Milwaukee- Police who are fired for for misconduct must be paid, with no provision for those officers to pay back the money if they lose their appeals.
Milwaukee taxpayers once again would have to pay most fired police officers while they appeal their dismissals under a provision Republicans tucked into the state budget in the wee hours Friday.
"All this bill does is allow the unscrupulous officers we fire for untruthfulness to game the system at taxpayer expense," Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said. "It is well known that officers in that position delay justice as long as possible, collecting money for no work."
The provision was written by Joint Finance Committee co-chairs Rep. Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and passed on a party-line 11-4 vote.
The Milwaukee Police Association union supported Republican candidates in the last election and was exempted from the new limits on collective bargaining passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Scott Walker. The measure is now tied up in the courts. Republican lawmakers are also moving to undo city requirements that police officers live in Milwaukee.
Vos said the measure on police pay was adopted because Milwaukee is the only city that allows its police chief to fire officers "for basically no cause."
"That's an awful lot of power we don't grant to any other police chief in the state," Vos said.
Flynn said state law says he can't fire an officer without cause.
Fired police officers elsewhere in Wisconsin don't get paid, though outside Milwaukee, fire and police commissions, not chiefs, do the firing.
Police officers in Milwaukee are most often fired for lying, according to records. The proposal, passed at 12:30 a.m. Friday, would require taxpayers to continue paying those fired officers.
"It's probably not a coincidence it's the middle of the night and we're dealing with this," Rep. Tamara Grigsby (D-Milwaukee) remarked.
Under the measure, fired officers including Ladmarald Cates would continue to be paid. Cates is under federal investigation after a woman said he raped her while responding to her 9-1-1 call for help.
For years, the practice of paying fired cops drew controversy in Milwaukee, the only city in Wisconsin that was required to do so under state law until it was changed.
Under the old law, fired Milwaukee officers remained on the payroll for an average of nine months, in part because of lengthy appeals by the powerful police union, according to a Journal Sentinel investigation. Some fired officers collected paychecks for years.
Link: http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/123145458.html