After Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald put out an APB on the Dem14, apparently the Wisconsin Department of Justice informed him that perhaps it wasn't the best thing for him to expose Wisconsin law enforcement officials to a possible lawsuit for unlawful arrest.
According to this news report, Fitzgerald ordered the State's crime information network to put out the detention order, in the form of a Senate Resolution, ordering that any of the Dem14 who might be located in the state by a law enforcement officer be taken into custody. After the detention order was put on the network, Kevin Potter, of the Wisconsin Department of Justice sent an email to Scott Fitzgerald:
"We would strongly recommend that you attempt to get the Senate's Order to Detain out of the system, i.e. to the extent possible indicate publicly that it has been withdrawn so that law enforcement do not rely upon it and attempt to enforce it, thereby creating unnecessary liability exposure to them and the state,"
Fitzgerald responded via his personal attorney, Jim Troupis, three hours later: "We are not withdrawing the Order."There was no explanation in the article for why the DOJ couldn't have simply pushed a button and deleted the inappropriate entry located on the crime information network.
So based on this news account, you had a politician disregarding the state's top law enforcement officer, and following the advice of his personal attorney, even though he had been told he might be exposing innocent law enforcement officers to liability. Little wonder the state's GOP leadership is so popular with law enforcement right now.
Money Quote:
"The whole thing was a mess," Fitzgerald said. "You just can't compel a senator to come back to the chamber."
Scott, you should have hired Dog, the Bounty-Hunter.
He said police agencies refused to carry out his March 3 order to forcibly detain the senators.
"There was no cop in the state that would enforce it," he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment