A new accusation shook Milwaukee’s Police Department, but the turmoil started long ago – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By the time a womanreported Kalan Haywood Sr.to police for sexual assault in the summer of 2019, hehad become a well-known leader in Milwaukee'sBlack community. Hisreal estate development firm, The Haywood Group, got $9 million in taxpayer-backedloans thatyear one of them after police opened an investigation into the rape complaint against him.

Haywood planned to use the money for a boutique hotel, the Ikon,on the city's north side. It would be the first hotel built by a Black developer in Milwaukeeone of the most segregated cities in the nation and it would be located in a neighborhood largely populated by poor Black residents. Rocky Marcoux, then the city development commissioner, talked about the significance of those factors when the Common Council approved Haywood's firstloanfor the Ikon.

"The folks you'll see working on this building are going to look like the people in this community," Marcouxtold council members. "That means a lot, not only to the people who live here but to the rest of Milwaukee as we try to advance men and women of color in the development (and)construction trades, and … (in)actually sharing in the success of what's happening downtown and in other parts of the city."

The terms called for Haywoods LLC to repay the moneyover 20 years, with the first payment due in fall 2021. One of the aldermen who voted against the loansaid the city was potentially "throwing money away" because Haywood hadn'tprovided enoughevidence of how he would repay it. The city had sued him in small claims court several times previously, and he'd failed to pay his taxes on time more than once.

Developer Kalan Haywood Sr.'s early plans for the Ikon hotel on the site of a former Sears store called for apartments and offices on land next door.Engberg Anderson Architects

Once the loan was approved, city officials had an incentive to help Haywood succeed. If he failed, it could cost Milwaukeetaxpayers millions.

Manual section breakGraphic by Erin Caughey

Haywood has sold his life story as making the most of a second chance.

Raised by his grandmother in Brewers Hill, Haywood graduated from Riverside High School. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee but hungout in the streets when he wasn't in class.

At 21, Haywood was arrested for possession of cocaine and carrying a concealed weapon. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. After his release, he has said, he went back to his old life and was shot multiple times.

Kalan Haywood Sr., shown here in 2005, started his first real estate development company, Vanguard Group, in 2000.Milwaukee Journal Sentinel files

I still get asked constantly about my case from 1995, Haywood told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2019. Every deal I do. Every single deal. Well, I did that. It's my fault. Im willing to explain it every time.

He credited a mentor with helping him go straight.

At first, Haywood focused on flipping neglected houses.In 2000, he started his first real estate development firm, Vanguard Group LLC, and turned his sights toretail properties, including a Walgreens store in the 2800 block of N. King Drive.

He also led an effort to convertthe historic Germania Building downtown from offices into apartments with help from the city $1.5 million.

Haywood doesnt mention a 2006 criminal case when he tells his redemption story. That year, he was charged with pistol-whipping a girlfriend.

According to the criminal complaint, Haywood punched the womanin the head approximately 10 times in front of her 8-year-old daughter.

Haywood yelled, Bitch, I love you! as he then slammed her head with a gun, the complaint says. She needed eight stitches.

Two felony chargeswere dismissed when the woman failed to show up for a court hearing.

Victims often are unwilling to testify against abusers for a variety of reasons: fear, stigma, losing custody of shared children, being deprived of housing or financial support, or religious or family pressure. Because of this, Wisconsin law permits evidence-based prosecution. This method allows the district attorney to make a case by presenting other proof, such as photographs of injuries and testimony from police officers or health care providers.

But the womanwho accused Haywood in 2006 didnt just refuse to testify. Two years after the charges were filed, Haywood's attorney, M. Nicol Padway, produced a sworn statement signed by the woman, which said she did not want to go forward.

Padway was a former member of the powerful civilian Fire and Police Commission.During a seven-year tenure on the board that ended in 1994, Padway said, he made it a point not to represent criminal defendants in Milwaukee cases.

The next time Haywood retained a lawyer with ties to the commission, he turned to Steven DeVougas, its chairman, whom he hired as a real estate lawyer in 2017.

Later, thepolice detective who questionedHaywood about a rape allegation would sayhe didn't know DeVougasworked on criminal matters.

The attorney replied: "I do it all."

The Milwaukee Police Department has long facedcriticism for lax discipline of problemofficers, butthere's plenty of blame to go around.

