Even the Milwaukee County district attorney, an elected Democrat, is questioning how his office could release Darrell Brooks Jr. on low bail. A 39-year-old with a 22-year criminal history (that we know about). Only two days before Sunday’s (11-21-21) slaughter at Waukesha’s Christmas parade, Brooks was released on $1,000 cash bail for (among other things) running over the mother of his love child with his now-infamous red SUV.
The carnage in Waukesha is staggering. Five dead, including four from the Dancing Grannies troupe; nine children in critical condition among the 48 injured. All because this chronic criminal was fleeing another crime and didn’t care who he hurt. (Was also a registered sex offender and bail jumper in Nevada.)
Waukesha could well be the tipping point that puts an end to squishy prosecutors and sob-story judges who grant low bail, even signature bond, to repeat offenders.
Like that 18-year old caught with loaded firearm at Verona high school 11-17-21. Two days later, a Dane County judge lets Tavion J. Flowers loose on a signature bond and prohibits him from possessing any weapons. Except … except … except … “At the time of his arrest, Flowers was already on a signature bond for a felony theft charge issued in October, which also barred him from possessing any weapons.”
Or Katoine Richardson, age 19. Spotted on State Street 10-10-21. A police officer was shot by friendly fire in the struggle to arrest him for violating curfew imposed after a previous case. Sure enough, Richardson (it is charged) was illegally carrying! Among the raft of charges he has accumulated in the last two years are armed burglary, theft, receipt of stolen property, riding in a stolen car, criminal damage to property — and three felony and one misdemeanor bail jumping. All of the cases are still open!
“As cases accumulated, Richardson, who was originally free on signature bonds, was jailed on $1,350 bail. He posted that in late March and was released from custody.” (Read & Weep!)
Or Andre Miller, the 21-year-old hard case who was arrested for dealing crack cocaine and heroin and for car jacking. Carried a 9 mm. handgun with an extended magazine, illegally modified to be sweep the streets with one squeeze of the trigger. The WI State Journal captured the frustration of Town of Madison Police Chief Scott Gregory: “Signature bonds apparently do nothing to endure the defendant follows the court’s orders. It is my hope a large cash bail is set for Miller to protect our community.” Because Andre M. Miller Jr. blew bail six (6) times.
The Wall Street Journal warns:
Bail reform has been a leading cause of the progressive left in recent years, and Democratic prosecutors have often gone along. More weekends like this one, and the backlash against lax prosecutors and misguided laws will build as a political issue.
Republican state Rep. Cindi Duchow is introducing a constitutional amendment to allow judges to consider a defendant’s danger to the community when setting bail in addition to assuring their court appearance.
A full accounting!
Blaska Policy Werkes calls on Dane County Clerk of Courts Carlo Esqueda to divulge:
- How many signature bonds and/or bonds of $1,000 or less have been assessed in felony cases in the last 12 months?
- How does that compare to five years ago?
- How many defendants have more than one signature bond or bonds of less than $1,000?
- How many of those have gone on to commit subsequent crimes?
- How many bail jumping charges have been issued this year compared to past years?
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Every high school riot, every stolen car, every statue toppled and business burned is an indictment of the Woke-progressive power structure.
The Defund the Police/Derail the Jail/Cops Out of School crowd have had their day. We can elect new county board and school board members next April 5. Five Dane County circuit court judges are also on the ballot. (“We’ve got to elect better judges.”)
Blaska Policy Werkes 
25 responses to “Why are we surprised when bad people keep doing bad things?”
Spot on, DB.
Anyone who cares to live in a peaceful society better get off the couch, sit up, and pay attention NOW.
When Dems excuse, enable, and encourage riots…. when they egg on the crazies chanting “Defund police” and “Derail the jail” and “let all Black people in the prisons out now”…. guess what, you are going to have Kyle R.’s (and Kayla’s too — even some white liberal women are quietly arming themselves) EVERYWHERE.
I am convinced neo-Marxist revolutionaries want to create as much chaos and disorder as possible in every city in America.
Has Alec Baldwin been arrested on $10mil bail? When is his nationally televised show trial?
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Judge Ellen Berz is a frequent offender of this low or no bail program. She needs to go!
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Agreed, although these are the judgeships on the ballot next April: Valerie L. Bailey-Rihn, Nicholas McNamara, John Hyland, Stephen Ehlke, and the worst of the lot — Everett Mitchell.
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And if Dave Mahoney was still sheriff, he’d endorse Mitchell, Berz, and every last one of them with a D after their name.
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The Madison-based FRFF must be no longer in business. I know an atheist advocacy organization would NEVER tolerate an active ordained Christian minister (Mitchell) in a judicial position in a courthouse they can see from their downtown HQ, right?
