It’s a scary, threatening symbol, found on hats and tats of its members.  Not the sort of people you would care to run into on dark night or a lonely street corner.  There’s a name that goes along with the long-toothed skull.  The Punishers.  Would it surprise anyone that this group, this gang, is terrorizing the streets of Milwaukee?

It surprised Edward Flynn, the Chief of Police.  From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel :

Police Chief Edward Flynn declined to be interviewed, but issued a statement Wednesday, calling the Punishers a “rumor.”

“Since 2005 there have been rumors of the existence of an organized group of officers engaged in vigilante-style activity calling themselves ‘The Punishers.’ There are indications that an investigation took place into these rumors prior to 2008,” Flynn’s statement said.

“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.”

Not exactly.

Shortly after Frank Jude Jr. was beaten, a Milwaukee Police Department commander investigated a suspected rogue group of officers known as “the Punishers,” who wore black gloves and caps embossed with skull emblems while on patrol, according to newly released documents.

Capt. James Galezewski examined what his report calls a “gang,” first in 2005 and again in 2007. The police academy supervisor concluded both times the Punishers represented a danger that warranted further investigation and action by the department, according to documents newly unsealed in Jude’s federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.

“This is a group of rogue officers within our agency who I would characterize as brutal and abusive,” Galezewski wrote in a December 2007 report.

The distinguishing feature of this gang, aside from the long-toothed skull, is that they all had shields.  And like any gang, they had to be careful in recruiting only members who fit their mold.  Where better to find them than in the police academy, where young minds are molded.

In 2007, Galezewski learned a police recruit had a tattoo of the Punisher logo, a skull with long teeth. The recruit – whose name was blacked out in reports at the urging of the city attorney’s office before the documents were unsealed – had been acting arrogantly in police academy classes, Galezewski wrote in his 2007 report.

Galezewski wrote the tattoo demonstrated the recruit posed a danger: “He is sending a clear message that he has every intention of exercising his authority as a police officer in an inappropriate and abusive way, and in my judgment, it would be irresponsible to allow him that opportunity.”

Galezewski recommended the recruit be fired. He was not and remains on the force as an officer, according to court documents, in which his name was blacked out.

This is the stuff of top of the line grade B movies, the type of action flicks that teenagers and lonely men enjoy immensely as the tattooed heroes show their machismo by beating people mercilessly.  Except this wasn’t the film, and was happening in a place like Milwaukee, where locals still sing polkas at Friday night fish fries.  Where movies, and Marvel comic books, are taken seriously.

Somehow, Galezewski’s findings never made their way to a subsequent report by Deputy Inspector Mary Hoerig of the Professional Performance Division, Nobody apparently noticed the long-toothed skull with the number 7 on the locker of Andrew Spengler, the cop who was convicted of beating Jude.  Or the same skull with long teeth tattooed on Jon Bartlett, another cop also convicted of the beating.

The notion that this both existed, and existed since 2005 (a year after the Punisher movie came out) is beyond shocking.  That a gang of rogue police officers, dedicated to taking vengeance into their own hands a meting out their own brand of “justice” should rock a city, rock a police department.  There should be no higher priority than to ascertain the existence of such a gang, and shut it down hard and fast, as it is not only outrageously criminal and wrong, but fundamentally contrary to the purposes of law enforcement.

And yet the police chief, despite the information that has since been revealed by Jude’s federal action and the disclosure of Galezewski’s report, says it was merely a rumor. 

When last I was in Milwaukee, we had dinner in a restaurant that lit up when the accordion player sang, “In heaven there is no beer (NO Beer!). that’s why we drink it here.”  The song was cheerful and gay.  Now I can’t help but wonder whether anyone lifting their mug high had a tattoo on their arm of a long-toothed skull.  Last time, I didn’t look.  Next time, I will.

More importantly, it serves to give a far deeper understanding of the risk faced by lawyers like Eric Brittain who stand up to the Milwaukee police department.  They may not be too good at investigating their cops, but they are right on top of going after criminal defense lawyers who challenge corruption.