Sheriff David Clarke has been a go-to anti-free-speech mouthpiece for right-wing media the past few years. Sheriff Clarke is the Milwaukee version of Sheriff Joe Arpaio if Joe spent an extraordinary amount of time manicuring and dying his facial hair dark. Sheriff Clarke’s belief is that anyone protesting the state should be thrown into jail sans habeas corpus. As a result, he’s clearly on president-elect’s shortlist of people who hate democracy enough to have openly supported Trump during the elections and therefore is in line for a potential job as the head of Homeland Security. How terrible is Sheriff Clarke? Amongst other things, he loves protocol and laws when it means “listen to Sheriff Clarke” but he hates laws and protocol when it reveals what a piece of incompetent detritus he is.
Brian Peterson, Milwaukee County chief medical examiner, said Thursday that the sheriff called him on Oct. 28 and "verbally pummeled" and "threatened" him over information that Peterson's office made public regarding the deaths of two inmates at the jail earlier this year. Peterson said his office followed appropriate protocol in the cases cited by the sheriff.
Even so, Clarke said he would be contacting the state Medical Examining Board to have Peterson sanctioned or his license revoked.
Mr. Peterson detailed this idiocy in an email to Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele. The letter included Abele’s chief of staff and Just for Men’s Sheriff Clarke. Abele’s chief of staff Raisa Koltun said that they would be supporting Peterson, as Clarke’s reputation as an angry tyrant is legendary. Here was the tweet of information that Clarke objected to.
Clarke called the release of this almost no information as “political activism.” Which is scary for a man who is being considered for a seriously powerful federal law enforcement position. In what is probably the best example of what a cowardly big-talking hypocrite Sheriff Clarke is, his office tried to say that Sheriff Clarke wasn’t afraid of these charges because Sheriff Clarke “had taped the whole conversation.” When Peterson and Raisa asked for a copy of this magic recording, Clarke and his staff bowed out like a bunch of punks.