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mpd misconduct mpd milwaukee police department milwaukee wi
The news is filled up with stories of abuse of power by police. The theme is usually the same though. White police abusing black people; sometimes it’s the other way around. I moved into a house on the south side of Milwaukee in 2001. Almost immediately I was set upon by the neighborhood thugs many of whom were quite young and non white. I could write a book about all the transgressions I endured. This went on until 2007 when it got worse. The tenants who lived next door moved out after finding a bullet hole in one of their kid’s bedroom walls. They were replaced several months later by a woman named Maria Rodriguez. Neighbor from hell barely begins to describe her and her kids and friends. After Rodriguez and her friends threatened me several times, I contacted the owner of the property, Tyna Rule by phone. Nothing changed, sent her a letter and still nothing.
About that time I received a flyer from a local community group, the Southside Organizing Committee or SOC. It asked for residents to report nuisance rental properties so I reported Rodriguez and Rule. It promised confidentiality. I completed the form and mailed it back to the SOC. Days later, Milwaukee police officer Jesus Gloria showed up at my house. He said he was there about the form I had returned to the SOC and then he arrested me. The charge was B&Z violations. When I asked what B&Z meant, Gloria said he didn’t know but claimed the warrant was on file for two years. As he was arresting me, Gloria told me not to complain about Rule or Rodriguez ever again. I was taken to a precinct jail and then sent to the Milwaukee County jail. It took about 10 hours to find out why I was arrested. The charge was building and zone violations on a house that I used to own.
I had to wait until the next day to see a court commissioner and get released. On my way out of jail I found a ticket for disorderly conduct issued to me by Officer Gloria mixed in with my belongings. He wrote that I caused a disturbance on a public street by yelling at Rule in front of witnesses. It wasn’t true but Gloria had back dated the ticket 35 days which made it impossible to defend against. A couple days later I was served with a restraining order filed against me by Rule. I couldn’t remember what Rule looked like as I had only talked to her once in person some five years earlier but she told the court commissioner Dean Zemel that I had harassed her for “years and years and years and years”. She put her husband Terry on the witness stand but he finally admitted to Zemel that he never saw me do or heard me say anything to his wife. The whole case was a fraud but the accusation was too ambiguous to defend against.
Zemel issued a restraining order against me for two years. It got scary and strange at the same time. The neighborhood was suddenly swarming with marked and unmarked Milwaukee police and Milwaukee county sheriff squads all driving slow past my house. Some even parked so they could stare at my house. Rule had a lawyer in Brookfield send two letters to my house addressed to a “Mr. Green”. I have no idea who “Mr. Green” was. I wonder if Rule knew who I was. The letters threatened Mr. Green with legal action but didn’t say what legal action they would take. I sold my house and moved. I appealed the restraining order to Milwaukee county circuit court after I moved. Rule showed up at the appeal hearing with a Milwaukee policeman for protection! He wasn’t a regular cop either, he had gold shoulder bars. The hearing was held in front of Judge Timothy Dugan.
Rule told Dugan that she and I were neighbors and that I was harassing her as of that very day! This was over a month after I had moved to West Allis and we were never neighbors to begin with! She also rattled off a list of her connections in the local government. Two of them were from the Community Prosecutor Unit that was assigned to the SOC. One was Grant Huebner and the other was someone named Paulina. Another was a Captain Meyers from the police department. Rule said she was on the board of directors of the SOC. Officer Gloria was the community liaison to the group from the Milwaukee police. Rule and her coworkers had taken the information I had provided in confidence and used it against me. What I had done in effect was complain to Rule about her rental property and tenants on a form that her group had created and sent me (awkward).
She even knew judge Dugan from another case. I tried to tell Dugan I had moved but he didn’t believe me. Finally Dugan told me I was despicable for harassing Rule and then dismissed the restraining order on grounds of free speech. I actually had lawyers representing me. The first was Brad Christensen. He showed up late to the restraining order hearing. I fired him and the Wisconsin state bar made him give me back half the money I paid him. The next lawyer was Paul Ruby. I told him to set a hearing for the disorderly conduct ticket. Instead he went and pleaded no contest even though Rule couldn’t recall a single incident of harassment when she was under oath. When we went to the hearing for the building code violations Ruby told me I had to plead no contest. This was despite the fact that I didn’t own the house anymore and it didn’t have any building code violations and someone else lived there.
During the hearing Ruby was terrified. His whole body was trembling. The judge, Mosley laughed as he fined me $1100.00. I had lost several thousand dollars over this episode. I had gotten arrested, jailed, tried, fined and convicted of building code violations that didn’t exist on a house that I didn’t own. The whole thing was a hoax and Rule and Gloria got away with it. Between the two of them and their coworkers I estimate they committed about a half dozen felonies. If that wasn’t bad enough, a strange thing happened about a year later. I went to a car repair shop to get a tire fixed. Rule and Gloria were in the waiting room. They were seated next to each other. Gloria was rubbing up against Rule. That piqued my curiosity. I sent information requests to the police, sheriff, municipal court and the neighborhood services department. I wanted to see the warrant information that Gloria claimed was on file for two years.
However the only information I was able to get was an old computer print out and a few scraps of paper. There was no warrant information. There was no case at all! The only person that seemed to know anything about the warrant was Gloria, the same guy trying to hump Rule in the waiting room at the car repair place. In other words there was no warrant. Eventually the court case information about me was deleted from the municipal court website. The only thing I could think of was federal court. I submitted a complaint to the federal court house with a check for $350.00. I was hoping to get my fine money back at least. Judge Stadtmueller waited until my check cleared and then dismissed my case without a hearing calling it ludicrous. That surprised me. When gays and lesbians want to get married these federal judges can’t get on their knees or grab their ankles fast enough.
When minorities and women want to file discrimination complaints the court house door is always open. In the end it was a crooked cop named Jesus that scared me out of the hood. If I understand my Spanish correctly his name means glory to Jesus. Justice system, that’s a contradiction in terms. All the checks and balances went right out the window. It still amazes me how these cases sailed threw the system without any questioning at all. The people who were supposed to stop cases like these from moving forward used their positions to stick to me instead. I don’t know how many strings or zippers Rule had to pull on. Where ever Harold Brier is I bet he’s laughing. These people are still around. I happened to see Rule while I was at Froedtert for a doctor’s appointment last year. She looked at me as I walked past her in the waiting room.
She SMILED at me like she was happy to see me. This, the same person who said I harassed her for “years and years and years and years”. This same woman who had a cop in the court room for protection from ME smiled from ear to ear. Is she pure evil or just delusional? She belongs to another community group according to an article I read. Gloria is still on the force. Huebner was on TV recently working as a prosecutor. The SOC is still in business. These community groups are dangerous. They take in private and public money. They operate like quasi government agencies but without the oversight or accountability. They don’t have anything to lose. I wouldn’t put anything past them.