The state of Wisconsin is rescinding the Social Development Commission’s status as Milwaukee County’s community action agency, a move that puts the SDC’s ability to offer critical services to the community in jeopardy.
The anti-poverty agency has held that designation for over 60 years. Without the status, SDC is not eligible for key federal block grant funding for its services.
In a letter sent Friday to the SDC board, Wisconsin Department of Children and Families Secretary Jeff Pertl wrote that as of July 3, SDC’s status as Milwaukee County’s community action agency will end and that the agency will no longer be eligible for federal Community Services Block Grant funding.
“SDC has been a beloved institution in Milwaukee, positively impacting community members through a long history of programs and services,” Pertl said in a statement. “As such, the decision to de-designate them as a community action agency was not taken lightly, but it is clear that we must turn the page to resume these vital services.”
The decision comes after representatives of Milwaukee County said earlier this month that they planned to move from SDC as its community action agency.
“The most important thing is to make sure that Milwaukee County residents are served, and this missive from DCF ensures that they will not be served,” said William Sulton, SDC’s attorney.
Now, the SDC board can request a review with the federal government within 30 days or choose to voluntarily de-designate.
The decision
The department decided to terminate SDC’s designation because it believes SDC has not been operating anti-poverty services since it abruptly shut down in April 2024, despite reopening in December.
According to the letter, SDC has not completed its federally required audit, verified sustainable funding sources, addressed outstanding financial obligations or corrected other deficiencies the department identified.
Board members and current and former employees of SDC advocated for the agency to keep its community action status at a hearing last month.
SDC was created by state, county and city governments but functions outside of them.
Pertl acknowledged the commitment of former staff members who performed unpaid service in support of SDC’s work and the board’s desire to restore SDC in his letter.
“There is also an array of community members and leaders who contend SDC is unable to carry out its vital mission in light of the financial mismanagement, pending foreclosures, outstanding debts, eroded infrastructure and lack of urgency in finding resolution to these practical service delivery challenges,” Pertl wrote in the letter.
SDC provided a range of services to help low-income residents, such as tax support, career advancement, senior companionship and rent assistance.
What happens next?
Going forward, SDC has the option to request a review by the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services within 30 days.
It could also voluntarily relinquish its community action status, which would allow the department and Milwaukee County to more quickly find an interim service provider to use SDC’s allocated funds for the year.
The letter noted that President Donald Trump’s administration proposed eliminating block grant funding to community action agencies in his fiscal year 2026 budget, making the program’s future uncertain.
The Department of Children and Families can now start conversations with other eligible entities, but cannot take over the funds intended for SDC until SDC’s de-designation is effective, according to Gina Paige, communications director for the department.
Sulton said the board will have to meet to determine SDC’s next actions, but he is concerned that the state, Milwaukee County and the city will choose to stop funding anti-poverty services.
“Really what this act amounts to is a withdrawing of their commitment to pursue anti-poverty programming,” he said.
The recent arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan – who is accused of obstructing a federal immigration arrest inside the Milwaukee County Courthouse – has intensified concerns over immigration enforcement and sparked questions about what rights individuals have when encountering federal agents.
Here’s what to know.
What is obstruction?
Obstruction occurs when a person prevents or makes it more difficult for officers to perform their duty – a definition that covers a broad range of actions, said Benjamin Van Severen, a Milwaukee-based criminal defense attorney and founder of Van Severen Law Office.
Obstruction can include physically interfering with an arrest, such as refusing to comply during a traffic stop.
“Let’s say you’re in a vehicle, and law enforcement does a traffic stop and then you refuse to unlock the doors – that could be obstruction,” said Van Severen.
Obstruction also includes providing false information to law enforcement.
According to the criminal complaint, Dugan obstructed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents by escorting the individual they intended to arrest into a nonpublic area of the courthouse after requesting the agents go to the chief judge.
A related but distinct offense from obstruction is known as harboring.
Harboring generally refers to knowingly assisting someone to remain in the United States unlawfully – typically by hiding, transporting or supporting the person in order to help avoid detention.
Knowledge and intent are critical components of the charge.
“You have to be acting with the conscious purpose of aiding their intention to remain here illegally,” said Ronald Kuby, a civil rights attorney familiar with similar cases.
“If, let’s say, Ahmed says to his neighbor, ‘Look, I need $150 to get a bus ticket to go to Canada because ICE is going to arrest me,’ it’s perfectly fine to give Ahmed that 150 bucks to go to Canada,” he said. “He may not buy that bus ticket to Canada. He may buy a bus ticket to, you know, Indianapolis, but that’s not on you.”
Different types of warrants
Understanding the difference between types of warrants is crucial in understanding immigration enforcement, particularly when it comes to where these warrants permit officers to go.
An administrative warrant permits immigration officers to arrest someone in a public place, such as a sidewalk or bus station. However, it does not allow entry into a private residence without consent.
Judicial warrants, by contrast, are signed by a judge and can authorize arrests in both public and private spaces.
Despite the differences, both administrative and judicial warrants are lawful tools that permit arrests in immigration cases, Van Severen said.
However, there are different rights that can be asserted depending on the type of warrant.
If law enforcement presents an administrative warrant, people inside a private residence have the right to refuse entry.
“If it’s not signed by a judge, they can’t come into your home without permission,” said R. Timothy Muth, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, of Wisconsin. “Ask to see the warrant. Have them slip it under the door or show it to you at your window. Look at the signature line – does it say ‘magistrate judge’?”
Other rights
Regardless of citizenship status, everyone in the U.S. has certain constitutional protections, including the right to remain silent and to speak to an attorney.
However, if the arrest is for an immigration violation and not a criminal offense, the government does not have to provide a lawyer, explained Ruby De León, staff attorney at Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant advocacy organization in Milwaukee.
Documenting activities related to immigration enforcement, such as filming and noting names and badge numbers, is also legal so long as it does not interfere with law enforcement actions, said Muth.
If people are not citizens but have documentation that permits them to stay in the country – such as a green card – they are required to keep that documentation with them, Muth said.
Muth recommends carrying documentation showing continuous presence in the country for more than two years, such as a lease agreement, pay stubs or utility bill in the person’s name.
Individuals who cannot prove they’ve been physically present in the U.S. for at least two years may be subject to expedited removal – a process that allows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, to deport someone without a hearing before an immigration judge.
Advocates recommend ensuring documentation is current, applying for passports for U.S.-born children and pursuing citizenship or legal status if eligible, perhaps through an employer or family member.
Voces suggests completing power-of-attorney forms to prepare for potential family separation. If a person is detained or deported, these forms allow a designated individual to make medical, financial or child care decisions on the person’s behalf.
Forward Latino, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the civil rights of Latinos throughout the country, has created a tool kit regarding potential family separation.
Other resources
A city of Milwaukee municipal ID can serve as a form of identification for city residents who cannot get state identification.
Voces maintains a list of immigration, workers’ rights and family attorneys it deems trustworthy.
Voces also provides various workshops and clinics, including Know Your Rights training, citizenship classes and legal clinics. For citizenship classes, call (414) 236-0415 or email newamerican@vdlf.org. For other services or questions, call (414) 643-1620.
In any community, the role of the medical examiner is vital.
Medical examiners — or coroners, in the nearly half of Wisconsin’s 72 counties that have them as an alternative — determine the cause and manner of death, support the criminal justice system and track data to identify trends that can impact public health and safety.
