Pubdate: Sun, 9 Sep 2007
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI)
Copyright: 2007 Journal Sentinel Inc.
Contact: http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/submit.asp
Website: http://www.jsonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/265
Author: Gina Barton
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?246 (Policing - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption - United States)

Journal Sentinel Watchdog Report

FORCEFUL IMPACT

Suspects Have Accused Sgt. Jason Mucha 10 Times of Beating Them or 
Planting Drugs. He Wasn't Disciplined, but Courts Took Notice.

Jason Mucha has wanted to be a police detective since he was in high school.

He started building his resume upon graduation, becoming a Milwaukee 
police aide more than 10 years ago. He has worked in some of the 
city's toughest neighborhoods and made sergeant at 26.

But Mucha has built a resume of another kind.

In a three-year span, he was accused at least 10 times of beating 
suspects, planting drugs or both - claims so similar that judges took notice.

Mucha's record shows how an individual can be the subject of numerous 
misconduct allegations and continue to advance his career inside a 
department that lacks a reliable way to track problematic behavior. 
His story also shows how a single officer was instrumental in 
changing the way Wisconsin courts consider claims of police misconduct.

As far back as 1993, Milwaukee Police Department leaders recommended 
using computers to analyze use-of-force statistics. Ten years later, 
when Nannette Hegerty became chief, a tracking system created in 1999 
wasn't working. She committed $500,000 more to get a better system, 
but it still isn't monitoring officers.

The department would not have needed computers, however, to spot the 
many complaints against Mucha, after rulings questioning his 
credibility were made in separate cases by a local judge and the 
state Court of Appeals.

In August 2005, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Charles F. Kahn Jr. 
ruled that several men who had accused Mucha of wrongdoing should be 
allowed to testify in the case of a defendant who said Mucha and 
other officers beat him and planted cocaine.

"It is not really normal, at least not in my experience, that (so 
many) individuals would all say that one or two police officers did 
the same, illegal, dishonest thing to them," Kahn said in an 
interview. He has presided over hearings in four of the 10 cases 
involving Mucha.

Seven months later, the Court of Appeals applied the same reasoning 
in a separate case and arrived at a groundbreaking opinion. The court 
listed several similar allegations of misconduct against Mucha. The 
three-judge panel agreed it was not in the interest of justice to 
take the officer at his word.

"It is not appropriate for this court, nor was it appropriate for the 
trial court, to assume that the defendant was lying and the officer 
was telling the truth," Judge Ted E. Wedemeyer wrote.

Among the appellate judges who signed the unanimous ruling was Ralph 
Adam Fine, a law-and-order judge who opposes plea agreements and has 
served as an advisory board member of the Federalist Society, a 
conservative lawyers group.

Mucha wasn't the only officer present in any of the 10 cases. At 
least 10 other officers were on the scene at one or more of the 
arrests. Mucha, however, was the focus of both Kahn's ruling and the 
Court of Appeals decision. In the appeals court opinion, Mucha's name 
was mentioned 58 times. No other officer was named more than twice.

Hegerty and Mucha's former supervisor, Glenn Frankovis, defended his 
performance.

"I think Officer Mucha, at least when he worked for me, was an 
outstanding police officer with a tremendous sense of dedication and 
sense of duty," Frankovis said.

Mucha's accusers are mostly men with criminal records ranging from 
misdemeanors to serious felonies - men whose testimony could easily 
be discredited.

Yet the judges found cause for their claims to be heard.

Felony charges against at least four of them were either reduced or 
thrown out amid concerns about police conduct.

Legal Complaints

The defendants are not serial complainers. None took their concerns 
to the city's Fire and Police Commission, and just three filed 
complaints with the Police Department.

Many of the defendants and their lawyers said they didn't file 
complaints with the department because they don't trust the police, 
and they didn't turn to the commission because it almost never 
disciplines officers.

The defendants involved in the 10 cases protested their treatment 
through the legal system, via their attorneys or by writing letters 
to the judges who would decide their fates. Many had no previous drug 
convictions. Most had pleaded guilty to other crimes in the past, 
unlike their assertions of innocence in the 10 claims of mistreatment 
involving Mucha.

The sheer number of similar claims with Mucha as the common 
denominator drew the judges' attention. Some cases included Mucha and 
a partner. In others, a large number of officers were on the scene. 
In two cases, Mucha and others were accompanied by former Officer Ala 
Awadallah, who resigned and pleaded guilty to federal charges of 
depriving citizens of their civil rights.

Awadallah was convicted after he was caught on tape threatening to 
plant drugs on a south side man. Mucha was not involved in that 
incident. Awadallah declined to answer questions for this report.

