Walker Allies Object to “Patchwork” Public Safety

On Wednesday I posted a blog about Scott Walker taking credit for someone else cleaning up his administration's mess at the Milwaukee County House of Correction. As it would happen, the very next day the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a story about Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke giving a reality check to Walker regarding his "patchwork" budgeting for public safety. The story not only gave us some interesting quotes but it also spelled out exactly how Walker's "patchwork" budget would cause the release of 120 inmates, reduced freeway patrols, and early elimination of rehabilitation programs. It is another example of Walker's "patchwork" budgeting having real-life and negative results on public safety.

This is not the only time that Sheriff Clarke, usually a Walker ally, has been critical of his policy. Back in 2008 when the Walker administration was trying to implement its policy of sending work release inmates back into the community on GPS monitoring, Clarke sounded a stern warning. At that time Clarke bluntly promised, "if you are not going to do GPS right, I'm going to stand in the way of it." He went on to say that serious unanswered questions still remained about Walker's GPS plan. Clarke said that a proper system would include complete screening, frequent drug testing, and extra law enforcement help to round inmates that strayed from approved locations and travel routes. Sheriff Clarke bluntly said that "all of those things cost money that hasn't been found yet."

Clarke is not the only Walker ally that has had problems with him on public safety issues. Only a month after Walker's administration first announced its idea to send work release inmates back into the community, one of those same inmates was found to have committed a homicide while in the community. After that failure of the Walker-administrated work release facility, frequent Walker ally, Supervisor Mark Borkowski said that "people have to be held accountable" and that "it starts at the top."

As I cited in Wednesday's blog, Supervisor Borkowski was also a frequent Walker administration critic regarding their gross mismanagement of the House of Correction. As I cited in the previous blog posting, Borkowski made some of the following comments:

"the elephant in the room is the staffing and for them not to even
acknowledge that is very disconcerting to
me."

"Walker and Malone have not shown any sense of
urgency in correcting problems at the House of Correction."

Even though his official spokesperson claims that Walker "takes a strong stance on public safety" it seems very clear that even some of his closest allies don't exactly trust him in that department. If the people that know him best don't then why should we?