For me and other Milwaukee-area journalists, the insights provided by the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office are integral to our coverage, providing crucial details and important context. Among the recent examples where the level of openness has played a key role are the COVID-19 pandemic, the tragic deaths of three men due to extreme cold last January and the high-profile case of D’Vontaye Mitchell last June.
Traditionally, the office has supplied “demographic reports” as well as “narrative reports.” Demographic reports include information such as the name of the deceased, where the death occurred, and the name of a family member who was notified. Narrative reports, in contrast, delve into the circumstances surrounding each case.
“Narrative reports are particularly illustrative when compared to other available public information,” wrote David Clarey in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in March. “Contextual information, such as whether a driver ran a red light or if a homicide resulted from a heated argument, is often missing (from demographic reports) and requires time-consuming requests from media and families alike.”
Tim Vetscher (Provided photo)
The media in Milwaukee were pleased with the level of openness we experienced from Karen Domagalski, the longtime operations manager for the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office. But when Domagalski retired on Feb. 19, the county’s medical examiner, Dr. Wieslawa Tlomak, announced a change in policy. Henceforth, she said, the office would stop sharing narrative reports until investigations were concluded and cases closed. She acknowledged that this shift represented a significant change in past practices.
Concerned by the change in policy, several news executives, including me, sent Tlomak a letter on April 4. It read, in part:
“The decision to curtail access to these preliminary findings poses a troubling scenario for our news organizations and, more importantly, for the residents of Milwaukee County. Withholding this essential information may leave the public waiting weeks, months, or even longer for basic insights into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of community members. This delay not only hampers our ability to keep the public informed but also undermines trust in the transparency of governmental processes.”
The letter noted that having access to narrative reports helps “clarify the circumstances” surrounding deaths and fosters “a better understanding among citizens about the events that impact their safety.”
Tlomak replied to our letter nearly three weeks later on April 23. Her response read, in part:
“I recognize that this shift in operational policies and procedures is new to members of the media that cover death investigations and public safety matters in Milwaukee County. After an internal review of operational policies and procedures, it became apparent that it is not within the ME’s Office mission and purpose to provide inaccurate and/or incomplete information to the public, as the disclosure of these draft details have the potential to cause significant harm to family members most affected by a death.”
Here’s my response to that: Dr. Tlomak, if your concern is releasing inaccurate information, the appropriate next step would be to correct the information rather than stopping its release altogether. I urge you to work with the journalists who rely on the reports provided by your office to develop a solution that ensures timely access to vital information without compromising the integrity of ongoing investigations.
Transparency is crucial for maintaining public trust.
Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Tim Vetscher, a council member, is news director at TMJ4 in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin’s constitution gives the Legislature two methods for removing judges from office.
Impeachment starts with a majority Assembly vote based on “corrupt conduct in office” or commission of a crime. A two-thirds Senate vote following a Senate trial would result in removal.
“Removal by address” occurs through a two-thirds vote of each chamber, based on misconduct. The judge would have an opportunity to make a defense.
Wisconsin judges run in nonpartisan elections. Bothchambers of the Legislature have a simple Republican majority.
Republicans called for the Legislature to remove Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan after the FBI arrested her April 24. She is charged with two crimes for allegedly obstructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting a criminal defendant in her courtroom.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court temporarily suspended Dugan. The Supreme Court can also remove judges for misconduct, based on a state Judicial Commission investigation.
It appears that Milwaukee County is ready to work with the state to find a new community action agency to replace the Social Development Commission, the embattled agency that has provided anti-poverty services for more than 60 years.
In an email to NNS, a spokesperson from the press office of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley stated: “Given the urgent need for supportive services in Milwaukee County, and in light of SDC’s ongoing challenges, we stand ready to work with the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and other local partners to identify another eligible entity or entities who can receive (Community Services Block Grant) funds and provide needed services to county residents.”
The Social Development Commission, also known as the SDC, is eligible to receive these federal block grant funds administered by the state through its status as a community action agency, which the state is considering rescinding.
The email from the county was sent in response to a question about whether the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors and the Milwaukee Common Council are required by state law to approve any decision to rescind SDC’s designation as a community action agency.
The background
The Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, or DCF, is scheduled to make a final decision on SDC’s community action status in the coming months.
DCF held a public hearing on April 4 to discuss SDC’s designation and future. At the meeting, some SDC board members and current and former employees testified about the crucial need to maintain the agency.
The department’s leadership said SDC has not created a realistic financial plan to restart services and perform its community action duties under the law, and it continues to have financial, programmatic, operational and service delivery concerns.
SDC reopened in a limited capacity in December after abruptly shutting down in April 2024, when problems included failing to pay employees and contractors on time and using grant dollars for one program to cover costs for another.
The agency has since missed state deadlines to pay employees their owed wages and also still owes some contractors for completed work.
In addition, SDC’s property corporation, SD Properties Inc., is facing a foreclosure lawsuit and owes nearly $3 million in mortgage payments on its North Avenue buildings, according to court records.
Who’s responsible?
Jorge Franco, interim CEO of SDC and chair of its board, said Wisconsin law requires both the Common Council and County Board of Supervisors to approve a decision to de-designate SDC as a community action agency before the state can take that action.
Franco is referring to Wisconsin Statute 49.265, which states the following: “The approval of a community action agency may be rescinded but only if there is good cause and if the decision to rescind is made by both the legislative body of the county, city, village or town that granted the approval and the secretary.”
According to the organization’s former website, SDC became a community action agency in 1964, shortly after the Economic Opportunity Act created the Community Action Program.
Because SDC was established through a collaboration that involved the city, county and other organizations, there is a lack of clarity over which legislative body actually granted SDC’s approval as a community action agency.
It’s also unclear which legislative body must weigh in on the commission’s potential de-designation based on state statute.
According to a spokesperson from the Milwaukee County Executive’s Office, a review of records found that the county board and the city of Milwaukee enacted an ordinance establishing SDC as a commission, but not specifically as a community action agency.
“We have not found any records indicating that the County Board ever took any action relative to SDC’s status as a CAA,” an email from the Milwaukee County Executive Press Office said.
Because the county board did not approve SDC’s status as a community action agency, it does not have the authority to rescind that status, the Milwaukee County Executive Press Office’s email said.
Jeff Fleming, a spokesperson for Mayor Cavalier Johnson, said the city’s responsibility in the potential de-designation of SDC as a community action agency has been a topic of discussion.
“The first impression from the city side is that it was the county that ‘granted the approval,’” Fleming said in an email, referring to SDC’s status as a community action agency.
NNS also reached out to Milwaukee City Attorney Evan Goyke for comment on the issue, but he hasn’t responded.
The Department of Children and Families was also questioned about which legislative body granted SDC approval to be a community action agency.
“This is the first time the Department of Children and Families has sought to de-designate a community action agency,” said Gina Paige, communications director for DCF. “As such, we are working closely with the federal Office of Community Services and Milwaukee County to determine what the process would need to be should we move forward with de-designating SDC.”
According to Franco, the state operates under a federal mandate to provide the types of anti-poverty services that SDC had provided for decades.
He said without SDC, those services could be delayed by several years.
“The bottom line point is that infrastructure is there. It must be activated immediately,” Franco said.
Money, Franco said, is needed to help the agency climb out of debt and, more importantly, relaunch vital services to low-income residents in the county.
“SDC intends to pay every dollar it owes. First things first. Get anti-poverty services ready to go through SDC, which is ready to go today and that should not be delayed any further,” Franco said.
Some elected officials weigh in. Most stay silent.
State Sen. LaTonya Johnson said that she’d like to see SDC rebound from its troubles.
“SDC has been in the community for many years providing pivotal services for the community and this community can’t afford to lose those services,” she said.
Still, she said, given the significant mismanagement of funds at SDC, she understands that the Department of Children and Families will make a decision it feels is in the best interests of residents.
“Whatever decision they make, I’ll have to back it just like other elected officials will because we have to believe that they’re making the choice that’s best for taxpayers,” she said. “I’m hoping that the state will have a way to make sure that services will be provided, whether it’s SDC or not.”
Ald. Sharlen Moore also hopes to see SDC survive.
“They provide a critical need to our community, and so what I would hope is that they would find the necessary help or support that they need in order to get back on track,” Moore said. “It’s such a huge void.”
Like Johnson, she also acknowledges the challenges of providing funding to an organization with an uncertain future.
“It’s hard giving someone money without knowing how they are going to move forward,” she said.
Rep. Gwen Moore said it is important to center the people who have been majorly affected, like residents who lost services and former employees who are still owed pay.
“The serious concerns raised by the state must be addressed, and I hope the result of this process moves us closer to resuming these vital services to my constituents,” she said.
NNS reached out to more than 20 elected officials from the city, county and state government for comment on SDC’s future, including Common Council President Jose Perez and Milwaukee County Board Chairwoman Marcella Nicholson. Only three elected officials chose to speak.
What’s next?
Despite the current challenges, Franco said that he is confident SDC will bounce back and that the history of the organization is proof of its effectiveness in fighting poverty.
“SDC has a legacy of generations of people who’ve been helped by SDC, and they still live in the community,” he said. “Whatever its issues were in recent times, the long-standing legacy and the number of people who have been helped must not be forgotten.”
The Milwaukee County Courthouse (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan’s arrest last week by federal agents is going to make Wisconsin’s court system worse, according to attorneys who practice in the state.
Earlier this month, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI appeared at the Milwaukee County Courthouse with an administrative warrant to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant accused of misdemeanor battery, and scheduled for an appearance in Dugan’s courtroom.
An administrative warrant is not signed by a judge and does not allow agents to enter private spaces to make an arrest like a judicial warrant would. While the agents sat in the hallway outside the courtroom, Dugan told Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to use a side door. The door exits into the same public hallway and one agent rode the same elevator down to the lobby as Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer. Agents let Flores-Ruiz leave the building and then arrested him on the street.
Last week, FBI agents appeared at the courthouse again to arrest Dugan. She’s been charged with obstructing justice and harboring an individual, both felony counts. Soon after her arrest, and before she had made her initial appearance in front of a judge, President Donald Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were discussing the case on social media and television, accusing Dugan of being “deranged.”
Bondi said on Fox News Friday that the charges were filed against Dugan to show the administration was willing to go after anyone, even judges, if they get in the way of their efforts to deport millions of people. Bondi said interfering with ICE agents “will not be tolerated.”
“What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” Bondi said. “The [judges] are deranged is all I can think of. I think some of these judges think that they are beyond and above the law. They are not, and we are sending a very strong message today … if you are harboring a fugitive… we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”
From the beginning, the case displayed many missteps in an effort to show force and draw attention, says Stephen Kravit, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
“It looks like these prosecutors are completely co-opted in Trump World and aren’t really using very good judgment. You should just look at the facts and law, and there’s just no chance they’ll be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Judge Dugan was corruptly intending to avoid a government subpoena, or that she was harboring a fugitive,” he says, calling the charges “crap.”
During the initial arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Kravit questions why DEA and FBI agents are appearing at the courthouse for immigration enforcement actions and why so many agents were needed to serve an administrative warrant.
“It’s bad for justice on any level. They had six agents there, six to make an unarmed collar of a person who was accused of battery to his roommate,” Kravit says. “And they know he’s not armed. And there’s six of them. Two of them are DEA agents. Those are two agents not enforcing drug laws, which is what they’re charged to do. There’s no drugs involved here, OK? Two of them are FBI agents, who have 100 other different things to do. We probably only have six or seven DEA agents in the state.”
Kravit adds that the whole situation might have gone differently if ICE had gotten a warrant to arrest Flores-Ruiz from a judge rather than one “written by some guy in the office” and it’s going to be difficult for prosecutors to prove Dugan had a corrupt intent by sending Florez-Ruiz out the side door when she could have just been avoiding a “ruckus” outside her door while she’s trying to move on with the court schedule.
He also takes offense with the way Dugan was “perp walked” out of the courthouse when she could have just been asked to turn herself in; questions why federal prosecutors didn’t bring the case to a grand jury first — which would have been the standard process — and why the country’s most powerful justice officials are discussing the case on cable news.
“The arrest warrant for the judge is a travesty, but there’s so much reasonable doubt,” he says. “Was she corruptly trying to interrupt a government proceeding? Corruptly? Was somebody paying her money? No, or was she harboring a fugitive? That’s what she’s charged with. Did she harbor a fugitive on any set of facts that you can imagine? That’s what she’s charged with. These are serious felonies. They ruin the woman’s life and all so that Pam Bondi could make a press statement.”
Dugan’s arrest, and the attention her case has brought to ICE operating at county courthouses could have a chilling effect on Wisconsin’s justice system, Jeff Mandell, executive director of Law Forward, says.
“I do think that there’s a chilling effect to having federal officials prowling a state courthouse to make arrests and absent real danger or exigent circumstances, it feels like that’s not a good thing,” Mandell says. “We want people in our communities to be willing and able to show up in court. We want those people to know that they can do so without feeling like they’re getting entrapped or something like that, and that’s in all of our interests.”
For immigrants, undocumented or not, appearing in court for any reason now is a fraught decision, which could lead to witnesses to crimes not showing up to testify, Mandell says.
“If you were just going about your day and something happened to you and this person was a witness, and you needed them to help sort things out in court and things like that, then you know, you didn’t choose your witnesses,” he says.” You didn’t decide who was going to be standing there when you were in an accident or some other misfortune befell you.”
ICE’s focus on arresting people making court appearances puts those criminal defendants — who have not yet been convicted of a crime — in the position to decide between showing up to court and potentially being picked up by ICE or skipping their court date. Last week, the Wisconsin public defender’s office sent an email to private defense attorneys across the state advising them how to deal with clients asking about ICE operations in courthouses.
“Explain to the client the consequences of not showing to court like you would to any client,” the email states. “Remember you cannot tell a client not to come but you can explain that ICE has been coming to courthouses and that it may no longer be a safe haven.”
Mandell says the operations in courthouses and Dugan’s arrest are emblematic of the Trump administration’s worst impulses.
“I think it reinforces what we’re seeing through day 98 of the administration, what we’re seeing in all kinds of ways in this administration, which is an impatience, a heedlessness, a recklessness, a disregard for norms,” he says. “That many of these folks seem to believe there’s one set of rules for them and a different set of rules for someone else.”
