This can’t happen soon enough.
Officials in the President Donald Trump administration are considering Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. for a job with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Clarke is to be appointed as assistant secretary at the department’s Office of Partnership and Engagement where he would coordinate outreach to state and local law enforcement agencies, Politico, an online news company, reported Friday. The position of assistant secretary does not require Senate confirmation.
On Friday, sources confirmed that news of the possible appointment is coming out now because Trump officials recently completed their background check of the sheriff. Trump staffers are a few steps away from making the appointment. One source said it could take more than a month to finish the process.
Considering what an atrocious (and deadly) Sheriff David Clarke has been, Milwaukee County will be better off with him elsewhere.
Good riddance, I say.
We agree on the need for him to move on out. I am reminded that when FDR offered LBJ the head of REA the then congressman understood that he was not independent of oversight and refused the position–wanting higher office and power. It will be interesting it Clarke takes the lower hanging fruit and misses the larger game he could still play. I detest this man so wish him long gone but will be watching to see how this plays out.
Trump’s officials must not have done much of any background check, as this appointment comes in the midst of our Milwaukee DA’s inquest into the April 2016 death of Terrill Thomas in Sheriff David Clarke’s Milwaukee County Jail.
Last September the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s office ruled the Thomas dehydration death a homicide, and the DA’s investigation will be the basis for a jury decision to press charges on the Milwaukee jailers. (see http://www.onenewspage.com/n/US/75e71wh95/Milwaukee-Prosecutors-Launch-Investigation-Into-Inmate-Death.htm)
Let’s see that justice is served here in Milwaukee, before Mr. Clarke has any chance to go to Washington.