While chiefs havethe authority to fire cops for misconduct, they don't always use it. Even when they do, boththe Fire and Police Commission andthe courts have the authority tooverrule them. One basis is fairness. If other officers have racked up similarviolationsbut kept their jobs, a terminationmay not hold up. As a result, the department's history of letting bad cops slidemakes it harder to hold today's force accountable.

Two of the officers responsible for investigating Jane Doe's sexual assault complaint against Haywood had narrowly avoided being fired.

One was lead investigator Zachary Thoms,whose promotion to detective wasdenied by the Fire and Police Commission after he was involved in one of the worst and most expensive scandals in the Police Department's history.

Between 2007 and 2012, officers in District 5 on the city's north side performed dozens of illegal strip and cavity searchesmost on Black men. Four white officers were criminally convicted as a result.The city has paid out more than $5 million in legal claims to dozens of victims. Because the city is self-insured, that money all came from taxpayers.

Thoms avoided criminal charges after he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. He told them he and another officer who was later convicted of multiplefeloniesand sent to prisonhadcoerced a suspect to try to defecate into a cardboard box in the hopes he would expel drugs.

Nonewere found.

Milwaukee Police Officer Zachary Thoms testified at a 2013 inquest into the death of Derek Williams in police custody.Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Another man had accused Thoms of reaching into his pants and retrieving a plastic bag of drugs from his anus in 2011, but those claims were dismissed by a federal judge.

Thoms'deal with the Milwaukee County District Attorneys Office also expressly included a promise he would not be disciplined by the Police Department.

Such agreements are "very rare," Chief Deputy District Attorney Kent Lovern said at the time, but this one was necessary to obtain convictions against Thoms' four fellow officers.

His attorney, Brendan Matthews, said Thoms deserved credit for telling the truth.

"It was messed up," Matthews said at the time. "But how many times do people see messed up things in their lives and they don't do anything about it? I know police officers are held to a different standard, but at the end of the day, they're just people."

Thoms' cooperation in the strip search investigation, which came in 2014, marked the second time hespoke up against other cops amid misconduct claims. A year earlier, he testified during an inquest into the death of Derek Williams, who died after gasping for breath and begging for help in the back of a squad car. Five other officers and two sergeants refused to testify, citing the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

When Jane Doe filed her report, Thoms boss in Sensitive Crimes was John Corbett, another cop with a troubled history.

In November 2010, Corbett was arrested after he got drunk and let his 13-year-old daughter drive his car. Hewas convicted of a criminal misdemeanor andserved 30 days on work release, doing his job as a police sergeant by day and sleeping in the jail. He alsowas suspended from the department for 60 days.

After he got sober, Corbett was promoted twice, once by Edward Flynn and again by Alfonso Morales, who took over as chief in February 2018. Both times, the Fire and Police Commission approved. One of the board members said they were impressed with Corbett's efforts in recovery, which included earning a master's degree and providing private substance abuse counseling tolaw enforcement.

Doe never anticipatedthat her rape complaintwouldget tangled up with the police chief's efforts to raise money.But because of Haywood's connections, it did.

Creating a newnonprofit, the Milwaukee Police Foundation, was among Morales earliest goals as chief. It was inspired by the St. Louis Police Foundation, whichcollected nearly $2.5 million in 2018to payfortraining and equipmentsuchas ballistic vests andsurveillance cameras.

In Milwaukee, Morales had grander plans. He wanted to raise tens of millions for a new regional police training facility, and he putLt. Erik Gulbrandson in charge of making it happen.

A volunteer attorney registeredthe new nonprofit with the state in April 2019. The next steps wererecruiting board members and soliciting donations.

Butthe fundraisinggot off to a slow start.

According to its tax returnfor 2019, the foundation took in just $12,050 that year, including $5,000 from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and $5,000 from a board member who ran a construction company. The documentlists spending of $153 on analysis fees and $1,172 for an MPD meet and greet.

The foundation's conflict of interest policy lays outwhat to do if a board member becomes financially involved in its operations.

It doesnt say what should happen if someone who makes a large donation ends up arrested or if one of the board members is accused of a crime.

Haywood's law enforcement connections didn't end with DeVougas and the Fire and Police Commission. Haywood was also longtime friends with Raymond Banks, an assistant chief of police. The three of them, the Fire and Police Commission's executive director later said, "appeared to be close."

Morales invited Haywood to join the Milwaukee Police Foundation's board at the suggestion of Banks, whom Moraleshad promoted despite a sexual harassment complaint by a Black female officer.

Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales, center, speaks to a Common Council committee in 2018. Assistant chiefs Raymond Banks, left, and Michael Brunson, right, look on.Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Banks denied the woman's allegations.In a conversation with Morales, Banks said his interactions with herwere not sexual in any manner and it was not his intent to make her feel uncomfortable, the chief wrote in a memo to the Fire and Police Commission.

The commission, chaired by DeVougas,approved Banks' promotionwith little discussion in April 2018, a month after the police union representing Banks' accuserhad hand-delivered her harassment claim to commission staff.

In that complaint and another to internal affairs, the woman said Banks had tormented her for years, making sexual comments, calling her at home to proposition her and barging into her office uninvited.

The woman made the report reluctantly, worriedit could harm her career. As it turned out, she was right. Sheinitially took medical leave, saying she was tootraumatized by Banks conduct to continue working. Later, Morales fired her.

According to a notification presented to the Fire and Police Commission in 2019, he did so for "non-disciplinary fitness reasons."After the vote to affirm the woman's firing, DeVougas told a reporter that, in general, those reasons could be anything other than misconduct.

"It could be for health reasons, it could be for personal reasons," he said at the time. "It's kind of a catch-all."

Asked if the public might consider that explanation vague, DeVougas said he didn't know "if that necessarily involves the public purview."

City officials later approved a taxpayer-funded legal settlementof $16,500 with the woman.

Haywood's membership on the Milwaukee Police Foundation's board was slated to become official at the group's August 2019 meeting. Not long before that, Morales chief of staff gave him some troubling news: A woman had recently filed a sexual assault complaint against Haywood.

July 30, 2019Zachary Thoms presents Jane Does case to Assistant District Attorney Abbey Marzick.

Early August 2019Chief of Staff Nick DeSiato learns from Marzick, who he was married to at the time, that Kalan Haywood Sr. is under investigation. Because he knows Haywood is being considered for a spot on the Milwaukee Police Foundation board, DeSiato tells Lt. Erik Gulbrandson, who is coordinating the creation of the foundation.

Aug. 6, 2019Thoms starts his vacation, which is scheduled to last through Aug. 13.

Read the full timeline of events in the Abuse of Trust series

Morales wanted more information. If Haywood was named to the board amid a rape investigation, the optics could turn out to be very bad.

The lieutenant spearheading the project called Corbett, the sensitive crimes captain, and asked him for answers.

Corbett said the case was awaiting a charging decision by the district attorneys office. A search warrant remained outstanding and Haywood still needed to be questioned.

Corbett later got another call. This time, it was the chief himself.

Morales explained Haywoods connection to the Milwaukee Police Foundation's board and indicated he wanted to keep the case moving, Corbett later recalled. It was the first and only time he got a call from Morales about a specific case.

Morales defended his actions in an interview with the Journal Sentinel last summer.

I dont want to get myself caught up in saying something I shouldnt be saying, he said. Its not my job to let somebody know Hey, youre under investigation. I have to find out what my boundaries are.

Corbett arranged for Detective Steve Wells to question Haywood in the hours before the foundation's board meeting on Aug. 13, 2019.

Both Thoms, the lead investigator,and the assistant district attorneyassigned to the casewere on vacation. Neither agreed with the timing. Haywood had no idea he was under investigation, which was to their advantage. If he found out too soon, he could hide evidence or otherwise compromise the case.

Although Morales later said he didn't have a problem with Haywood being interviewed under those circumstances, several national experts told the Journal Sentinel it was a questionable choice.

When the prosecutor and the lead investigator are still planning the investigation and theres still information they want to get, I would defer to them, said Ronal Serpas, who has led the police departments in New Orleans and Nashville and serves on the national Council on Criminal Justice.

He added: A poorly timed interview could tip off the suspect before you know what you might find.

The prosecutor wanted Corbett to explain things to the victim, so he got on a call with both of them. Doe begged that her name not be disclosed to Haywood, saying she was afraid of what he might do.

She says Corbett assured her it wouldnt.

But his promise was quickly broken.

How we reported this story

In reporting this story, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters Ashley Luthern and Gina Barton conducted dozens of interviewsand reviewed numerous records, including police reports and videos and court files.