“So they want respect paid to federal officials, but they are going to trample on state institutions and state officials,” he continues. “They want everyone to follow the law, but they are going to play fast and loose and cut corners, whether that’s using administrative warrants, whether that is avoiding grand juries to bring federal charges.”
Mandell adds that when Trump was charged with felonies, he was given the privilege of turning himself in to be booked.
“They want all of the trappings of tremendous respect for their offices, but they are not going to afford even a modicum of respect to others,” Mandell continues, “which we see handcuffing and perp walking Judge Dugan out of the courthouse without even the common courtesy of a phone call to ask if she might be willing to turn herself in, which, of course, is how the President himself insisted on all of his bookings being handled.”
Want to understand the levers of power in Wisconsin? Our statehouse team writes a weekly preview of what’s on the agenda in state politics and why it matters. It’s called Forward. The analysis below is an example of what you can expect in your inbox every Monday if you subscribe here. (Our newsletters are free, like all of our journalism).
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested on Friday for allegedly helping a man living in the United States without legal status evade federal immigration authorities. Dugan faces two federal felony counts — obstruction and concealing an individual.
Dugan’s case is similar to a 2019 case brought by federal prosecutors against Massachusetts Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph. In that case, Joseph was accused of helping an unauthorized immigrant avoid an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent after a court appearance.
In both cases, federal officials alleged the state judges allowed the defendants to exit their courtrooms through alternative routes to avoid federal immigration officials waiting outside the courtrooms in publicly accessible areas.
In a criminal complaint filed last week, federal officials alleged that Dugan confronted immigration enforcement officials outside of her courtroom as they waited for a defendant who was scheduled to appear before her finished his court business. Witnesses reported that Dugan “was visibly upset and had a confrontational, angry demeanor,” according to the complaint. Dugan asked to see the warrant the immigration officials were acting upon and then referred them to see the county’s chief judge.
After returning to the courtroom, Dugan then escorted the man and his attorney through a door that leads to a “nonpublic area” of the courthouse, the complaint states.
A similar series of events unfolded in the Massachusetts case. After learning that an ICE agent was waiting to arrest a defendant, Joseph eventually had the man exit the courtroom through a nonpublic exit, federal authorities alleged in a 2019 indictment. A separate court official then helped him exit the building through a back door.
The Massachusetts case was dismissed in 2022. In exchange, Joseph referred herself to the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct, per The New York Times.
One key difference between the two cases: Joseph was indicted. Dugan was served a criminal complaint. To secure an indictment, prosecutors have to present evidence to a panel of everyday Wisconsin residents and convince them there is probable cause a crime has been committed. For criminal complaints, officials only have to get the sign-off of a federal judge, but then later have to secure an indictment from a grand jury, two former federal prosecutors told Wisconsin Watch.
Now, the federal government has 21 days to seek an indictment, according to Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former federal prosecutor.
“It is unusual that this happened with an arrest and complaint because there really is no indication that the Judge was a flight risk or danger to the community,” she told Wisconsin Watch in an email. “They easily could have gone to the grand jury first and summoned her in IF the grand jury wanted to indict.”
Stephen Kravit, a Milwaukee area attorney and former federal prosecutor, said criminal complaints are rare in the Eastern District of Wisconsin and are usually reserved for “an exigent situation where the defendant’s whereabouts aren’t specifically known or the presence in this area is temporary.”
“None of that applies to a sitting Circuit Court Judge,” he added in an email.
Instead, Kravit said, “this was done in a hurry to make a political point.” He added, “Normally, a person charged even with felonies aged 60+ with no record and no chance of fleeing would be summoned to show up at an appointed time for booking and arraignment. Not here. And that was the point.”
🚘 Budget road trip. The Joint Finance Committee will hold a pair of hearings on Monday and Tuesday this week, stepping away from the Capitol in Madison to hear from Wisconsin residents in Hayward and Wausau about what they want included in the state’s next two-year budget.
It will be the third and fourth time so far that the committee has heard from the public on the spending plan. But as the GOP-controlled committee continues to go through the motions of crafting the budget, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, indicated last week that Republican lawmakers could punt on passing a new budget altogether.
Vos was reacting to a Wisconsin Supreme Courtdecision that left intact a move from Gov. Tony Evers that provided for annual public school funding increases for the next 400 years. “It’s certainly a possibility if we can’t find a way for us to get to a common middle ground,” Vos said of spiking the funding plan last week on the “Jay Weber Show.” “But that’s not the goal.”
“It’s something we’re talking about, but it wouldn’t be the first go-to,” Vos added, noting that it has never happened before. The state has passed a budget every two years since 1931, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
But even if the Legislature were to pass on sending a new spending plan to Evers, things in the state wouldn’t shut down. In Wisconsin, the state continues operating at the existing spending levels until a new budget is approved.
📈 Student homelessness rising. Homelessness among K-12 Wisconsin students reached a new high in 2024, increasing 9% over the previous year despite total enrollment declining slightly.
That’s according to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, which found that a little more than 20,000 Wisconsin students were homeless in 2023-24. If that figure seems high, it’s because it is. Homelessness among students is counted using a definition that is more expansive than the one employed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal McKinney-Vento Act defines homeless children and youth as those “who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.”
It’s the third straight year that student homelessness increased in Wisconsin, the report found, reaching a new high since the state Department of Public Instruction started keeping data in 2019.
“The number of students affected by homelessness has grown and is likely to continue to remain high in the near future as an insufficient supply of affordable housing remains a lingering problem throughout the state,” the report concludes. “Addressing the needs of this high-risk group of students could benefit not only them but also Wisconsin’s educational outcomes overall.”
Wisconsin Watch’s Hallie Claflin has been documenting the state’s rural homelessness crisis, including in her latest report about police departments transporting homeless people outside their jurisdiction. We’ll be watching the budget process closely to see if lawmakers address this issue or similarly treat it as out of sight, out of mind.
Protesters gather outside of the Federal Building in Milwaukee to denounce the arrest of Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
After the arrest of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan by federal agents Friday morning, the city’s political and activist communities responded forcefully, protesting against the arrest across the city.
Dugan was charged with obstruction of justice and harboring an individual after a group of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents showed up outside of her courtroom last week to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant accused of misdemeanor battery.
The criminal complaint against Durgan alleges she broke the law by allowing Flores-Ruiz to use a side door in her courtroom to exit without going past the agents. The agents saw him leave and later apprehended him on foot.
While a larger protest took place outside of the federal courthouse in downtown Milwaukee, local resident Jeneca Wolski stood alone outside of the county courthouse where Dugan was arrested.
“[I’m] just a local citizen who is horrified that we are finding ourselves in this position right now,” Wolski told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We’re sliding downhill so fast. I don’t want to be looked back on by history as part of it. We have to do everything we can to kick and fight and scream to save our democracy right now.”
At a press conference, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley accused the administration of President Donald Trump of acting to intimidate “anyone who opposes these policies.” Crowley added that Dugan was arrested by a “large, performative showing” of federal agents in the county courthouse.
“We have an obligation to administer our courts in a safe, efficient manner that delivers due process for anyone,” Crowley said. “The Trump administration’s actions are clearly preventing us from doing so by intimidating judges and eroding public faith in our judicial system.”
People gathered outside the federal courthouse in Milwaukee Friday afternoon to protest Dugan’s arrest. At the rally, Christine Neumann Ortiz, executive director of immigrant rights group Voces De La Frontera, told the Wisconsin Examiner the Trump administration was trying to undermine efforts to oppose its immigration policies.
