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  Cary Spivak & Dan Bice E-MAIL | ARCHIVE |
It started out as a routine police matter. Some goof walking along Villard Ave. about 5 a.m. looks suspicious. When police approach, he whips out two large knives, their reports say. More cops rush to the scene, one fires a shot and the suspect is arrested.
It's the type of thing Milwaukee police often deal with in the wee hours of the morning.
But this case is quietly mushrooming into a potentially explosive dispute involving the city's top cop and a couple of highly regarded police supervisors.
Already the two cops, Lt. David Zibolski and Capt. Brian O'Keefe, have hired a top law firm and slapped the city with a notice that they are planning to sue it for knocking each officer down a notch after they questioned Police Chief Arthur Jones' handling of the highly charged situation. Their union is demanding that the Fire and Police Commission investigate Jones' actions.
What's more, even though he rushed to the scene with his siren blasting and was calling the shots during the June 21 incident, Jones is noticeably absent from the 11 reports filed by cops at the scene.
"If I was writing the report, I would include the presence of the people at the scene if they influenced the outcome of the incident," said Konrad Ellenberger, president of the Milwaukee Police Supervisors Organization.
So why was Jones' name missing?
"I really don't know - you'd have to ask the chief, I guess," Ellenberger said. "We'd like to get an answer to that question, too."
When we called Jones' office Tuesday, an aide followed the department's SOP for dealing with media inquiries. She refused to take a message, transferring each of our calls to voice mail in the department's public information office.
According to the police reports and the criminal complaint, Geno Williams, 20, was stopped by police at 5111 W. Villard Ave. in the early morning hours of June 21. Williams then pulled out two steak knives with 5-inch blades, which he refused to drop at police gunpoint. A number of other cops, including two trained in negotiations, immediately were called to the scene.
The reports say the officers formed a semi-circle around Williams in a parking lot and slowly moved in, until he lunged at one of them, prompting a sergeant to fire his shotgun once, though he missed. Williams fell, unharmed, to the ground where he was arrested.
He's charged with reckless endangerment.
But the claim filed by Patrick Dunphy, the lawyer for Zibolski and O'Keefe, tells a much more interesting and elaborate story.
It states that shortly after the incident began, the cops set up police tape, but Jones then arrived and sat in his car until the tape was removed to let him drive closer to the scene.
"The very visible arrival of the chief in the manner described above was in direct contravention of standard negotiating procedure," Dunphy wrote. Specifically, Jones' siren could have set the suspect off, and his presence prevented the negotiators from buying time by saying they needed approval from the department brass to meet any requests he might have made.
In addition, the claim says Jones took over the situation, devising a strategy that called for curtailing negotiations and for the ring of cops to begin closing in on Williams. He told police not to wait for the arrival of a machine that could shoot pepper spray at a suspect from a safe distance. Instead, Jones instructed the officers to shoot Williams in the legs if necessary.
Jones' orders violated training designed to defuse tense situations, Dunphy charged.
"The chief was apparently not willing to await the arrival of the spray gun or allow the negotiators sufficient time to resolve the incident safely through dialogue, based on the extremely short amount of time given to negotiators prior to the 'closing of the ring' strategy," Dunphy wrote. By doing this, police ended up too close to Williams, Dunphy wrote. He added that police are to shoot at a suspect's abdomen and chest area, not his limbs.
The stand-off ended predictably, the claim says.
"The circle was closed. Williams, on being intimidated by the closing circle, reacted, and charged as he stated he would. As ordered, an officer fired but missed. He missed because the distance he was directed to move to did not allow him sufficient time to perceive and react to the threat," Dunphy wrote.
Neither O'Keefe nor Zibolski was at the scene, but they each questioned Jones' actions, a move that they say caused their disciplinary woes. Both were kicked off the negotiating team and bomb squad, and Zibolski was demoted to detective, which will cost him $9,000 if the action withstands an appeal by the union.
Zibolski's crime, according to the Sept. 23 disciplinary order: "Failing to be courteous and considerate towards another member of the department, failing to guard himself against unfriendly feelings toward other members of the department, and failing to refrain from all communications to their discredit."
Assistant City Attorney Jan Smokowicz declined comment, though he said it was his understanding Jones was on the scene June 21.
In a letter to the police commission, the supervisors union cites this case as an example of Jones' abuse of the disciplinary system.
The number of internal affairs investigations has skyrocketed during Jones' six-year regime. Court records show that as of October, there was an ongoing internal investigation stemming from the Williams case.
Union boss Ellenberger wrote in the Oct. 21 letter to the commission: "The chief operates in an environment where all that are subordinate to him are investigated and formally disciplined whenever he feels that it is appropriate, but his behavior is seldom if ever investigated."
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