woman to be elected as a Milwaukee Common Council alder. She was an activist who advocated fair and affordable housing in Milwaukee, including introducing the Phillips Housing Ordinance in 1962, which would have outlawed racial discrimination among landlords and real estate agents in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Common Council finally adopted an open housing ordinance in April 1968 after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and the U.S. Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968. 

Phillips passed away on April 17, 2018. Her 101st birthday was Tuesday. 

“Her life and work has impacted countless Wisconsinites, so much so that all Wisconsin students should know about and recognize her,” Moore Omokunde said.

Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) said at a press conference that Phillips “wasn’t just a leader. She was a force of nature. She refused to accept the limits placed on her as an African American woman and as a woman in general, and she made sure that no one coming after her had to suffer those barriers,” Johnson said. “Milwaukee is the city that it is today in part due to Vel Phillips.

“She wasn’t just making history. She was paving the way for the rest of us — for Black women in Wisconsin who still face barriers, for girls who need to see what’s possible and for every person who has ever been told to wait their turn,” Johnson said. “That’s what this bill is about — ensuring Vel Phillips’ story is told for generations to come. Making Feb. 18 a special observance day isn’t just about remembering Vel Phillips. It’s about teaching our kids what she stood for, making sure her name, her fight, her legacy lives on.” 

There are 21 special observance days in Wisconsin’s school calendar, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Susan B. Anthony’s birthday, Environmental Awareness Day, Bullying Awareness Day, September 11 Observance Day, Veterans Day and Robert La Follette Sr. Day.

The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) states on its website that observance days can “teach the elements of tradition that preserve U.S. society and foster an awareness of our cultural heritage” and “can be part of a rich social studies curriculum that gives these individuals and events proper emphasis, both in the context of Wisconsin and U.S. history and in relation to their effect on or improvement of our political, economic and social institutions.” 

Mikki Maddox, a teacher at Necedah Area High School, is part of the reason the caucus brought the legislation forward. She said she started doing announcements for the school and marking the observance days in her calendar. 

“I noticed that there are quite a few gaps,” Maddox said, adding that she contacted DPI and wrote to Senate and Assembly members about observance days. 

“I knew this was a person that needed to be recognized all over the state for her courage and for her willingness to stand up,” Maddox said. 

Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski honored her predecessor at the press conference, recalling that she learned about Phillips in school only after taking her own initiative to look for women important to Wisconsin history and coming across her in a textbook.

“As Wisconsin’s secretary of state I stand on Vel’s shoulders. … She is a trailblazer and Wisconsin is better because of Vel’s leadership,” Godlewski said. “Too many students [are] just like the one that I was sitting in the classroom flipping through my history books and not seeing that full picture of who actually shaped our state.” 

The bill, Godlewski said, would ensure “every student learns about her, not just as an afterthought, but as a fundamental part of our state history.” 

The bill, which is currently being circulated for co-sponsorship, will need bipartisan support to pass in the Republican-controlled Legislature. Moore Omokunde said he doesn’t think recent hostility towards diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts from Republicans will hinder it, adding that many observances of Phillips already exist throughout Wisconsin. An outdoor statue of Phillips was installed outside the Wisconsin State Capitol in September 2024 — an action that received bipartisan approval in 2021. Phillips also had a Madison high school renamed for her in 2021 and a road in Milwaukee is named after her.

“We already have the statue. Vel Phillips has a street in Milwaukee… it’s really a no-brainer,” Moore Omokunde said. 

The bill is a continuation of lawmakers’ work to recognize and celebrate Black Wisconsinites during Black History Month. Early this month, lawmakers re-introduced a resolution to proclaim February as Black History Month.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

The Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety. Seated at the table are Detective Joseph Mensah (left) and Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police President Ryan Windorff (right) (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

“Baseless,” “false allegations,” and “meant to harass” were phrases used by Republican senators and police groups to describe what they called the “abuse” of Wisconsin’s John Doe law to exact vengeance on police officers who were involved in fatal incidents. 

“Activists have discovered that the John Doe process itself can be the punishment they seek against innocent law enforcement officers in our community,” said Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) during a Thursday afternoon hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee. 

It was the second time Hutton has introduced a bill taking aim at Wisconsin’s John Doe law. The law, which applies to a wide range of crimes, allows a judge to review cases in which prosecutors have declined to file charges. A judge then decides whether probable cause for a crime exists. If so, then the judge may appoint special prosecutors to consider whether charges are needed. Hutton’s bill seeks to limit the law’s use against officers involved in fatal shootings. 