“They basically want to be unleashed to do whatever they want to commit these raids in courtrooms across the country,” she said. “They don’t want any resistance from judges or from the community standing up for people’s due process rights or limiting their policies of mass deportation and racism.”
Seven of the city of Milwaukee’s legislative representatives said in a joint statement that Dugan’s arrest and ICE operating inside the courthouse will “lead to a breakdown of civil society.”
“The County Courthouse is a sanctuary for justice and peace where the accused come forward willingly in a fair and unbiased process,” said the lawmakers, Sens. Chris Larson and Tim Carpenter and Reps. Christine Sinicki, Darrin Madison, Supreme Moore Omokunde, Angelito Tenorio and Sequanna Taylor. “Arresting people out of a courtroom will lead to a breakdown of civil society. We do not support the presence of ICE in places where it will lead to intimidation against witnesses and victims of crimes, denying everyone involved the justice they deserve.”
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned how Dugan’s arrest makes the country safer.
“The Trump Administration continues to test the limits of our Constitution — this time by arresting a sitting judge for allegedly obstructing an immigration operation at the courthouse,” Durbin said. “When immigration enforcement officials interfere with our criminal justice system, it undermines public safety, prevents victims and witnesses from coming forward, and often prevents those who committed crimes from facing justice in the United States. How does this make America any safer? How does arresting a sitting judge make America any safer? It is imperative that Judge Dugan is afforded due process and the presumption of innocence, as required by our Constitution and her fundamental rights as an American.”
State Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein (D-Middleton) and Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, criticized the arrest in a joint statement.
“Today’s arrest of a sitting judge, at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, is a frightening escalation of the Trump Administration’s attacks on America’s judicial system,” they said. “This is part of a pattern by this Administration – defying court orders, flouting the democratic system of checks and balances, ignoring the right to due process, and threatening judicial independence – that alarms us as legislators and as residents of this great state and this great country. We will follow this case closely. We will continue to stand up to lawless and unconstitutional actions. And, we will always fight for a bedrock principle of American democracy: equal justice under the law.”
The Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, an activist group, was planning protests Friday afternoon outside the federal courthouse and Saturday outside the FBI’s Milwaukee field office. In a statement, the group said the arrest was a “heinous attack.”
“They are seeking to send a clear message: either you play along with Trump’s agenda, or pay the consequences,” the group said. “During this period of racist and political repression, we must stand together to denounce today’s actions by the FBI. What happened to Dugan is not new. The FBI and other agencies have been emboldened in recent months, snatching people off the streets, separating families, terrorizing communities, breaking doors down of pro-Palestine activists, and contributing to the unjust deportation of immigrants who don’t have criminal records. What is new is that they have gone after a judge.”
The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
FBI agents arrested Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan on Friday, accusing her of obstructing an immigration enforcement action last week.
Dugan was arrested at 8:30 a.m. at the county courthouse, according to the U.S. Marshal’s Service. She was scheduled to make an initial appearance in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Dries at 10:30 on Friday. According to a criminal complaint, she’s been charged with obstructing or impeding before a department or agency of the United States and concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.
Online court records show that the government did not request that Dugan be held in detention and that she was released on an O/R bond, meaning she was released from custody without having to post bail and signed an agreement that she’d appear in court when required.
The agency’s director, Kash Patel, wrote on the social media platform X that Dugan had “intentionally misdirected federal agents away” from Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant accused of misdemeanor battery. In the now-deleted post, Patel accused Dugan of creating “increased danger to the public.”
Flores-Ruiz appeared in Dugan’s courtroom on April 18 for a pre-trial conference on charges of misdemeanor domestic battery. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents appeared outside Dugan’s courtroom, she led Flores-Ruiz and an attorney out a side door and down a private hallway.
ICE agents later apprehended Flores-Ruiz on foot. This is the third time since March that immigration agents have appeared at the Milwaukee County courthouse to conduct arrests — a tactic that local officials have said threatens to undermine the work of the local justice system by making immigrants fearful of coming to the courthouse to testify in court.
In an initial statement, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said he was aware of Dugan’s arrest and that the legal process should be allowed to play out.
“Like any individual in this country, I believe she is entitled to due process,” Crowley said. “We should let the facts come to light and the legal process play out.”
But later, he accused the FBI of politicizing the arrest to punish perceived enemies.
“It is clear that the FBI is politicizing this situation to make an example of her and others across the country who oppose their attack on the judicial system and our nation’s immigration laws,” he said. “FBI Director Kash Patel issued a public statement on X, which he hurriedly deleted, making unsubstantiated claims about Judge Dugan’s case before charges were officially filed and she could have her moment in court. Director Patel’s statement shows that Trump’s FBI is more concerned about weaponizing federal law enforcement, punishing people without due process, and intimidating anyone who opposes those policies, than they are with seeking justice.”
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said the administration of President Donald Trump is attacking democratic values.
“In the United States, we have a system of checks and balances and separations of power for damn good reasons,” she said. “The President’s administration arresting a sitting judge is a gravely serious and drastic move, and it threatens to breach those very separations of power. Make no mistake, we do not have kings in this country and we are a Democracy governed by laws that everyone must abide by. By relentlessly attacking the judicial system, flouting court orders, and arresting a sitting judge, this President is putting those basic Democratic values that Wisconsinites hold dear on the line. While details of this exact case remain minimal, this action fits into the deeply concerning pattern of this President’s lawless behavior and undermining courts and Congress’s checks on his power.”
Gov. Tony Evers said the arrest was another example of the Trump administration’s attacks on the judiciary.
“Unfortunately, we have seen in recent months the president and the Trump Administration repeatedly use dangerous rhetoric to attack and attempt to undermine our judiciary at every level, including flat-out disobeying the highest court in the land and threatening to impeach and remove judges who do not rule in their favor,” he said. “I have deep respect for the rule of law, our nation’s judiciary, the importance of judges making decisions impartially without fear or favor, and the efforts of law enforcement to hold people accountable if they commit a crime. I will continue to put my faith in our justice system as this situation plays out in the court of law.”
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) said the arrest was “shocking.”
“This Administration’s willingness to weaponize federal law enforcement is shocking and this arrest has all the hallmarks of overreach,” Moore said. “Federal law enforcement coming into a community and arresting a judge is a serious matter and would require a high legal bar. I will be following this case closely and facts will come out, however, I am very alarmed at the increasingly lawless actions of the Trump Administration, and in particular ICE, who have been defying courts and acting with disregard for the Constitution.”
The ACLU of Wisconsin wrote on social media that ICE making arrests at courthouses interferes with the work of local justice officials.
“Judges have a duty to maintain order in their courtrooms and ensure the fair administration of justice, and federal law does not require state judges to act as agents of federal immigration enforcement,” the organization said. “Everyone is due their day in court, and when ICE starts showing up to courts looking to make arrests, it risks interfering with those rights. In recent weeks, the administration has attacked the integrity of our judicial system, refused to comply with a Supreme Court order, and arrested a judge for using her authority to protect the fair administration of justice.”
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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.
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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.
Reading Time: 11minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
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)
Reading Time: 8minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
Milwaukee County is among dozens of U.S. counties where drugs are disproportionately killing Black men born between 1951 and 1970.
