Clarke And Walker Are On The Same Page

by capper

Sheriff David Clarke is making the news again. And once again, he is not doing it for anything constructive, by, oh, I don't know, doing his job and fighting crime.

No this time we have two stories. One story shows how the deputies union is seeking $50,000 from Milwaukee County for legal costs in getting a court ruling that Clarke cannot force his religious views on his deputies. Oh well, when one takes in all the other lawsuits, 50 grand is just a drop in the bucket for Clarke.

The other story is a follow up on an inmate that escaped from the county jail. The story was originally reported a few days ago. Clarke blamed the escape on the inmate changing his wristband with another inmate. He said that this is the oldest trick in the corrections system and called his staff "dumb" for falling for it and threatened their jobs.

Today, we see that there was an extra step in jail security that would have prevented this from happening. The inmate who is to be released first needs to have his identity confirmed by checking his fingerprints before his release. However, the fingerprint machine is broken. In fact, according to the union, it has been broken for about a year. Even Clarke's spokesperson confirms that it is broken.

In other words, Clarke willfully fails to give the deputies and the correction officers working at the jail the equipment they need to perform their jobs, and then blames them for not being able to do their jobs. He obviously took this page from Walker's playbook. Walker has already blamed several corrections officers and a corrections manager for not being able to do their jobs, even though he would not give them the necessary equipment or manpower to do so.

Do these guys really think it is cheaper to fight and lose all these lawsuits and hearings, rather than just do the right thing in the first place? The bad news is we can't do anything about Clarke, yet. The good news is that we can send him a message by getting rid of Walker. Please vote for Lena Taylor, so we can stop hearing these stories of incompetency from our county leaders.