Seems like no matter what, we remain second class citizens...

Deputy, Critical Of Sheriff, Told To Ride The Bus

A deputy in Wisconsin who blasted Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. in a union newsletter has been given a curious new assignment. The deputy was reassigned to a one-man foot patrol.
In addition to walking his new beat, Deputy Michael Schuh, 55, was told he had to take a bus to and from the north side area of Milwaukee – an area that has seen high rates of violent crime and a spike in homicides.
Deputy Schuh was ordered to take a county bus to and from the neighborhood, and to contact every home and business in the area to improve relations with community leaders and business people. Deputy Schuh was also ordered to hand out Sheriff’s Department business cards to the people he visited, according to a report by the Associated Press.
“Convince them that we’re the good guys – we’re on their side and can’t succeed without their participation,” Schuh was informed in a memo from Captain Eileen Richards.
The memo detailing Schuh’s reassignment was given to the Journal Sentinel newspaper by Roy Felber, president of the Milwaukee Deputy Sheriffs’ Association. That organization is calling the reassignment a dangerous form of retaliation and says it’s planning a lawsuit.
The new assignment came just after the publication of the Milwaukee Deputy Association’s newsletter where Schuh questioned Clarke’s courage and the fact that he used deputies to escort him everywhere.
Sheriff Clarke insisted that the reassignment is not retaliatory but rather an operation designed to address a string of murders on the north side. But not everyone bought the argument, including Roy Felber. “You’re not going to solve anything throwing one deputy there,” Felber said.
Schuh, who is a Vietnam veteran, said that danger was part of being a deputy and that he would do as he was told. “I’ll report for duty,” Schuh said. “I don’t work for Clarke; I work for the citizens of Milwaukee County.”
The parent union of the Milwaukee Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA), AFL-CIO, was quick to respond with a pledge of legal and monetary help. IUPA President Sam Cabral was clearly enraged at the actions taken against Deputy Schuh.
“To require Deputy Schuh to use public transportation to reach his assigned beat and patrol it on foot without anything as basic as a properly equipped cruiser, to expect him to rely on ahand-held radio to summon backup when the sheriff is accompanied by armed guards to safe havens like the airport, is hypocrisy at best and a complete lack of courage at worst.”
Schuh wrote an opinion column known as “The Sacred Cow” in the July issue of The MDSA Star, the union’s newsletter.
In it he was responding to a written comment on roll call message boards that was viewed as questioning the courage of some deputies. Felber said that deputies were told Clarke authored the message-board comment.
After hearing about the message board posting, Schuh wrote the following about Clarke: “If you are afraid or you have lost your courage and you need two deputies and a sergeant to escort you every time you fly in and out of the airport and patrol deputies to drive by your house when you’re out of town, you should resign and go home!”
Schuh said that he wrote the column out of frustration over deputies’ belief that Clarke too often blames them when things go wrong.
County Supervisor Roger Quindel told the AP he was not aware of Clarke starting a program to assign deputies to patrol the central city on foot.
“It seems like a viciously vindictive, ill-thought-out program to punish an individual for exercising his First Amendment rights,” Quindel said.
Clarke stated he was focused on finding new ways to combat the senseless violence in the community, in a written statement after the controversy erupted.
“We’ve had over 170 murders in this county in the last 18 months, the last three in a 12-hour time frame, countless shootings, armed robberies and other aggravated assaults and you’re asking me about some deputy’s assignment? Are you kidding me?” the statement read.
The deputies’ union and Clarke have clashed repeatedly over the Sheriff’s disciplinary moves. Sheriff Clarke says that he is trying to instill a more demanding culture in the agency, but the union is saying his decisions are arbitrary and unfair.
As we went to press, Sheriff Clarke said he would let Deputy Schuh have a partner and a police car for his new assignment. But the Deputy’s Association said it was too little, too late.
They want the entire order rescinded, period – otherwise they will move ahead with their lawsuit against the county charging that the agency is in violation of Deputy Schuh’s First Amendment rights of free speech.

(reprinted from APB).