Black men of the generation accounted for 12.5% of all drug deaths between 2018 and 2022. That’s despite making up just 2.3% of the total population. The trend has only accelerated in more recent years.
Most of the men who died used cocaine that was cut with stronger fentanyl — the faster-acting drug has fueled the national opioid epidemic. Most had a history of incarceration.
Limited options and lingering stigma prevent a generation of Black men from accessing drug treatment.
In many ways, Hamid Abd-Al-Jabbar’s life story involved redemption. A victim of abuse who was exposed to alcohol and drugs while growing up on Milwaukee’s North Side, he made dangerous choices as a teenager. By age 19, he landed in prison after shooting and killing a man during a 1988 drug house robbery.
But he worked on himself while incarcerated, his wife Desilynn Smith recalled. After he walked out of prison for good, he found a calling as a peace activist. He became a violence interrupter for Milwaukee’s 414 Life program, aiming to prevent gun violence through de-escalation and intervention.
Abd-Al-Jabbar may have looked healed on the outside, but he never moved past the trauma that shaped much of his life, Smith said. He wouldn’t ask for help.
That’s why Smith still grieves. Her husband died in February 2021 after ingesting a drug mixture that included fentanyl and cocaine. He was 51.
Smith now wears his fingerprint on a charm bracelet as a physical reminder of the man she knew and loved for most of her life.
“He never learned how to cope with things in a healthy way,” said Smith, executive director of Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., an organization that provides mental health and substance use services on Milwaukee’s North Side. “In our communities addiction is frowned upon, so people don’t get the help they need.”
Desilynn Smith is still grieving the loss of her husband Hamid Abd-Al-Jabbar, who died in 2021 after ingesting a mixture of cocaine and fentanyl. She is shown Jan. 23, 2025, in her office at Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Abd-Al-Jabbar is part of a generation of Milwaukee’s older Black men who are disproportionately dying from drug poisonings and overdoses, even as the opioid epidemic slows for others.
Times and Banner reporters initially identified the pattern in Baltimore. They later found the same effect in dozens of counties nationwide.
In Milwaukee, Black men of the generation accounted for 12.5% of all drug deaths between 2018 and 2022. That’s despite making up just 2.3% of the total population.
The county’s older Black men were lost to drugs at rates 14.2 times higher than all people nationally and 5.5 times higher than all other Milwaukee County residents.
Six other Wisconsin counties — Brown, Dane, Kenosha, Racine, Rock and Waukesha — ranked among the top 408 nationally in drug deaths during the years analyzed. But Milwaukee was the only one in Wisconsin where this generation of Black men died at such staggering rates.
Hamid Abd-Al-Jabbar, right, helps distribute masks in Milwaukee during the pandemic-impacted April 2020 elections. After spending years in prison, Abd-Al-Jabbar found a calling as a peace activist. (Courtesy of City of Milwaukee Office of Violence Prevention)
Milwaukee trend accelerates
The trend in Milwaukee County has only accelerated since 2022, the last year of the Times and Banner analysis, even as the county’s total drug deaths decline, Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch found.
Drugs killed 74 of the county’s older Black men in 2024. The group made up 17.3% of all drug deaths — up from 16.2% in 2023 and 14.1% the previous year, medical examiner data shows.
Abd-Al-Jabbar’s story shares similarities with many of those men. Most used cocaine that was cut with stronger fentanyl — the faster-acting drug has fueled the national opioid epidemic. Most had a history of incarceration.
Boxes of Narcan are stored in the Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., office, Jan. 23, 2025, in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Marc Levine, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researcher, concluded in 2020 that “Black Milwaukee is generally worse off today than it was 40 or 50 years ago” when considering dozens of quality of life indicators.
Meanwhile, limited options and lingering stigma prevent a generation of Black men from accessing drug treatment, local experts told Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch.
“Black men experience higher rates of community violence, are often untreated for mental health issues and experience greater levels of systemic racism than other groups,” said Lia Knox, a Milwaukee mental wellness consultant. “These all elevate their risk of incarceration, addiction and also death.”
A network of organizations providing comprehensive treatment offers hope, but these resources fall far short of meeting community needs.
A silent struggle
Smith and Abd-Al-Jabbar first started dating at 14, and they had a child together at 16. But as their relationship blossomed, Smith said, Abd-Al-Jabbar silently struggled with what she suspects was an undiagnosed mental health illness linked to childhood trauma.
“A lot of the bad behaviors he had were learned behaviors,” Smith said.
Desilynn Smith, executive director of Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., wears a bracelet bearing the fingerprint of her late husband Hamid Abd-Al-Jabbar at Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., in Milwaukee. “I keep that with me at all times,” Smith says. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Abd-Al-Jabbar became suicidal as a teen and began robbing drug dealers.
When he entered prison, Abd-Al-Jabbar read and wrote at a fifth grade level and coped like a 10-year-old, Smith said. By age 21, she said, he’d already spent two years in solitary confinement. But he had the resolve to change. He began to read voraciously and converted to Islam.
He was released from prison after 11 years, but returned multiple times before leaving for good in 2018. Smith and Abd-Al-Jabbar married, and he started earning praise for preventing bloodshed as a violence interrupter.
Still, he struggled under the pressures of his new calling. The work added weight to the trauma he carried into and out of prison. His mental health only worsened, Smith said, and he turned back to drugs as a coping mechanism.
“The main thing he learned in prison was how to survive,” she said.
Most men lost were formerly incarcerated
At least half of Milwaukee’s older Black men lost to drugs in 2024 served time in state prison, Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch found by cross-referencing Department of Corrections and medical examiner records. More than a dozen other men on that list interacted with the criminal justice system in some way. Some served time in jail. For others, full records weren’t available.
Most of the men left prison decades or years before they died. But three died within about a year of their release. A 55-year-old North Side man died just 22 days after release.
In Wisconsin, DOC officials and prisoners say drugs are routinely entering prisons, putting prisoners and staff at risk and increasing challenges for people facing addiction.
Thousands wait for treatment in prison
The DOC as of last December enrolled 815 people in substance abuse treatment programs, but its waitlist for such services was far higher: more than 11,700.
“You don’t really get the treatment you need in prison,” said Randy Mack, a 66-year-old Black man who served time in Wisconsin’s Columbia, Fox Lake, Green Bay and Kettle Moraine correctional institutions.
Randy Mack, a resident of Serenity Inns, talks with Ken Ginlack, executive director, in the facility’s library on Dec. 19, 2024. Expanding on its original outpatient treatment center on Milwaukee’s North Side, Serenity Inns also runs a residential treatment facility and a transitional living program and opened a drop-in clinic in January. (Andy Manis for Wisconsin Watch)
Leaving prison can be a particularly vulnerable time for relapse, Mack said. Some men manage to stop using drugs while incarcerated. They think they are safe, only to struggle when they leave.
“You get back out on the streets and you see the same people and fall into the same traps,” Mack said.
Knox, the wellness consultant, agrees. After being disconnected from their communities, many men, especially older ones, leave prison feeling isolated and unable to ask for help. They turn to drugs.
“Now with the opioids, they’re overdosing and dying more often,” she said.
Access to the program is uneven across the state. Corrections officials have sought to expand it using settlement money from national opioids litigation. In its latest two-year budget request the department set a goal for hiring more vendors to administer the program.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers plans to release his full budget proposal next month. His past proposals have sought millions of dollars for treatment and other rehabilitation programs. The Republican-controlled Legislature has rejected or reduced funding in most cases.