In the 3rd District neighborhoods they once patrolled, Mucha and 
those who worked with him in an elite unit gained a reputation - and 
a nickname. Residents called the officers the "Night Train" because 
that's what the line of identical police cars looked like when it 
rolled into the neighborhood. A police wagon was the caboose.

In a recent interview, Hegerty said she was unfamiliar with the court 
cases that have raised questions about Mucha. After a reporter faxed 
the written court decisions to her office, she declined through a 
spokeswoman to discuss them.

Hegerty acknowledged past problems with a specialized unit in 
District 3, where Mucha had been assigned, but she defended his 
recent job performance.

"Since he made sergeant, he has not had a sustained complaint against 
him, and I think he's doing a great job at this point in time," she 
said last month.

However, a judge is reviewing brutality allegations against Mucha 
stemming from an arrest that occurred after his promotion, records show.

Numerous attempts to interview Mucha were unsuccessful. He hung up on 
a reporter, did not respond to messages left at the department and 
ignored a certified letter.

In response to another letter left at his house, Mucha filed a 
complaint with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, saying the letter 
should not have been hand-delivered to his mailbox.

Policing Aspirations

The Jason Mucha profiled in Wisconsin Lutheran High School's yearbook 
was an athlete and a leader. One of the goals listed in his senior 
profile with the class of 1996 was: "Be a detective."

Mucha served on the school's Alcohol and Other Abuse Prevention Team, 
discouraging elementary school students from using drugs and alcohol. 
Even so, the first blemish on Mucha's personnel record was a one-day 
suspension for underage drinking while a police aide. After he 
completed the aide program and became a recruit, he was suspended 
again, this time for having an open container in a car, according to 
his personnel record.

Since entering the training academy in 2000, Mucha has received three 
minor reprimands: two for failing to appear in court as a state's 
witness and one for parking illegally.

Over the past seven years, the Police Department has investigated at 
least seven battery complaints against him: four complaints of 
improper search and seizure, two of theft and one of false arrest. 
Each was ruled either unfounded or not substantiated.

Department spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz said three of those 
investigations involved individuals named in the 10 cases found by 
the Journal Sentinel in court records. She would not say which three. 
Records indicate the department's professional performance division 
did not investigate the other seven.

Hegerty would not provide details of the Mucha investigations, except 
to say the department took "as much time as was needed to investigate 
them thoroughly."

Mucha, 29, was promoted to sergeant in January 2005.

Case Is Turning Point

In at least four court cases involving arrests made by Mucha, felony 
charges were reduced or dismissed as part of plea agreements amid 
allegations that Mucha had beaten or planted drugs on the defendant.

In one key court case, according to police and court records, Mucha 
and Officer Brad Westergard were looking for a suspected drug dealer 
in a white sedan in January 2004. Instead, they found Walter Missouri 
- - who, they later admitted in court, was the wrong man.

Missouri, now 34, was sitting in the same type of car, waiting for 
his girlfriend to drop off some movies.

"I look up, I seen a gun, then the badge shine," he said in an 
interview. "I was looking down the barrel of a gun."

Missouri said he got out of the car and put his hands on the roof, as 
the police instructed. Mucha hit him, Missouri said, so he jumped 
back into the car, clung to the steering wheel and laid on the horn, 
hoping someone would help. He said Mucha stuck the gun barrel under 
his chin and said, "Let the (expletive) steering wheel go or I'll 
blow your brains out."

Missouri let go. He was dragged out of the car, handcuffed and 
beaten, he said. One of the officers - Missouri isn't sure if it was 
Mucha or Westergard - shoved a baggie full of cocaine into his mouth, 
Missouri said. Then Westergard pepper-sprayed him. Missouri said he 
had no idea why he was being attacked and thought he was going to die.

At Missouri's trial, Mucha and Westergard testified that they feared 
Missouri was trying to get a weapon from under the driver's seat. 
When Missouri got out of the car, the officers said, he put a baggie 
of crack cocaine in his mouth. Missouri resisted, and they were 
forced to tackle, strike and pepper-spray him. Missouri then spit out 
the baggie, the officers said.

Although Missouri has a criminal record dating back to 1991, none of 
his other convictions - before or since - involved drugs. Missouri's 
trial attorney, Robert Meyeroff, wanted another man who had claimed 
abuse by Mucha to testify.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Elsa Lamelas wouldn't allow testimony 
from the other man, Booker Scull, who claimed that Mucha beat him and 
kicked out two of his teeth. A Milwaukee County jury convicted 
Missouri of cocaine possession with intent to deliver, a felony, and 
resisting arrest, a misdemeanor.

