Flashback

“Call the police!” is a phrase I’ve been hearing a lot these days. As if the police are the Ultimate Arbiters of Everything, and calling them is the best way to solve all problems, stop all crimes, and save endangered lives.

Tell that to Konerak Sinthasomphone, who was handed over to Jeffrey Dahmer by an officer who was later rewarded by being elected president of the Fraternal Order of Police:

John Balcerzak is a police officer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and former president of the Milwaukee Police Association. In 1991, he was fired for having handed over an injured victim to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, despite the victim’s protests.

Two women, Sandra Smith and Nicole Childress, discovered the victim, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, after he had managed to escape from Dahmer’s apartment, naked, bleeding from the rectum and under the influence of drugs. They called 911, Balcerzak and his partner Joseph Gabrish were dispatched. Though the Laotian immigrant had been in the country for ten years and spoke English fluently,[1] in his drugged and brain-injured state, Konerak was unable to communicate his situation to authorities. Dahmer found the boy with the police and convinced them that the boy was his 19-year-old lover (when Sinthasomphone was only 14). Sandra Smith and Nicole Childress were convinced that Sinthasomphone’s life was in peril and tried to save the boy. However, Balcerzak and his partner chose to believe Dahmer and allowed him to keep Sinthasomphone. Dahmer later sexually abused, killed, and dismembered the boy.

Balcerzak and Gabrish were terminated from the Milwaukee Police Department[2] after their actions were widely publicized, including an audiotape of the officers making homophobic statements to their dispatcher and cracking jokes about having reunited the “lovers”. The officers had never checked the boy’s ID because they said he appeared to be 19 years old. The officers did not check Dahmer’s identification; had they done so, they would have discovered that Dahmer was a sex offender previously convicted for molesting Sinthasomphone’s older brother.[3]

Both officers later appealed their termination, won, and were reinstated.[4]

In May 2005, Balcerzak was elected president of the Milwaukee Police Association, defeating Sebastian Raclaw by a vote of 521 to 453.

Milwaukee’s finest!

 


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4 responses to “Flashback”

  1. SteveBrooklineMA Avatar
    SteveBrooklineMA

    I was living in Milwaukee at the time. What a horror. The “police fail” continued afterward, when Sandra Smith’s mother called the police afterward to follow up

    http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/glenda-cleveland-was-jeffrey-dahmers.html

    I do remember at the time reading reports on the officers involved. People who knew them were shocked that these particular officers messed up so badly, as they were considered to be top-notch.

  2. […] "Call the police!" […]

  3. TLM Avatar
    TLM

    Well, yeah. It’s Milwaukee. I am absolutely not surprised about this at all. Just look at the last couple Chief’s they’ve had. Art Jones immediately comes to mind; totally incompetent at everything except reverse discrimination during his long tenure. Ran around in his dress blues so much you’d think he was the fifth member of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Also ex-Mayor Norquist’s (also a scumbag) sycophant for the majority of his turn.

    However Milwaukee is in and of itself a hole in the ground, only exceeded by Detroit, Cleveland and Portland in terms of sheer awfulness.