Mack said he received some help while in prison, but it wasn’t intense enough to make a breakthrough. Now he’s getting more holistic treatment from Serenity Inns, a North Side recovery program for men.
Executive Director Kenneth Ginlack said the organization helps men through up to 20 hours of mental health and substance use treatment each week.
What’s key, Ginlack said, is that most of his staff, including himself, are in recovery.
“We understand them not just from a recovery standpoint, but we were able to go back to our own experiences and talk to them about that,” he said. “That’s how we build trust in the community.”
Fentanyl catches cocaine users unaware
Many of the older men dying were longtime users of stimulants, like crack cocaine, Ginlack said, adding they had “no idea that the stimulants are cut with fentanyl.”
They don’t feel the need to use test strips to check for fentanyl or carry Narcan to reverse the effects of opioid poisoning, he said.
A group discussion is shown at Serenity Inns in Milwaukee on Dec. 19, 2024. (Andy Manis for Wisconsin Watch)
Last year, 84% of older Black men killed by drugs had cocaine in their system, and 61% had fentanyl, Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch found. More than half ingested both drugs.
Months after relapsing, Alfred Carter, 61, decided he was ready to kick his cocaine habit.
When he showed up to a Milwaukee detox center in October, he was shocked to learn he had fentanyl in his system.
“What made it so bad is that I hear all the stories about people putting fentanyl in cocaine, but I said not my people,” Carter said. “It puts a healthy fear in my life, because at any time I can overdose — not even knowing that I’m taking it.”
Awareness is slowly increasing, Ginlack said, as more men in his program share stories about losing loved ones.
Milwaukee’s need outpaces resources
Expanding on its original outpatient treatment center on West Brown Street, Serenity Inns now also runs a residential treatment facility and a transitional living program and opened a drop-in clinic in January.
Still, those don’t come close to meeting demands for its services.
“We’re the only treatment center in Milwaukee County that takes people without insurance, so a lot of other centers send people our way,” said Ginlack, who said the county typically runs about 200 beds short of meeting demand.
“My biggest fear is someone calls for that bed and the next day they have a fatal overdose because one wasn’t available.”
‘I don’t want to lose hope’
Carter and Mack each intend to complete their programs soon. It’s Mack’s fourth time in treatment and his second stint at Serenity Inns. This time, he expects to succeed. He wants to move into Serenity Inns’ apartment building — continuing his recovery and working toward becoming a drug counselor.
“My thinking pattern has changed,” Mack said. “I’m going to use the tools we learned in treatment and avoid high-risk situations.”
Butterfly stickers adorn the windows of Desilynn Smith’s office at Milwaukee’s Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., on Jan. 23, 2025. They remind her of her late mother. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Carter wants to restore his life to what it was before. He spent years as a carpenter before his life unraveled and he ended up in prison. He knows he can’t take that life back if he returns to drugs.
“I have to be able to say no and not get high. It doesn’t do me any good, and it could kill me,” he said. “I have to associate myself with being clean. I don’t want to lose hope.”
As Smith reflects on her partner’s life and death, she recognizes his journey taught her plenty, too. “I was hit hard with the reality that I was too embarrassed to ask for help for my husband and best friend,” she said. “I shouldn’t have had that fear.”
Newly elected Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern has made it a priority to listen to residents on the north and south sides of Milwaukee.
“What I have heard loudly and clearly is everyone wants to feel safe, and everyone wants that safety in their daily lives, and they want that for their children,” Lovern said.
With nearly 30 years of experience as a prosecutor, he’s recognized for his collaborative approach to systemic issues.
Lovern focuses on collaborations outside his office, in part, because he believes these collaborations are necessary to sustainably reduce violence and increase public safety in Milwaukee.
“I just feel like we need to better connect into one another and develop our own system of public safety – one that is really framed up as community development, economic development, educational development and the public safety comes with that,” he said.
Among Milwaukee’s large network of criminal justice advocates, many say they feel heard by Lovern.
“Kent has always been thoughtful and responsive to me,” said Emilio De Torre, executive director of Milwaukee Turners, which advocates for various criminal justice initiatives as well as those impacted by the criminal justice system.
Working together
“We can’t unring the bell of a crime, right? If somebody commits a crime, like myself, they need to be prosecuted,” said Adam Procell, who coordinates the monthly resource fair Home to Stay, for formerly incarcerated individuals reentering society. “But after that time period, when somebody gets out, he (Lovern) also understands that if we don’t provide the person with an opportunity to lead an optimal lifestyle, they’re going to have to prosecute them again for another crime.”
For Lovern, people reentering have a unique ability to lead others away from crime.
“People returning back to communities, looking to be proactive members of their community, looking for ways to help mentor young people and help instruct young people about the pitfalls and the mistakes they made – that’s a very powerful group,” he said.
Milwaukee County has the largest population of people on parole, probation or extended supervision in the state. At the end of October, nearly 13,000 people were under supervision, state correctional data show.
“On the whole, I have heard more interest in reentry across the board … than I have heard at any time in my career,” Lovern said.
Causes of crime
Lovern’s support of reentry is consistent with an overall preventive approach to crime.
He cites the relationship between drug addiction and crime as a good example.
“We’ve had a strong approach to this for some time because right after John (Chisholm) was elected, 18 years ago, we created an early intervention unit, and that was immediately designed to offer opportunities for people to work through a criminal charge … and we’ve seen a lot of success with that.”
WISDOM, a statewide faith-based organization, wants Lovern to expand on this philosophy.
“There’s a lot of room for certainly expanding treatment alternatives to incarceration for people living with mental illness and with addiction issues, and there are many opportunities to divert more people from the system. I’m definitely optimistic that those types of programs will continue and will expand,” said Mark Rice, coordinator of WISDOM’s Wisconsin Transformational Justice Campaign.
Lovern is proud of Milwaukee’s mental health courts, which address cases involving mental health concerns, including assessments of competence and insanity pleas.
An intermediate goal the DA’s office is close to achieving, he said, is increasing the number of cases handled in these courts to 30 cases on an ongoing basis, compared to 10 cases previously.
“Somebody might come first through the police department or to the DA’s office, and we may be saying, ‘Look, this person isn’t really committing criminal behavior – the bigger concern here is the mental health piece,’” said Lovern.
But certain violent crimes have increased since 2022, including robberies and carjackings.
“There’s no question that there is additional work that needs to be done to drive down the level of violent crime we see in this community,” Lovern said.
The problem, he added, is not evenly spread throughout the city.
“Everyone’s concerned about crime everywhere, but we know where the concentrations of violent crime exist,” said Lovern, adding that many residents in these neighborhoods tell him that “a strong response” to crime is needed and that these “neighborhoods need to be valued.”
Limits of the office
Rice, of WISDOM, does not want fairness and justice to be lost, however.
“We still in Wisconsin incarcerate Black people at one of the highest rates in the nation,” he said. “There’s a lot of discretion up front when plea bargains are reached in terms of who gets diverted from the system and who goes in.”
Rice and others also worry about the systemic limitations of the DA’s office to address such problems.
“Jobs like the DA’s office, mayor’s office, police chief tend to be very difficult, with unforeseen pressures and inherent flaws in how they’ve been systemized over the years,” said De Torre, of Milwaukee Turners. “The real test is how a person acts and what they do within a flawed system.”