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Adam,
I’m surprised Progressives tolerate it, though I’m sure that his being soft on crime lessens the blow for them.
BTW, Al Sharpton is a minister and the left loves him.
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The problem with expecting a sea change (or even a ripple) in Madison politics-as-usual is that local progressives simply refuse to connect real-life events, no matter how horrific, with their ideology-driven worldview. There could be a dozen Waukeshas between now and next April and Madison voters would still elect the same judges, aldermen, supervisors, etc. When you’re blinded by ideology, reality has NO effect on your beliefs or behavior. Period. I’d be glad to wager a substantial sum that after April’s elections, the complexion of Madison’s political scene will have changed not one whit.
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Bingo, Gary.
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When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again
Do, don’t you want me to love you
I’m coming down fast but I’m miles above you
Tell me, tell me, tell me, come on tell me the answer
Well, you may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer
Helter skelter, helter skelter
Helter skelter
In his warped deranged mind, Charlie predicted the coming race war, albeit decades too soon.
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If you’re interested in reading a novelisitc account of Charlie’s predictions, check out “Love in the Ruins” (1971) by Walker Percy. A synopsis of the book on Wikipedia reads, “Over time, the U.S. has become progressively fragmented between left and right, black and white, as social trends of the 1960s run to their logical extremes. Society begins to come apart at the seams, and no one … seems to notice or [to] particularly care.” Sound familiar? At the heart of the book is a race war that sounds considerably more plausible today than it did when Percy imagined it 50 years ago.
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Excellent post. Your bottom line says it all.
“Waukesha could well be the tipping point that puts an end to squishy prosecutors and sob-story judges who grant low bail, even signature bond, to repeat offenders.”
You’d think.
Moderates may come around, but I’m not sure much is going to change the leftist mindset. I still see denial, silence, and talk about “root causes.”
Look at the recent fights at East. If anything was going to happen on the parents side like it has in Loudoun County, it would have. Instead, mothers are baking cookies. Parental involvement is a great thing, but these efforts won’t change what’s broken.
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I think of it more as hitting rock bottom than a tipping point. Like the addicts say, you have to hit rock bottom before you can turn things around. I have no confidence that Madison has reached their bottom.
It’s not encouraging when you consider how poorly leftist policies are actually performing, and how determined they are to go even farther. Boot the SRO’s without a safety plan. Result: More police calls and a school wide riot. Correction? Form and ad hoc committee, and make sure it “doesn’t look like a typical Madison committee,” which means it will have no straight white males (unless they have solid radical left credentials.) And no cops whatsoever, not even a gay, black, female cop. After all, this is what “re-imagining” is all about. Schools without those pesky arrests. By the way, how is that black/white arrest ration going right now? Remember, that was the reason for tossing the cops. So, how’s that going?
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Well when the Grannies get mowed down in cold blood along with young children that will be scarred for life. What will it take? Don’t forget Jill Karofsky who let a thug out on bail and then that night a small child was shot. Wgat did the white women of Wisco do? Voted her in to the Supreme Court.
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Go to OpenSecrets and you can see who donated to whom. While doing a search, I ran across a record of a former Madison POLICE captain who donated a few hundred bucks to her campaign.
Some in law enforcement, including here in Madison, seem to be soft on crime themselves.
Somewhat off topic, last year when the Madison police union took a no-confidence vote of the mayor, a good 5% of rank and file officers voted that they believed she was taking the city in the right direction.
Makes you wonder.
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Today’s “news”‘ report on WPR referred to the slaughter in Waukesha as an “incident” in which a red SUV caused the death of five and injuries to dozens. No mention whatsoever of the POS who was driving the vehicle and certainly no mention of his criminal background. Yes, lenient judges and woke prosecutors are the root of the problem, but they are consistently excused/covered for by the left-wing ideologues in the MSM. if the driver of the vehicle had been a white Trump voter, his image would be plastered everywhere and the media would be gleefully calling for every punishment the law allows (and then some).
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Public radio needs to be defunded. Leftist media is malicious & malignant on its own. We shouldn’t have to pay for it.
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Waukesha’s Police Chief Daniel Thompson ordered his police officers to kneel to BLM.
Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot!!! With racist behavior like that you needn’t ask,
“Why are we in this hand basket, and where are we headed?”, I know.
It’s “black privilege”?
When Lefty law enforcement goes light on crime bad things will continue to happen. Is justice served by letting a violent, career criminal with outstanding warrants and a 50-page rap sheet rapper loose with a paltry $1000 bail justified?
Is that some kind of Lefty restorative justice, racial justice, social justice? Have you ever noticed that “political justice,” … which bears the same relationship to justice as “social justice” does, that any modifier entirely negates the noun. But I digress.
DA John Chishom is calling for an investigation of himself and his office.
