MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin - January 7, 2011 - A lawsuit over the beating of a man by off duty Milwaukee police officers in 2004 has turned up new information.
Court papers now suggest the existence of a rogue group of Milwaukee police officers.
In 2005, Milwaukee Police Captain James Galezweski heard about a group of police officers working out of the District Seven police station that called themselves "The Punishers".
The Punisher is a comic book antihero - a police officer who gets his own brand of justice when the legal system fails.
Galezweski investigated the group and, in a 2007 departmental report, he wrote that it was made up of "...rogue officers within our agency who I would characterize as brutal and abusive."
Two of the former officers convicted in the Frank Jude beating were apparently part of the group.
Andy Spengler had a Punisher emblem on his truck and Jon Bartlett had a tattoo on his shoulder.
Jude's attorney, Jon Safran, discovered these reports as part of their lawsuit against the city.
They argue if the department did more to reign in this group, officers may not have brutalized Jude outside a house party in Bayview in 2004.
"The evidence seems to be strongly there about what the department knew, what they didn't do and the fact there were some officers involved in the Jude incident that seemed to identify with the Punishers," Safran said.
Police Chief Ed Flynn was not around during the Jude incident but in a statement he says they investigated the group in 2008 but found no evidence it existed.
"I directed the Professional Performance Division in 2008 to conduct a thorough investigation. PPD interviewed a number of officers, they reviewed the complaint file and could find no evidence that such an organized group ever existed nor is there any record of citizen complaints to any local or federal authority regarding the activities alleged," Flynn said in a statement. "Although we must be ever vigilant, it would be sad if this old rumor was used as a strategy in a lawsuit against the city to undermine the community support that Milwaukee Police Officers have worked so hard to earn.
Safran said he's baffled the chief would take that position.
"The Captain that wrote the original report and the officers involved in that report were never interviewed, so how could the department determine this group didn't exist," Safran said.
"There's a fine line with their personal life drawing over to their professional life. If somebody wants to have a tattoo of a cartoon character on themselves, or put this cartoon character on the window of their car, okay that's one thing, but now I have to look at their conduct," said Milwaukee Area Technical College law enforcement instructor Paul Stuhmer.
Stuhmer spent 30 years with Milwaukee police, retiring as a captain. He said he was surprised to hear of these Punisher officer allegations.
He said police supervisors have to be observant of overzealous behaviors and even attitudes. It's something he continually stresses to his students.
"Your place as a police officer is to be exactly that; you're a police officer in the entire criminal justice system. You're not the judge, jury and executioner," said Stuhmer.
