I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I’m far from being a fan of Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. Putting aside the fact that he’s a conservative masquerading as a Democrat for political expediency, I’ve never been impressed with Sheriff Clarke as a crime fighter. His GRIP program proved to be woefully ineffective before being ended, and he’s famous (or infamous) for his mismanagement of the Milwaukee County Jail.
So imagine my surprise when as I was surfing the intertubes I came across a story about how “helpful” Sheriff Clarke was to a drunken, stranded motorist back in February of this year:
On a frigid and snowy Sunday afternoon in February, Brian Allen drove his car off the Good Hope Road entrance ramp to Highway 41/45 and into a nearby snow bank.
It looked, at first glance, like a run-of-the-mill winter accident.
At least that’s the way Sheriff David Clarke Jr. treated it.
But he couldn’t have been more wrong.
Clarke, the first cop at the scene, instantly moved into helper mode. First, he tried to push and then pull Allen’s vehicle out of the snow bank. But even with the help of another motorist, Clarke couldn’t get Allen and his Ford Taurus back on the road.
That’s when the second officer arrived.
Deputy Sandra Santoro did what any good cop should have done from the start.
Santoro ran a check on the driver and found that his license was suspended. She then sized up Allen, noticing his eyes were bloodshot and glassy and that he reeked of alcohol. Visible inside his car were two empty beer bottles, one empty beer can and an open beer can, still three-quarters full.
“I’m not gonna lie to you,” Allen told Santoro, according to her police report. “I was drinking. I had a few beers. I knew I was busted when you guys came.
“I almost got away with it.”
As it turned out, Allen’s blood-alcohol content was more than twice the legal limit. The 43-year-old driver later pleaded no contest to drunken driving, agreeing to pay a $764 fine.
Putting aside the fact that Sheriff Clarke attempted to help get an obviously drunk driver back onto the roads – where he could potentially kill someone – I’m more than a little disturbed by Sheriff Clarke’s behavior after the incident:
In response to the open records query, Clarke’s office released the reports by the two deputies and other documents related to Allen’s arrest. Absent from the material, however, is any written report by Clarke on the incident.
Since he was the first officer at the scene, shouldn’t the twice-elected Democratic sheriff have filed a report?
“You would think so,” said Felber, the union boss.
But that would have meant the sheriff would have put in writing how he tried to help a drunken driver get back on the highway.
Considering the tough stand Sheriff Clarke has taken against drunk driving, shouldn’t he be practicing what he preaches when it comes to doing his job properly? After all, what kind of message does it send to folks when Milwaukee County’s “top cop” is trying to assist drunk drivers get back onto our roads?
What’s more, how can anyone be certain this is the first time Sheriff Clarke’s been in a situation where he’s helped a drunken motorist get back onto the road?
H/T to capper over at Cognitive Dissidence.
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