Hutton, calling the the law “archaic,” said that it’s “being often used with more frequency against police officers.” Any person or group can file a complaint with a court and request the initiation of a John Doe process, he said. If passed, Hutton’s bill would prevent the John Doe law from being used in cases where there is no new or “unused” evidence and where prosecutors already decided that a officer acted in self-defense.

Although Hutton didn’t clarify what might count as “new” or “unused” evidence, he did talk at length about his conversations with police officers. The senator described going on ride-alongs and watching officers respond to domestic violence calls, “legally going 90 miles per hour” to respond to emergencies, and how disrespected and criticized officers often felt. Hutton described having conversations with officers who said they felt more “timid” and feared being charged for something like a fatal shooting. Many officers, Hutton said, are leaving the job at a time when some agencies struggle with understaffing. 

Hutton said that two recent John Doe hearings involving police shootings have further damaged morale. A 2021 hearing reviewed the shooting of 25-year-old Jay Anderson Jr. by then-Wauwatosa Police officer Joseph Mensah. In 2016 Anderson, who was sleeping in his car in a park late at night when Mensah approached him, was the second person Mensah had fatally shot within a year. Over his five-year career at Wauwatosa PD Mensah was involved in three fatal shootings. Anderson, who Mensah said was reaching for a gun when he shot him, was the only person Mensah’s shot whose killing triggered a John Doe hearing. 

Another John Doe hearing in 2023 looked into the killing of Tony Robinson by Madison Police officer Matthew Kenny. The 19-year-old was killed in his apartment after officers responded to reports that he was acting erratically. His family was awarded a $3.3 million settlement in 2017, the largest for a police shooting in Wisconsin history at the time. 

Neither of the John Doe hearings succeeded, however. Although probable cause was found in Mensah’s case for homicide by negligent use of a dangerous weapon, special prosecutors declined to pursue charges. A judge declined to continue with Kenny’s case. Hutton referred to both hearings as a growing problem, but the Mensah and Kenny cases were the only two the senator and police lobbyists said they were aware of. Hutton pointed to Mensah, who attended the Thursday hearing to offer testimony, as the inspiration for the bill to limit John Doe proceedings. 

Other Republicans on the committee appeared supportive of changing the John Doe law. Sen. Andre Jacque (R- DePere) likened its use to “attacks on qualified immunity” for police, and Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) — committee chairman and a former police officer — as well as Sen. Jesse James (R-Altoona), another law enforcement official, and police lobbyists, stressed that officers need to be able to act without hesitation. 

Committee Democrats, however, were not sold. Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee), questioned the imbalance of power within the criminal justice system that the bill could create, and wondered whether Hutton had talked to representatives of the State Bar of Wisconsin, which is opposed to the bill. Hutton said he had not. Hutton described those bringing John Doe cases against officers as seeking to “demonize someone in law enforcement.” Whereas the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin and the Civil Rights and Liberties Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin registered against the bill, two Wisconsin police associations and the State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police registered in support. 

Under the microscope 

Mensah’s shooting of Anderson was investigated by the Milwaukee Police Department before the John Doe. Their investigation in 2016 was reviewed by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, who declined to charge Mensah. A separate civil rights review, and internal Wauwatosa PD review, were also conducted. In 2020, an independent investigator also found that Mensah had violated multiple department policies when he did a radio show interview. Hutton called the use of the John Doe law against police officers as “a gap that needs to be sown up and closed.” 

After the hearing was over, Hutton told Wisconsin Examiner that although he’s talked extensively with police officers and their families, that he has not spoken with family members of anyone killed by police, such as those in Mensah’s shootings. “I haven’t heard from any of them,” Hutton said of the Anderson family and other relatives of those killed by Mensah. “I would love to have conversations with any of them in that regard, I have not had any conversation with them at this point.” 

Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said that she was “troubled by the callousness” of the discussion of Hutton’s bill. Roys said police officers and the people they kill, as well as the family members of the deceased, are victims of a tragic situation. “You have to have accountability,” said Roys. “People need to be able to trust law enforcement.” Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) pointed out that John Doe hearings involving police officers are infrequent. 

Ryan Windorff, president of the Wisconsin Order of Police, called the allegations made during John Doe hearings “baseless.” Windorff said the hearings came into vogue after what he called an “anti-police movement” which had “infected” the country. Windorff said investigations are transparent, and that while families have rights, those rights do not “usurp” the ability of police officers to defend themselves. 

