Detective charged with battery and domestic abuse
A Milwaukee police detective arrested after allegedly punching and kicking his live-in girlfriend has been charged with one count of misdemeanor battery and domestic abuse, according to a criminal complaint.
Jason E. Rodriguez, 39, is accused of striking the woman with plates, throwing her to the floor and repeatedly stomping on her head Nov. 20 in their home in Greenfield, according to the complaint.
The woman received 13 stitches for an injury on her right leg and also suffered a fractured pinky finger, among other injuries, according to Greenfield police.
Rodriguez has been suspended from the Milwaukee Police Department, which is conducting an internal investigation into the incident.
This isn’t Rodriguez’s first arrest. He was fired from the department in 2002 after an earlier criminal conviction, but the firing was overturned by the Fire and Police Commission.
His problems began shortly after he was hired as a police aide in 1997 at age 18.
In June 1998, he was ticketed for underage drinking at Summerfest, according to police records. Rodriguez told his supervisor he was merely holding a beer for a friend who was in the restroom. But the Milwaukee County sheriff’s sergeants who ticketed him said Rodriguez admitted drinking “one or two beers.”
He was suspended for one day for drinking and another five days for lying.
Rodriguez’s first drunken-driving offense occurred less than six months later, on Dec. 24, 1998, court records show.
Rodriguez became a recruit officer in 2000, when he was 21.
Fourteen months later, Rodriguez was charged with second-offense drunken driving and obstruction, both misdemeanors, after he reported his car stolen in Madison.
According to the criminal complaint: Rodriguez told Madison Police Officer Jimmy Minton he had parked his Jeep on the street around 4 or 5 a.m. Nov. 10, 2001, and walked several blocks to a gas station for directions. When Rodriguez came back about half an hour later, he found the Jeep had been struck by another vehicle, he told Minton.
“Officer Minton concluded that Mr. Rodriguez had in fact collided with another object and was attempting to cover up a hit-and-run violation,” the complaint says.
As the result of a plea agreement with Dane County prosecutors, Rodriguez pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charge of second-offense drunken driving and was ticketed for a less serious obstruction charge — a county ordinance violation rather than a crime. He was sentenced to 15 days in jail and fined $800. His driver’s license was revoked for a year.
He attended a chemical dependency program for two months, according to a letter in his court file.