Officer appeals demotion
Mishandling of sex assault case at issue
A Milwaukee police detective demoted after a sexual assault suspect was left free to sexually assault an 82-year-old woman at a bus stop in July 2015 told a panel of Fire and Police Commissioners Wednesday that while he made some mistakes, he did thoroughly follow up on the case.
Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn demoted Brendan M. Dolan to the rank of officer in April, saying he violated the department’s core value of competency for failure to properly investigate an earlier sexual assault by the man. A hearing on Dolan’s appeal of that discipline began Wednesday.
In his complaint against Dolan, Flynn said a fingerprint found at the earlier assault, which occurred in April 2015, should have prompted Dolan to issue what is known as an investigative alert for the suspect, Stephen Ray Robinson, who was stopped by police six times between the two sexual assaults. The alert would have informed those officers Robinson was wanted for questioning in the April case, according to testimony from Internal Affairs Sgt. Thomas Hines. Had the alert been in place, the July assault could have been prevented, he said.
But earlier Wednesday, Dolan pointed out that he was not immediately assigned to the April case, which was handled by officers in District 7. Those officers initially ruled the case “baseless” because the victim, also an elderly woman, said she had been at a grocery store, but surveillance video from the store did not confirm her account.
One of the officers did some further research, locating video of the woman that had been recorded at a different business.
District patrol officers often are the first responders to sexual assault complaints. If they believe it is warranted, those officers or their supervisors call in investigators from the Sensitive Crimes Division, who specialize in sexual assault, child abuse and missing people.
Dolan said he was called in to assist the District 7 officers in the April case. Those officers, Dolan said, “handled the entire case.” While assisting them, Dolan did a follow-up interview with the victim. He also arranged for her to try to pick out the suspect from a group of photos, but she was not able to.
Dolan, who had finished his yearlong probationary period as a detective less than three months before the April assault, said his shift in Sensitive Crimes, 4 p.m. to midnight, was so understaffed in 2015 it was “insane.”
His supervisor at the time, Lt. Justin Carloni, never told him to issue an investigative alert and did not mention any shortcomings in Dolan’s work until July, Dolan said.
That’s when Robinson confessed to both crimes.
In reporting him to internal affairs, Carloni was trying to cover up his own failures in the earlier investigation, Dolan said.
Carloni countered that he had instructed Dolan to locate and question Robinson and to issue the investigative alert, but Dolan failed to do so.
The investigation of the July assault already has made news because it took more than three hours for police to respond to the woman’s call about being raped by a stranger.
The perpetrator, Robinson, 30, pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault with use of force, a felony, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison and 10 years of extended supervision following his release.
Dolan’s appeal comes a year after two other Milwaukee Police Department members were demoted for mishandling another sexual assault case involving a serial rapist.
That man, Robert C. Brown, was sentenced to 155 years in prison for five armed stranger rapes, four of which occurred after police had already identified him as a suspect in the first attack.
The lead detective on the case, Amy Stolowski, and her sergeant, Emeterio Guiterrez, were demoted in May 2015 to officer rank. The Fire and Police Commission upheld Guiterrez’s demotion, but reversed the decision about Stolowski, restoring her to the rank of detective and giving her a 20-day unpaid suspension instead.