Vacancies for community corrections staff in Milwaukee County, including probation and parole officers, have nearly tripled since before the pandemic, Wisconsin Department of Corrections data shows.
Some people are worried that fewer officers will make it harder to stabilize their lives after incarceration.
“With fewer agents, it can affect the way individuals can participate in programs while in the community and … in the right path to have sustained and continued success,” said Wilfredo Diaz, who is incarcerated at Stanley Correctional Institution.
Gaps in essential services
“The biggest effect is less service to people who need it the most,” said Peggy West-Schroder, former executive director of FREE, a statewide organization that addresses the needs of women and girls who are incarcerated, formerly incarcerated or otherwise affected by the criminal justice system.
Community corrections staff monitor people on parole, probation and extended supervision – with the goal of enhancing public safety and reducing the likelihood the person will reoffend, according to the Department of Corrections.
Those under supervision are supposed to be monitored for compliance with standard supervision rules concerning their activities and whereabouts. Depending on the type of conviction, such as sex crimes, there are additional supervision rules.
This is consistent with the needs of people who are leaving incarceration. Housing and employment are two of the most common needs among those who are reentering, said Conor Williams, who serves as facilitator of the Milwaukee Reentry Council.
Another major need for people post-incarceration is substance abuse treatment, and community corrections staff can help connect people to such resources as well.
According to a report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, 72% of people on supervision in Wisconsin in 2022 had a “substantial need” for some kind of substance abuse treatment.
Unfilled positions
Around March 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage of vacancies among security staff and correctional officers inside prisons began to increase, according to data from the Department of Corrections.
While staffing levels for security positions within prisons have rebounded since the pandemic, the shortage of community-based staff continues.
At the start of the pandemic, the percentage of unfilled community corrections staff serving Milwaukee County was just over 11%, according to Department of Corrections data. By the end of October, it shot up to more than 29% – the highest of any other correctional region in the state, DOC data also shows.
Milwaukee’s adult probation and parole office is located at 1300 N. 7th St., Suite 300. Since the pandemic, vacancies among community corrections staff, which includes probation and parole officers, have nearly tripled. (Devin Blake / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
At the same time, the county has the highest number of individuals who require supervision, noted Rep. Darrin Madison, D-Milwaukee, who serves on the state’s Assembly Committee on Corrections.
At the end of August, there were just about 13,000 individuals in the county who were under some form of supervision, correctional data also shows.
The Department of Corrections did not respond to several requests for comment about vacancy rates among community corrections staff.
Unmet needs
“I think a lot of people are just falling through the cracks, honestly,” said Juliann Bliefnick, administrative coordinator for FREE, who also is under supervision.
Bliefnick moved to a different part of Wisconsin in 2018 because she was not able to get her needs met in Milwaukee, she said.
The continued rise in unfilled community corrections positions has made the situation worse, Bliefnick said.
“I know people who have been on probation for three years and had seven different agents in those three years,” she said. “You can’t even get anything done when there’s that much turnover.”
West-Schroder and Bliefnick said there is a much higher risk of people being reincarcerated when they do not get the support they need.
Over 30% of people released from prison in 2020 were reincarcerated in Wisconsin within three years of release, according to publicly available correctional data.
Solutions
Lawmakers and advocates are offering their ideas for attracting more supervision staff.
“We must raise the wages and restore labor rights of community corrections staff in order to fill positions and retain workers for longer,” said Madison.
For the latest state budget, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers requested more money to do just this.
In October 2023, base pay for new probation and parole staff went from $21.21 to $22.06 per hour. In June, it increased again, to $22.51 per hour.
So far, the pay changes have not resulted in a decrease in the number of unfilled community corrections positions.
West-Schroder has a different idea.
“We have talked to DOC (Department of Corrections) several times about implementing in-house peer support services, understanding that officers can’t take on huge caseloads while providing these resources,” she said. “Let people who have been in this position before provide support … .”
The reopening of the Social Development Commission, after months of disruption, has sparked mixed reactions from elected officials.
While some welcome its return, others anticipate challenges ahead, with Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson calling for greater transparency from the agency.
The Social Development Commission, or SDC, reopened its main office at 1730 W. North Ave. earlier this month. It’s now focusing on resuming its Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, career services, child care and housing programs.
The agency provided programs and services that helped Milwaukee County residents living in poverty before it stopped services and laid off employees in late April because of its inability to meet payroll and other financial concerns.
Mayor calls for more transparency
At the SDC board’s meeting where leadership announced plans to reopen, Jackie Q. Carter, the board’s commissioner appointed by the mayor, voted against executive board nominations and asked for more community involvement, a formalized process and public transparency in the board’s decisions.
“The vote accurately reflected the mayor’s concerns about the lack of transparency in the latest moves,” said Jeff Fleming, a spokesperson for Johnson.
The mayor would like SDC to follow requirements of Wisconsin open meetings law, which includes publicly posting notice of its board meetings and providing agendas with information regarding the matters of discussion, Fleming said.
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson would like to see more transparency from the Social Development Commission’s board. (Sue Vliet / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service file photo)
Since SDC suspended operations, the board has only been meeting part of the law’s notice requirements. SDC has notified individuals and members of the press of upcoming meetings, but it has not been posting meeting notices in public places or online.
“The mayor is hopeful SDC will, once again, be a leading provider of help to low-income residents of the region,” Fleming said. “It is essential that SDC regain trust before it can resume the important work it previously undertook. The services are needed, and well-run organizations are key to serving those who deserve assistance.”
Other officials weigh in
Before the reopening announcement in November, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said in an interview that the county wants to continue working with the Social Development Commission.
He said many of the services SDC provided have been picked up by other agencies, and his office has not received any constituent calls related to service issues.
“But we also know that as a CAP (community action program) agency, there are dollars that are probably on the table at the state and federal level that we haven’t been able to take advantage of because they aren’t open,” Crowley said.
Following the reopening announcement, Jonathan Fera, the communications director for the county executive’s office, said the state and the federal Office of Community Services are working with SDC to determine how to move forward, and Crowley is ready to collaborate with them when needed.
“It’s encouraging that people are back at the table working on a solution to the challenges that have impacted public services provided by SDC,” Fera said.
Another official interested in SDC restarting services is U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore.
When SDC abruptly shuttered in April, Moore wrote letters to SDC’s board and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, calling for a federal investigation.
“The Social Development Commission’s closure was a loss that was deeply felt in the community,” Moore said. “While I am grateful that the Social Development Commission is resuming some of its services, I know it still faces many challenges ahead.”
County Supervisor Priscilla E. Coggs-Jones, who represents the 13th District on Milwaukee’s Near North Side and is the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors’ second vice chair, called the reopening a “critical step toward restoring vital services for Milwaukee County residents.”
“The SDC has been a cornerstone of community support for years, and its relaunch reaffirms our commitment to uplifting people in need,” she said.
State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, who represents the 6th Senate District, said the reopening is great news for Milwaukee County.
“The commission’s ability to provide housing assistance and child care food services has been a lifeline for families who need a little support,” Johnson said. “I’m glad to have them back in our community, and I encourage those who need help to take advantage of their services.”
Devin Blake, PrincessSafiya Byers and Edgar Mendez contributed reporting to this story.
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