Law-abiding citizens don’t deserve the “racial justice” caused by DA John Chisholm:
.
.
.
Black people have indeed been the victims of oppression and genocide, but mostly by other blacks and their self-appointed caring custodians in the Democrat Party. Young black males can lead a long and productive life if they escape Planned Parenthood’s and the DNC’s “d & c.
Black lives DO matter, they just don’t matter much to the Democrat Party.
This is your legacy. Thank you, Emperor “Let Them Eat Hope” Urkel, the First. Before BHO came on the scene, America had put its ugliest aspect, racism, behind it. While racism was an ugly aspect of our history, it was not the defining aspect of our history. The fact that we overcame it is the defining aspect of our history. Yet in the years since the end of the Civil Rights era, several unfortunate incidents were amplified by the usual race-baiters who tore at the bandages and picked at the scabs.
I know people who, despite Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis and all the rest of it, still voted for this clean and articulate usefool tool solely because he was black. They felt he’d expunged their guilty over racism they neither committed nor thought, in the hope and change that doing so would finally lead us to a post-racial, harmonious America of MLK’s dream being fulfilled.
How’d that work out for you, Lefty? In terms of race relations,
… Barack Hussein Obama set us back a hundred years.
We’re fighting battles we had already won back in the 60’s.
Whatever racism there was and/or is in America is caused solely by the Democrats and the anti-American Left. They’ve weaponized it to such an extent, thanks to the brainwashing of academia, the msm and gutless politicians, … that the hateful lie that America is structurally, institutionally an illegitimate, racist nation, stolen from indigenous peoples and built on slavery and oppression of non-whites, … is becoming more and more accepted as fact. It’s not just in the typical blue urban chit-holes cities, but right here in River City, our home and heartland, … da Cheddarhood.
And that rhymes with ‘P’
and stands for ‘T’,
…. and it’s Trouble.
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He ordered them? I didn’t know that. Sickens me to my core when cops kneel, but to have the chief of police order it?
I was shocked that the Waukesha chief is not calling this domestic terror. Or seemingly not adding a hate crime attachment.
There are a percentage in law enforcement, including in Madison, who are quite Progressive. Which is fine, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their jobs. Yet.
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Well, Mr. Blaska! The next time you want information from me, just call or email me! It’s kind of weird to have a friend text and say, “Hey, that Blaska guy is calling you out!”
So the answers to your first four questions are: “I don’t know.” Unfortunately, my record keeping database doesn’t let me sort on dollar amounts of cash bail assessments. What I can tell you is that, for example, in 2019 (the last “normal” year), we had 7,209 criminal felony, misdemeanor, and traffic cases filed. Of these, 6,609 had “signature bond set” events. 2,269 had “cash bond set” events. Those two figures exceed the case count because the bail situation can be fluid. A single case can start with a signature bond, escalate to a cash bond due to the defendant’s subsequent conduct, and then possibly even go back to a signature bond after that. But if I was going to try and figure out who all had cash bonds of $1,000 or less, I’d have to inspect all of those “cash bond set” events one by one, and then do it all over again for 2014. Trying to figure out who of those with $1,000 or less cash bonds went on to commit additional crimes is even more unwieldy, as I’d have to manually record names and dates of birth, as well, and then query those names for subsequent cases.
Bail jumping charges I can tell you about. Misdemeanor bail jumping is Ch. 946.49(1)(a) and felony bail jumping is Ch. 946.49(1)(b). There have been 1,654 misdemeanor bail jumping charges filed in 2021 to date. 1,565 in 2020 for the same period, and 1,763 for the same period in 2019. For felony bail jumping charges, there have been 2,991 to date this year, 2,551 for the same period in 2020, and 1,957 for the same period in 2019.
Now, having said all that, respectfully, I believe you’re looking at this issue in the wrong way– at least as far as the law is concerned. I refer you to Article I, Section 8 of the Wisconsin Constitution. It says: “All persons, before conviction, shall be eligible for release under reasonable conditions designed to assure their appearance in court, protect members of the community from serious bodily harm or prevent the intimidation of witnesses. Monetary conditions of release may be imposed at or after the initial appearance only upon a finding that there is a reasonable basis to believe that the conditions are necessary to assure appearance in court.” That second sentence is crucial to this conversation. This verbiage is restated in Ch. 969.01(4) of the Wisconsin statutes, where it says: “If bail is imposed, it shall be only in the amount found necessary to assure the appearance of the defendant. Conditions of release, other than monetary conditions, may be imposed for the purpose of protecting members of the community from serious bodily harm or preventing intimidation of witnesses.” Putting these together, it means that whether there is cash bail, or a determination of the amount it should be, is predicated SOLELY upon the perceived risk of the defendant not making scheduled court dates. Note that the law states that concerns about “protecting members of the community from serious bodily harm” (e.g. “public safety”) is only to be addressed via non-monetary conditions of bail. I was curious so I checked Brooks’ record via the WCCA website and noted that since 2006, he’s had three failures to appear out of a whole lot of scheduled court appearances. Based upon what the law specifically and unambiguously holds, he WAS entitled to a low cash bail– even a signature bond would not have been out of line, given his appearance history. Because, again, the determination of whether there should be cash bail, or how much it should be, has nothing– I repeat– nothing to do with the severity of pending charges or with the length of criminal history under our Constitution and our law.
