Bice: Clarke calls for prosecution of critic
If you're going to call on Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. to resign, you best be prepared for some serious blowback.
Like having the sheriff call you an "idiot" and request that you be prosecuted.
On Thursday, Supervisor Supreme Moore Omokunde issued a news release urging the sheriff to resign immediately in the wake of four deaths at the Milwaukee County Jail since April.
"Something is terribly wrong at the Milwaukee County Jail, and Sheriff David Clarke needs to resign before more people die," Omokundesaid in a news release. "The simple fact that four deaths have occurred in a six-month period under his watch demonstrates that Sheriff David Clarke is unfit to manage the Milwaukee County Jail."
Omokunde accused the sheriff of failing to establish a culture of professionalism, to call for independent investigations and to discipline his staff over the deaths.
The statement comes after U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, Omokunde's mother, ripped Clarke in an interview with the Huffington Post a couple weeks ago.
Clarke, who is under consideration for a cabinet-level post in President-elect Donald Trump's administration, initially responded to Omokunde's remarks by issuing a statement making fun of the County Board member's name. The supervisor had previously gone by the name Supreme Solar Allah.
"Supervisor who?" Clarke asked. "That sounds like some character in a science fiction comic book, and he's upset that I helped Donald J. Trump get elected POTUS.”
Medical examiner 'threatened' by Clarke over jail deaths
On Friday, the sheriff upped his criticism of Omokunde on Facebook.
First, Clarke complained that the Journal Sentinel didn't mention that Omokunde was one of four Democratic staffers who pleaded guilty to misdemeanors for slashing tires on 25 vans hours before Republican Party officials were to use them to drive voters to the polls in 2004. Omokunde was sentenced to four months in jail and fined $1,000 for his role in the much-publicized caper.
The old Spivak & Bice column was the first to report Omokunde's involvement in the case.
Then Clarke calls on the feds to reopen the case and prosecute it as a civil rights violation. In doing so, the sheriff dismissively called Omokunde a "goof," a "cartoon character," an "idiot" and Supreme "Solar System" Moore.
"This was a voting rights violation that should have been prosecuted in federal court and he should have been sent to federal prison. If he had been a Ku Klux Klansman, he would have been. There was no equal justice under law. This was low-balled because of who his mommy is," Clarke writes on the taxpayer-funded Facebook page for the Sheriff's Office.
"The United States Department of Justice should reopen this civil rights violation, prosecute and send this idiot to federal prison so justice can be served."
Milwaukee County to audit medical care in jails after 4 deaths
Like that's going to happen.
Omokunde accused the sheriff of resorting to "childish jokes and name-calling" to deflect attention from what is going on at the County Jail.
"Four deaths in six months in David Clarke's jail is no joke," Omokunde said. "Whatever these people did to end up the County jail, it wasn't worthy of a death sentence.
Of course, Clarke has nothing to say about the problems at the County Jail in his Facebook statement.
Milwaukee County auditors announced this week that they have started a wide-ranging investigation into medical care at the county's two jails, where four people have died in recent months and a court-appointed monitor found numerous problems related to inmate treatment.
All four deaths at Clarke's jail remain under investigation. The April death of Terrill Thomas, 38, was determined to be caused by profound dehydration, and the Medical Examiner's Office deemed the manner of death as "homicide."
Jail monitor: Mistakes, poor monitoring before 3 inmate deaths
SPECIAL REPORT: Deaths in detention
Brian Peterson, Milwaukee County chief medical examiner, said Thursday that the sheriff called him on Oct. 28 and "verbally pummeled" and "threatened" him over information that Peterson's office made public regarding the deaths of two inmates at the jail earlier this year. Peterson said his office followed appropriate protocol in the cases cited by the sheriff.
Even so, Clarke said he would be contacting the state Medical Examining Board to have Peterson sanctioned or his license revoked.
"I haven't been talked to like that since I was probably 5," said Peterson, who documented the conversation in a lengthy email. Clarke declined to comment on the conversation or to provide a tape recording he said he made of the talk.
Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 224-2135 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @ DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.