Clarke rips Barrett in post

Sheriff brings up State Fair attack on mayor

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. enjoys dishing it out, but he certainly can’t take it. A day after being chided by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett for being largely missing in action, Clarke responded with a rant on his county Facebook page mocking Barrett for the time he was beaten severely while trying to protect a grandmother and her 1-year-old granddaughter near State Fair Park in 2009.

“The last time Tom Barrett showed up at a crime scene he got his ass kicked by a drunk, tire-ironwielding man who beat him within inches of his life,” Clarke said in the lengthy post Friday. “The milquetoast mayor trying to play cop foolishly thought he could simply talk the man who beat him senseless into backing down. Bet he won’t try that again!”

Clarke then ends the post with a threat.

“If you had to call for help, who would you rather see show up, me or timid Tom?” Clarke asked. “Time to crawl back into your hole Tom, unless you want some more of this because I have some.”

Patrick Curley, chief of staff to Barrett, said the sheriff had crossed a line with his Facebook post.

“To dismiss and to minimize the actions the mayor took to protect the lives of a woman and child is unconscionable and a sad and true reflection of the sheriff himself,” Curley said. “David Clarke can find no new lows, no new depths to sink to.”

On Wednesday, the fourth-term Democratic mayor described Clarke as an absentee sheriff focused on his conservative television career instead of public safety. Clarke has spent much of the past year acting as a surrogate for President Donald Trump and hawking his new book.

“I think he’s got a great gig going right now. He’s fightin’ crime one conservative cable TV show at a time,” Barrett said. He added that most people in the know would agree that the sheriff “rode his horse out of town a long time ago.”

Clarke offered a short reply to the Journal Sentinel in response to the criticism. But he waited until Friday to vent his anger.

“Timid Tom should leave policing to the professionals like me, and stick to coming up with a plan to reduce the violence, carjackings, random shootings that leave children dead, and the burglary ring currently plaguing the north side of Milwaukee,” Clarke wrote, posting a photo of himself with heavily armed deputies and one of Barrett wearing a cast on his fractured right hand after the State Fair Park incident.

Anthony Peters, who was 21 at the time, was sentenced to 12 years behind bars for his attack on the mayor.

Clarke said on Facebook that former Mayor John Norquist handed Barrett “a pretty good city.” Actually, former Acting Mayor Marvin Pratt ran the city for three months after Norquist stepped down, a detail Clarke should remember since he lost in the mayor’s primary contest to Pratt and Barrett in 2004.

But after ripping the mayor for having the city “circling the drain with no end in sight,” the sheriff — who runs as a Democrat because he can’t win in Milwaukee County otherwise — went back to ridiculing Barrett.

“Whoever told Barrett it was a good idea to come out of hiding and take shots at me gave him some bad advice,” said Clarke, who appeared to be in Milwaukee late last week. “I will give Tom ‘Mr. Peepers’ Barrett this much credit however — he would know what a crime scene looks like because Milwaukee is full of them.”