Mensah also testified at the hearing. In 2020, Mensah resigned from the Wauwatosa PD after being suspended by the Police and Fire Commission. He was later hired by the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department, where he said he underwent “a unique hiring process.” Besides a background check, the sheriff and Defensive and Arrest Tactics (DAAT) experts did their own review, which he passed. Nevertheless, Mensah said that other agencies had been unwilling to  hire him because of “publicly-made…available information.” He added that the only public information besides police reports is the news, about which he said, “they have their right, they can be biased if they want.”

Mensah described the investigations and scrutiny after his three fatal shootings as “a constant drain.” He said that a John Doe proceeding could be brought “literally for anything,” and that he lives knowing that he could be charged with a crime any day. Mensah said police “aren’t granted the same protections and the same benefit of the doubt, or anything.”

“Unfortunately now, the way the law is written, the scale is heavily not in our favor,” said Mensah. 

He also took aim at the protests that focused on him in 2020 and 2021. Mensah said he didn’t understand why protesters demonstrated at the home of the woman he has since married and his parents’ house, chanting Black Lives Matter when he is a Black officer himself. “My race was completely stripped from me. I was no longer considered Black. I was considered just an officer,” he said. 

The protests and hearings were difficult to explain to his family and kids, Mensah added. “There’s been clear civil rights violations against myself, no one cares,” said Mensah. “No one cares when it’s violations against my children. No one cares when it’s violations against my wife.” Mensah’s wife, whose maiden name is Patricia Swayka, is a former Milwaukee police officer. In 2024, she appeared on a “Brady list” of officers with problematic histories obtained by TMJ4 through records requests. 

Mensah added that “this has been just a cold, calculated process of just harassing me, harassing my family, and using this law to take advantage of it. And there needs to be some type of change before it happens to someone else.” 

Mensah talked about a protest outside his house that escalated into a confrontation, in which a protester brought a gun and fired it. Several protesters were arrested for the incident, and three were charged with either handling, firing, or transporting a shotgun. Wauwatosa PD, the FBI, and Milwaukee PD specialized units all helped investigate the incident. 

During the hearing, Mensah said that the judge in his John Doe hearing “got it wrong” and that “the system as we have it is flawed, and people are using it not to get justice, but to get revenge. And specifically revenge against me.” Mensah said that he used to be a “very proactive” officer, and that Anderson’s shooting occurred when he was more proactive on the job. 

Mensah told the Senate committee “I did not have a chance to defend myself,” during the John Doe hearings. “Anytime something was brought up, I couldn’t question it.” According to court filings from the hearing, however, Mensah pleaded the Fifth Amendment, since he was subject to criminal charges. After the Senate committee hearing when asked about this, Mensah said “I honestly don’t remember.” He told Wisconsin Examiner that “I was instructed that we weren’t allowed to say anything in that hearing.” Mensah vaguely recalled “some mention of it”, referring to his Fifth Amendment pleading. “I honestly don’t remember if I did, or if there was questions about what if it got to a certain point.” 

 

19 – Brief in Support of Motion to Quash Subpoena of Joseph Mensah

 

When asked how the Anderson shooting was misrepresented by Anderson’s family and their lawyers, Mensah recalled people saying “I shot him 13 times in the back,” which wasn’t correct. Elsewhere Mensah saw people mistaking his ethnicity. “I get it…You can only report what you know…What you’re told, what you find out. Some stuff’s true, some stuff isn’t. Some stuff’s intentional, some stuff’s not. I can’t say what isn’t intentional, and what’s not. At the same time, it’s kind of like in law enforcement, if I’m interviewing someone and they tell me something, I can only take that at face value and put it forward.”

Asked whether he felt that his career in the Waukesha Sheriff’s Department had been negatively affected, he said, “All I know is I applied for the detective position, I got it. I applied for a lieutenant position, didn’t get that.” 

“In some ways I’ve been promoted, in some ways I haven’t,” he said. 

Democratic Sens. Johnson and Drake expressed skepticism in comments after the hearing.

Johnson compared the John Doe bill to Republican efforts to impose stricter regulations  on bail and parole, arguing that judges need more authority to keep violent offenders incarcerated. Yet Hutton’s John Doe bill, she pointed out, takes away discretion and power from judges. 

“It really boils down to who we decide are victims,” said Drake.

Clarification: This article has been updated to reflect that the Civil Rights and Liberties Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin, not the State Bar as a whole, registered against the bill to end John Doe proceedings against police officers.