Interestingly, Rep. Cindi Duchow (R-Delafield) understands how the cash bail law works and has thus introduced a joint resolution that would amend the Wisconsin Constitution so that court officials COULD consider public safety issues, as well as the severity of pending charges and the overall criminal history, in the cash bail calculus. https://www.wispolitics.com/2021/rep-duchow-introduces-a-constitutional-amendment-for-bail-reform/
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Doubt this would make a difference to the leftist court officials in this state.
“Interestingly, Rep. Cindi Duchow … has thus introduced a joint resolution that would amend the Wisconsin Constitution so that court officials COULD consider public safety issues, as well as the severity of pending charges and the overall criminal history, in the cash bail calculus.”
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Fully intended to direct question to you personally but raised the issue publicly because I doubted that you would be able to answer due to limitations of your data base.
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Of course Chisholm is going to look into it with all eyes on him. It’s CYA. What he SHOULD be doing is resigning and hanging his head in shame.
This article should help explain his motivations.
“George Soros-backed district attorneys are ruining America”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/nov/23/george-soros-backed-district-attorneys-are-ruining/
Then this.
Repulsive.
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Oops, this is the correct one.
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He failed to appear 3 times, hmm, how are those recorded. My question is did he just not show up 3 times or was there a legitimate excuse filed through his legal representative prior to just not showing up. If i don’t just show to work 3 times without notifying work, i would be fired, even with a rap sheet a mile long over decades, that should be a red flag after the 1st time unless he was in the hospital. This is where the problem lies, maybe your hands were tied by law but you are a judge. Your paid to look at every case and make your best judgement for society about individuals. I disagree with you, perpetual offenders such as this turd of a human being as this person. He ran over his girlfriend and did bodily harm. Whether it be her foot or her entire body, that is a sign this person was capable more heinous acts. Along with and entire history of being a piece of schiff. You judge should resign effective immediately and never be able to work in law again.
You can make excuses all u want but the blood is on your hands.
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Chisholm felt “racial justice” was more important than actual real justice.
Knowing full well that his policy would lead to disaster and the murder of innocents, this soft-on-crime prototypical proglobot wanted to rectify “a racial imbalance” in prisons anyway, saying,
“Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into a treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill somebody? You bet. Guaranteed. It’s guaranteed to happen.”
Chisholm, of course, was right. After he investigates himself and finds himself innocent,
I wonder if he’ll admit any culpability for springing career criminal Darrell Brooks. Chisholm
didn’t intend to reduce crime, he only wanted to reducing the number of blacks in jail.
.
When you free criminals unjustifiably in a misguided attempt to achieve “group equity,”
innocents suffer. When you take cops off the street, freeing criminals to continue their BLMing,
… burning/looting/murdering, … innocents suffer. When you refuse to prosecute crime,
… criminals spot an opportunity, and they’ll exploit that opportunity.
Reality is on the home team and always bats last, but it’s small comfort to the families who lost loved ones. Voters can either continue to deny reality and pay the price, or we can wake up to the simple fact that reality always wins. Until good citizens get harsh and punish criminal behavior with Old Testament law, criminals,…and the politicians who enable them,…will be the only winners.
Brooks’ death toll from what is absolutely a bona fide domestic terrorist attack, and most likely spurred on by the acquittal of American hero, (reluctant as he may consider himself, but oh, Hell yes) Kyle Rittenhouse, has risen to 6 with the death of an 8-year-old boy, Jackson Sparks.
To be clear, Jackson did not pass counterfeit bills at a convenience store, nor tried to swallow half a kilo of crystal meth before the cops could search his vehicle. Nor was he high on purple crank while pounding someone’s head into the pavement. Nor was he a drug dealer’s gun moll caught in the crossfire of a police raid. Nor did he bullrush a police officer after punching him in the face and trying to wrestle his gun away to avoid arrest. Nor was he a pedophile or domestic abuser with a rap sheet the size of a phone book.
No. Jackson Sparks was guilty of one thing and one thing only, ….being white.
In today’s post-legal, post-reality, Orwellian Ape City, that’s a capital offense.
Say his name, you enabling Leftist bastards. Say his name.
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