Karter Stank tried to fight City Hall, but lost.
Stank was part of a group of unlucky people who filed claims against the city after police executed search warrants in the wrong homes. When that happens, the homeowner is left with a bashed in front door and a substantial mess to clean up inside too. They usually also are left holding the bag for the bill to fix it.
Stank went to the Common Council's Judiciary Committee asking for $10,463.05 to pay for damages, including mental anguish.
Anguish, indeed.
"I almost got killed that day," he said, relaying the incident when he carried tools upstairs from the basement of his home on North 60th Street and was greeted by police officers pointing shotguns and shouting obscenities at him. The cops took him outside and made him kneel in his front yard for all his neighbors to see while they ransacked his house.
According to the warrant, police were looking for a black male named Anthony Lewis, who had a sawed-off shotgun. Stank is white. Police seized some antique guns, ammo and what they claimed was "cocaine base" from his house, but no charges were issued.
"I think they realized they had the wrong property, but they just started taking things," Stank said. "They just grabbed stuff all over my house. I feel I got robbed at gunpoint by the police department."
Stank said it took him nearly seven months to get all his stuff back.
"The MPD served the warrant in relation to firearms located in the claimant's residence. The items seized were directly related to the firearm issue. Since the use of force was authorized by state statutes and the MPD was acting within its sphere of responsibility, we recommend denial of this claim," reads the city attorney's office opinion.
Police said the warrant was based on the word of a "confidential informant" who has helped police confiscate guns in the past. The informant's tips were used to get 15 search warrants, the committee was told.
The parade of wrong search warrant executions left Ald. Jim Bohl looking for answers from a tight-lipped police representative.
"It sort of makes it look like we're running around playing cowboy," said Bohl, who called it "ridiculous" that the police can destroy a person's home under the guise of a search warrant and then know the city won't have to compensate the victim for the police deeds.
"If we had culpability for the cost of something, we'd turn around and do the due diligence of additional time," he said, adding that the current practice "has a raw stink of government abuse."
Out of left field, Ald. Joe Davis, a member of the committee and Stank's alderman, chastised Stank for not being an active part of his neighborhood. Stank has complained to Davis about activity at a store in his neighborhood, but claimed that Davis never returned his calls.
In accusatory fashion, Davis asked Stank if he knew drug dealers were operating in the neighborhood. Davis knows there are.
"If you haven't taken the proactive responsibility of reporting drug dealing in your neighborhood, then I consider you to be part of the problem," Davis told Stank.
That statement, seemingly unrelated to Stank's search warrant issue, drew puzzled looks in the room.
"I don't like your tone," Stank told Davis.
"You're going to have my tone," responded a heated Davis, who was then silenced by committee chair Ashanti Hamilton.
The city denied Stank's claim.
The governor's office wanted to portray this part of his tour as adding to his green credentials, suggesting that buying electricity from hydro plants in Manitoba is more eco-friendly than using coal. Wisconsin Public Service Corp., the power company that keeps the lights on in northern Wisconsin, has said it will buy power from Manitoba starting in 2018.
Manitoba Hydro is one of the more notorious utilities in Canada and has a reputation for not letting nature get in the way of the kilowatt.
Some major rivers in northern Manitoba have been diverted and the native population has seen its land flooded by massive reservoirs created by the dams. Court cases and negotiations are underway between the First Nations and the government over the impact of additional dams. But WPS can point to buying hydropower as part of meeting its state mandate to use more renewable fuels.
But if hydro is such a "green" power source, why wouldn't Doyle start doing dam projects in the Badger State, instead of allowing our major utilities to exploit minority populations in other countries?
Accusing the Accuser: Marilyn Figueroa once was known as a community activist, but now she's just getting her name in the news as the consummate accuser. Figueroa, now known as Figueroa-Brito, will go down in history as the woman who brought Mayor John Norquist's career on Wells Street to an end. She forced Norquist to go public about an affair the two had and then claimed she was sexually harassed and sued the city.
Now, Figueroa-Brito has filed a lawsuit claiming that her attorney in the Norquist affair, Victor Arellano, sexually harassed her after the Norquist deal settled in 2002. She has also filed a complaint with the state's office that regulates lawyers.
Figueroa settled her harassment complaint against Norquist with the city for $375,000, for which Norquist reimbursed the city. The settlement, however, didn't help her stave off foreclosure on her home in 2007. It didn't stop her from going to ex-husband Justo Figueroa in search of additional child support.
Arellano represented Figueroa-Brito in her initial quest for more child support. That move backfired, however. Justo Figueroa had to travel from Florida to defend himself and the court ended up reducing his monthly support payments from $1,125 to $450.
One red flag in the most recent of Figueroa's filings is that she doesn't even have an attorney to represent her in the case. Perhaps the legal community has given her the scarlet letter of being on the "difficult client" list.
"We have denied all of these silly allegations," Arellano told the press.
Figueroa-Brito claims that Arellano led her to believe the two were going to get married after the Norquist deal was over.
If more people sued over the fact that they thought they were getting married and then didn't, courts would have to be open 24 hours with drive-thru windows.
An avid outdoors person he regularly takes extended paddling trips in the wilderness, preferring the hinterlands of northern Canada and Alaska. After a bet with a bunch of sailors, he paddled across Lake Michigan in a canoe.
He lives in Bay View.
