Pubdate: March 19, 1998 
Source: Shepherd Express
Author: BY John-David Morgan
Website: http://www.shepherd-express.com/ 
Comtact: JUDGE DEFENDS FORCE IN POLICE BEATING CASE

During a single week last April, three people died in separate incidents
involving officers of the Milwaukee Police Department.

David Genaw says he was almost the fourth.

Genaw was beaten about the face, legs and back in an April 20 incident at
The People's Inn, a bar on the South Side where he had gone looking to buy
some cocaine.

While handcuffed, Genaw says he suffered a seizure and, according to
medical reports, was taken by ambulance to Froedtert Hospital, where he
received cardiac tests and treatment for numerous head wounds, scrapes and
bruises covering his body. Police jailed him for resisting arrest and
disorderly conduct--and have admitted no wrongdoing in the incident. Genaw
was cited for resisting arrest and disorderly condict in the incident.

Unlike the three deaths last year, little media attention was paid to
Genaw's case, which was heard in Milwaukee County criminal court Monday.
There, the state agreed to drop a resisting arrest charge. But there was
little compassion from Judge Dominic S. Amato when Genaw pled no contest to
the disorderly conduct charge. Amato sentenced him to 90 days of work
release jail time.

But not before the judge, after viewing graphic photos of Genaw taken in
the county jail shortly after his arrest, delivered a rambling discourse on
how the use of police force was often appropriate in drug law enforcement.
Amato then blamed the media for the public's misperception of police
wrongdoing.

"Spin-doctoring" by the press created a "media overkill" on the Los Angeles
police officers who, in 1991, beat Rodney King and "made a bad guy [King]
look good," Amato said.

"If these officers had committed a crime they would be charged," he said of
officers Scott Charles and Marcellus Merriweather, the undercover cops
Genaw said beat him. "But there were no charges."

"This is about how the police can push drugs on you, not show you a badge,
beat the hell out of you, and you end up going to jail," Genaw said. "There
is no justice."

Genaw, 46, a musician by hobby and a banquet waiter by trade, currently
working as day laborer, said he took the plea bargain "just to be done with
it." The sentence was no suprise. "The police can do whatever they want and
get away with it," he had said before the trial.

Genaw claims he walked into The People's Inn, 1139 W. Maple St., with $220
in his pocket, having arrived that day on a bus from Florida. He had left
the state months earlier in a distressed state of mind, still using drugs
and seeking treatment--and on probation for a 1993 marijuana possession
charge. His wife, Kounka Sabeva Paskaleva, an immigrant from Eastern
Europe, was dead, her throat slashed in early 1997 in her Cambridge Street
apartment on the East Side. The marriage was a farce to help her gain her
citizenship, but they had remained friends, and her death only compounded
his personal struggles. (Genaw says police have cleared him as a suspect
and the case is still unsolved). He returned to Milwaukee in April because
his sister was expecting a baby.

The $220 was travel money, not necessarily money to buy cocaine, although
Genaw admits the drug was on his mind when he entered the bar. He has used
the drug for about 18 years, including a seven-year period between 1988 and
1995 when he said he was using "a lot." He asked the bouncer where he could
get some coke, and then asked bar owner José J. Gonzalez. Gonzalez directed
him to undercover officer Scott Charles.

>From there, Genaw's and the police stories diverge. According to the
police report, Genaw followed officer Charles into the bathroom after
asking if he could buy some cocaine. Inside the men's room, Genaw repeated
"You got some coke?" and asked if Charles was a cop. Charles answered "yes"
and "removed Milw. PD badge from underneath his coat and clearly displayed
said badge," according to the report. Police say Genaw then tried to punch
Charles, and charged him, knocking them out of the bathroom and into the
bar, where Merriweather and bar customers attempted to "subdue" him. The
struggle lasted two to three minutes, with Genaw on the floor resisting
despite police commands, the officers claim.

Genaw let out a disbelieving laugh when the report was read to him early
this week. "Naw, they just beat the hell out of me."

When he entered The People's Inn, he had "not completely decided to get
[cocaine]--I was thinking about it," he said. "When you use coke, the urge
just comes to you."

Charles did approach him, Genaw said, but it was to ask if Genaw had coke
for sale. "I said no," Genaw wrote in his civil claim. "But before I could
get a drink he came back and said, `Do you want to buy any cocaine?'" Genaw
said nothing and walked to the bathroom, and Charles followed. "Are you a
rip-off or are you a cop?" Genaw said he asked. "Yes," came the answer. "I
tried to run, fearing that he would steal my money or shoot me." Charles
never identified himself as a police officer, Genaw maintains.

But he says they beat him, nearly ripping his arm off, Charles cracking
Genaw head on the frame of the bar door on the way out, and again against
the door of the paddywagon. That's when Genaw says his seizure began.

In court Monday, Charles said through assistant District Attorney David
Lerman that Genaw looked as if he might have been homeless, perhaps an
explanation for the scrapes and bruises in the jail photographs of Genaw's
injuries.

This conflicts directly with the admission report from Froedtert, which
states Genaw was "wrestled to the ground during apprehension and sustained
contusions to face and [left] hip." The contusions to Genaw's face and head
are described, with "multiple bruises and scratches all over" also noted.

During treatment, Genaw "continued to cry off and on," begging to stay in
the hospital or be taken to the county mental health complex. He was
released into the custody of police and transported to the jail in the
early hours of April 21.

At the trial, much was made of Genaw's drug history (two cocaine dealing
convictions in the early 1980s and the 1993 pot possession charge; Genaw is
now off probation).

"There is tremendous violence in the community involving people who sell or
use drugs," Amato said. "It is so bad that for those involved in that
criminal action, whether they sell or use, death is at one's doorstep."
Police officers' lives are also in danger, and the use of force on suspects
is "appropriate, given the dynamics and exposure of the drug unit."

"I wasn't on trial for drug charges," Genaw later protested. "My rights
were violated. It was a police lie to cover up the fact that they had
almost killed their fourth person in a week."

Little about the beating was at issue in court Monday, though it will
appear on the record, possibly helping an $18,700 civil claim Genaw has
filed against the city. The prosecutor, Lerman, who made the decision not
to press the resisting arrest charge before a jury, denied that the state
had an interest in keeping police brutality out of the public eye.

"I think that, as the judge said--the judge talked about Rodney King--so of
course the jury is going to be thinking about that," he said. "It's
something that would probably have had to be dealt with [in a trial]."
Agreeing with Amato's statements in court, Lerman added that Genaw's
plea-bargained case did not allow a forum for police brutality to be dealt
with in criminal court.