Missouri's appeals attorney, Jeffrey W. Jensen, has been a defense 
lawyer long enough to know that people charged with crimes often 
claim they were framed. But Missouri's allegations sounded exactly 
like those made by another man Jensen was representing, James Murry.

Jensen knew about Scull's similar complaint from the court file. 
Jensen and his investigator located three additional men who had made 
similar claims against Mucha. They found some of the cases with the 
help of the public defender's office, which had been keeping its own 
file on Mucha, Jensen said. They learned of others through word-of-mouth.

In Missouri's appeal, Jensen argued that the other men should be 
allowed to testify. The Court of Appeals, in its unprecedented 
decision, agreed.

"This court cannot decide whether Mucha or Missouri is telling the 
truth," the decision says. "We do know that one of them is not."

Missouri's initial convictions were thrown out. The state did not 
appeal. Prosecutors reached a plea agreement with Missouri: He 
pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors, was given credit for the more 
than two years he already had served and was released.

Missouri said he entered the pleas because he already had served the 
time and wanted to get on with his life.

Changed Court Convention

The appellate ruling in the Missouri case turned conventional 
courtroom wisdom on its head, said Daniel Blinka, a professor at 
Marquette University Law School.

Historically, jurors often have been allowed to hear evidence of a 
defendant's past wrongdoing, either to show a motive or to attack his 
credibility. The Missouri decision opened the door for similar 
evidence about police officers, Blinka said.

"Now what you really have, what (the Missouri case) embodies, is the 
idea that there's balance here," Blinka said. "If there's a state's 
witness, even if it's a police officer, who has engaged in relevant 
misconduct, we're going to hear it."

Milwaukee County Deputy District Attorney Jon Reddin agreed that the 
Appeals Court took a standard usually applied to defendants and 
applied it to police officers. That reasoning, combined with recent 
instances of police brutality that have caused officers to lose 
credibility with jurors, makes the prosecution's job harder, he said.

"Jurors are not as likely anymore to believe a cop just because he's 
a cop, or she's a cop," he said. "That creates serious problems just 
on a system basis for us. The cold, hard fact is that most of our 
witnesses are police officers."

At Missouri's sentencing hearing, Mucha accused Missouri of trying to 
damage his reputation.

"He tried to change the facts in this case from him possessing drugs, 
which he intended to sell, and him attacking me, to him being a 
victim of police brutality and corruption, which was not the case," 
Mucha said of Missouri. "I've worked very hard for my reputation. . . 
. He shows no responsibility for his actions, and he's willing to lie 
before this court to get himself out of the trouble he got himself 
into, regardless of . . . what harm his accusations caused myself and 
the reputation and the perception of police in the City of Milwaukee."

In court records and police use-of-force reports regarding the other 
cases, Mucha said the defendants had drugs or threw them to the 
ground as they fled. He contended that he used the minimum force necessary.

Westergard, who was with Mucha at least one other time when a 
defendant accused police of planting drugs, declined to be interviewed.

Changes in District 3

When Hegerty became chief, she noticed some problems with a special 
unit in District 3, where Mucha worked, she said. The unit's mission 
was to swarm high-crime neighborhoods. As a rule, the officers didn't 
have to answer radio calls and focused on making themselves visible. 
Hegerty disbanded the unit and others like it in early 2004 amid 
concerns about their professionalism.

"They seemed to have generated a number of complaints," she said of 
the special patrols. "I did make some personnel changes. I moved some 
people around. I did all kinds of training to try and overcome some 
of these, what I thought were historical problems, within the department."

The training occurred departmentwide. Mucha was not singled out for 
special training, she said.

"I believe that if he was a problem at that time, I believe that the 
problem has been dealt with," she said recently. "Officers who may be 
problem officers in the past, we want to turn them around. This is 
something that definitely happened in this case."

Nine of the 10 cases involving Mucha found by the Journal Sentinel in 
court records occurred after Hegerty became chief and after she 
transferred his supervisor, Frankovis, a captain.

The controversial decision to remove Frankovis from command came 
after he wrote a memo urging his officers to make the lives of thugs 
miserable.

Frankovis, who had been in command of District 3 since November 2001, 
defended the effectiveness and professionalism of the special unit he ran.

Mucha worked for Frankovis for more than a year. Mucha always wanted 
to be a part of the specialized unit, Frankovis said.

"He wanted to be on the field, wanted to be playing the game, wanted 
to be on the 'A' team. Guys on a unit like this tend to see 
themselves as harder workers, harder chargers, like Special Forces in 
the military," Frankovis said. "Find me one Special Forces guy who 
doesn't think he's a cut above the average Army guy. Why would you 
not want a guy like that?"

Frankovis made Mucha wait before giving him the coveted assignment, 
wanting to be sure the young officer gained experience.

If Frankovis had been around long enough to see Mucha or any other 
officer rack up 10 misconduct claims, he would have referred the 
officer to the professional performance division, he said.

"Certainly, you look at those types of things," he said. "You're 
going to look at it, investigate to see if it has any merit. If I get 
one, two, three complaints from different people, I might give (the 
officer) the benefit of the doubt, but if it's over and over again 
from different people, there might be something there that we're 
going to need to investigate."

Identifying Trends

Stanley A. Goldman, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, 
said the Police Department and district attorney should have 
investigated the 10 cases involving Mucha as a trend. Even two or 
three similar misconduct claims should warrant serious scrutiny, he said.

"They're always saying about criminal defendants, 'Where there's 
smoke, there's fire.' Why is it any less true for police officers?" 
said Goldman, who researched the Los Angeles Police Department's 
Rampart scandal, in which dozens of officers were criminally charged 
with or disciplined for beating suspects or planting evidence.

Many other police departments use early warning systems like the one 
Milwaukee has struggled to implement. Some departments flag officers 
with three similar complaints. Others decide action is needed at five 
complaints, said Paul Chevigny, professor at the New York University 
School of Law and author of the book "Edge of the Knife: Police 
Violence in the Americas." After that threshold is reached, the 
officer is supposed to be questioned, monitored and retrained, he said.

Milwaukee police officials have said they can't figure out a 
department average for battery complaints, uses of force or internal 
investigations. The last report the city's Fire and Police Commission 
received on the subject covered the years 1994 to 1998, said 
commission attorney Steve Fronk.

Kahn, the Milwaukee County judge, said he has never seen as many 
similar accusations made against a small group of police officers in 
30 years. One of the cases Kahn presided over was the 2004 case of 
Lemar Barnes, who said Mucha was among a group of officers who beat 
him and planted cocaine.

In Barnes' case, Kahn ruled that several other men should be allowed 
to testify about their experiences with Mucha. In his decision, Kahn 
called their accounts "strikingly similar." He wrote that the events 
"certainly could constitute evidence of a plan or intent by an 
officer or officers to misuse police powers and obtain additional 
arrests or convictions regardless of the innocence of the arrested parties."

The prosecution's case fell apart.

Reddin, the prosecutor, wouldn't discuss the Barnes case but said 
such rulings force prosecutors to take the officer's testimony out of 
the equation. Without it, a misdemeanor charge is often all they can prove.

That's what happened with Barnes. The felony drug charge against him 
was reduced to misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

Like Barnes, the others accusing Mucha of misconduct are black. Mucha 
is white.

The Court of Appeals raised race as an issue in the Missouri case, 
and attorney Jensen believes prejudice could have played a role. 
Another motive, Jensen said, could be a power trip.

"Police officers have been taught that 'we can do whatever we want to 
do,' " he said. "They might start out doing a good job, doing the 
right thing, then they start taking out personal frustrations on 
people in the community because they believe they can do it with 
impunity. All they have to do is show up with their uniform on, and 
people will believe whatever they say."

Latest Allegations

Despite Hegerty's assurances that problems Mucha might have had are 
in the past, another judge is reviewing brutality allegations against him.

According to records, Mucha was the sergeant on the scene during the 
arrest of parolee Duane Dolenshek on Sept. 15, 2006. Dolenshek's case 
on a charge of cocaine possession with intent to deliver is pending. 
The arresting officer, Daniel Zolo, testified that he was answering a 
drug-dealing complaint. According to Zolo, when Dolenshek saw police 
coming, he ran, dropping a baggie of 34 individually wrapped rocks of 
crack cocaine.

Dolenshek was arrested after he fell, Zolo said. He needed six 
stitches in his head, according to his attorney.

Zolo and Mucha both testified that Mucha was not directly involved in 
the arrest. Rather, Mucha started chasing Dolenshek but stopped to 
pick up the baggie, they said.

Dolenshek, however, is prepared to testify that Mucha pistol-whipped 
him and that he did not have the cocaine Mucha found, according to 
court records. Dolenshek has three misdemeanors and two felonies on 
his record. None are drug offenses, though a charge of marijuana 
possession was dismissed in an earlier case.

In March, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Timothy Witkowiak ordered 
the police to turn over internal files of pending investigations of 
Mucha. Witkowiak, who was first appointed to the bench by Republican 
Gov. Scott McCallum, wants to review the files before ruling on 
whether other witnesses should be allowed to testify about Mucha.

The department turned over some of the documents, but at a July 
hearing, attorney Michael Tobin argued on the department's behalf 
that others should not be released, not even to a judge. Witkowiak 
ruled against him. Witkowiak plans to decide this week whether any of 
the information should be turned over to the defense.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake