For years, State Rep. Joe Sanfelippo has been warning anyone who would listen that liberal prosecutors like Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm are a danger to public safety.
Unfortunately, it took a mass-murder in Waukesha to wake up the state about Milwaukee County’s revolving door criminal justice system.
Sanfelippo and several of his Waukesha-area colleagues have been calling on Gov. Tony Evers to remove Chisholm from office. Evers received an official complaint against Chisholm from Milwaukee County residents more than two weeks ago. As of Monday, Evers had yet to announce whether he intended to open an investigation into Chisholm and how the DA’s office let a career violent criminal walk free on $1,000 bail just days before he was suspected of killing six people and injuring 60 more in the Waukesha Christmas Day parade.
Sanfelippo in recent years has introduced a multitude of crime bills aimed at protecting the public from repeat violent offenders. Many of those measures have died in the Legislature. The New Berlin Republican said he and some fellow lawmakers will be bringing the bills back as soon as this week.
“Unfortunately it takes tragedies like we’ve seen unfold in Waukesha to kind of bring people focus that there is a problem,” Sanfelippo told Empower Wisconsin’s M.D. Kittle last week on the Dan O’Donnell Show.
He said the first thing communities need to do is to start backing law enforcement officers.
“These men and women who are out there every day fighting the same problems, they’re arresting the same offenders day after day, putting them into the system. Then you’ve got the rest of the criminal justice system — Chisholm and the like — turning them back out onto the streets,” Sanfelippo said.
Republican lawmakers today will hold a press conference to introduce a law enforcement support package. According to Assembly leadership, there are 13,576 law enforcement officers in Wisconsin – the lowest number in over a decade.
Rep. Joe Sanfelippo is our guest today on this edition of PowerUp, Empower Wisconsin’s podcast.