The Milwaukee Police Department declined to release its case file on the sexual assault investigation, citing an exemption to the states public records law for open cases. From an anonymous source, Luthern and Barton received nine pages of a 44-page incident report dated July 23, 2019. The report includes summaries of statements made to Investigator Zachary Thoms by a woman, identified publicly only as Jane Doe, who accused Kalan Haywood Sr. of sexual assault. The source also provided reporters with a DVD containing a video recording of Haywood being questioned by Detective Steve Wells on Aug. 13, 2019.

The reporters reviewed the full report of Mel Johnson, a retired assistant U.S. attorney hired by the Fire and Police Commission after the Journal Sentinel's initial coverage of the allegations against Haywood.Johnson was tasked with investigatingthe source of the leak and determining whether it was appropriate for police to interview Haywood at Sojourner Family Peace Center, which houses a shelter and the Police Department's Sensitive Crimes Division. Johnson also looked into the actions of Steven DeVougas, an attorney who was serving as chair of the commission when he accompanied Haywood to the interview. Johnsons report largely consists of summaries of his interviews with those involved in the case. It also includes a letter from DeVougas attorney citing his reasons for refusing to meet with Johnson, police emails and emails between Johnson and Jack Enea, attorney for the Milwaukee Police Foundation.

Luthern, Barton and other Journal Sentinel reporters attended numerous meetings of the Fire and Police Commission and the Common Council where the Haywood investigation was discussed. The reporters attended some of the meetings in person and others via live stream due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They also reviewed archival footage of past meetings.

Haywood and DeVougas answered reporters questions during an on-the-record interview that lasted nearly three hours in December 2019. Haywood repeatedly denied sexually assaulting anyone. DeVougas contended he had done nothing wrong in accompanying Haywood, who employed him as a real estate lawyer, to the police interview.

Doe declined to speak with reporters. Descriptions of her experiences and feelings, including her description of a reported sexual assault, come from police reports, a civil suit she filed and a summary of her interview with Johnson. Reporters also spoke with her attorneys.

Details and quotes in scenes were obtained through interviews with those present or from police reports, court records, transcripts, archived news reports, video recordings or audio recordings.

Details of Haywood's upbringing and early career come from a 2008 article in the Milwaukee Business Journal. Information about being shot after his release from prison and a mentor turning his life around was contained in news coverage of remarks he made while serving on a 2014 panel about mass incarceration convened by the Helen Bader Foundation.

Additional information in this installment comes from campaign finance reports; from the Haywood Groups most recent annual report, filed in 2017; and from tax records for the Milwaukee Police Foundation.

Informationabout the city's small claims suits against Haywood and his failure to pay taxes on time comes from online court records and state regulatory documents.

The accuserin the dismissed 2006 case against Haywood did not respond to telephone calls or to a certified letter.

The description of the exchange between a detective and DeVougas about the types of law he practices was taken from video of a conversation between DeVougas and Haywood before Wells entered the room to question him.

Luthern was the Journal Sentinels public safety reporter during the administrations of both Edward Flynn and Alfonso Morales.Bartonserved as the Journal Sentinel's criminal justice investigative reporter for 15 years, beginning in2006.

Barton was first to report on the death of Derek Williams in police custody. She and colleagues covered the inquest into Williams death as well as the investigation into strip and cavity searches by Milwaukee police, which began in 2012. Barton first reported on now-retired Captain John Corbett's misdemeanor conviction as part of a 2011investigation into police who had been disciplined for violating laws and ordinances. She first reported on sexual harassment allegations against now retired Assistant Chief Raymond Banks in 2018. She interviewed M. Nicol Padway, Haywoods former attorney who had served on the Fire and Police Commission, in 2019.

Banks, Corbett, Lt. Erik Gulbrandson and Morales former chief of staff, Nick DeSiato, did not respond to emails requesting interviews for this story. Thoms referred a reporter to the Police Department's spokesman, who would not approve an interview withhim or withWells. Information about Banks recommendation of Haywood for the foundation board comes from Johnsons report and from an interview with Morales. Information about Thoms cooperation in the strip search investigation comes from deposition transcripts and from Barton's2014 interview with attorney Brendan Matthews, who represented him at the time.

Former Milwaukee Assistant District Attorney Abbey Marzick, initially assigned to Jane Doe's case, declined to comment.

Abuse of Trust was reported and written byAshley Luthern and Gina Barton.

Illustrations by Lou Saldivar.

Originally posted here:

A new accusation shook Milwaukee's Police Department, but the turmoil started long ago - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel