Supervisor candidate slammed police
County Board hopeful Sparkle Ashley bashed cops in vulgar Facebook posts.
Sparkle Ashley, a candidate for the Milwaukee County Board, has been running her campaign by the book.
Completing a training program for female Democratic candidates: Check.
Putting some of her own money into the campaign: Check.
Scoring endorsements from state and local officials and labor groups: Check.
Printing mailers playing up public safety: Check.
But there is one thing that Ashley forgot to do. She failed to scrub her FaceOne book page of all her inflammatory criticism of Milwaukee’s finest.
“Every day that I am alive my hatred grows for the Milwaukee police department!” Ashley wrote on Jan. 5, 2014. “I have NEVER had a good experience no matter the circumstances! I have an idea, how about all you dumb (expletive) jump off the highest building in downtown Milwaukee! No one will miss you I promise!”
The post ended with four incendiary hashtags, including one that says “f--the police.”
In another 2014 post, Ashley wrote: “I can not believe that the police still turn on their sirens to run lights!! Oh how my hatred for them grows!”
Ashley, a social worker, began posting about local police a year earlier.
“The Milwaukee Police Department is a joke!” she wrote on Aug. 9, 2013. “I have no respect for any of them and between them and all the dummies out here killing people they are going to destroy this city instead of making it better.” Ashley then emphasized that she goes to work every day to pay the salaries of Milwaukee cops, who she said then mistreat people. “I’ll fight to the end,” she concludes.
On the same day, Ashley posted that the city was wasting its money by buying police cars and providing police training because “they dumb (expletive) don’t use or forget how to use.” She concluded: “Just because you are a punk (expletive) police officer does not mean you get to mistreat people!”
The posts were available online earlier this month. But it appears that all but
two have since been removed.
Ashley, 31, explained her posts by saying she was a much more angry person four years ago. She said she no longer endorses her earlier “explicit commentary.”
“While I regret the language used in those posts, I am also saddened that very little has changed for black people in Milwaukee,” she said in an email. “There has long been a breach in trust between community members and police, and that breach fosters the frustration that I exhibited at that time.”
If elected, Ashley said she will “demand accountability and transparency from all law enforcement.”
Shortly after sending her statement to the Journal Sentinel, Ashley posted it on her campaign page on Facebook, hoping to get ahead of this column.
The issue is a gimme for her opponent, Supervisor Deanna Alexander, the most conservative County Board member. The Milwaukee police and deputy sheriffs’ unions have endorsed Alexander in the April general election.
Alexander tore into Ashley for her past Facebook posts.
“Being critical of government is important, but disdain for law enforcement is entirely different and unacceptable,” said the second-term supervisor. “Milwaukeeans want safe neighborhoods and I know how valuable our men and women in blue are to our community.”
Even one of the groups supporting Ashley, the Wisconsin Working Families Party, took exception to Ashley’s over-the-top posts, even if it is not rescinding its endorsement.
“Sparkle’s past comments are unacceptable,” said Maria Langholz, spokeswoman for the group, “and we remain committed to supporting her campaign.”
Ashley’s campaign literature and website offer a very different image of the Democratic candidate.
On one of her flyers, she poses in front of the Milwaukee County sheriff ’s monument while calling for hiring more sheriff’s deputies.
“I am running because our neighborhoods aren’t safe anymore,” Ashley says in the mailer. “We need representatives who are willing to stand up and fight to increase public safety.”
Her tone was much different in 2014. After one of her more bombastic posts, a Facebook friend asked Ashley what was fueling her anger at Milwaukee law enforcement.
She offered a vague explanation. “Nothing happened with me personally,” she wrote on Jan. 5, 2014. “It’s just that whenever I need them to do something to protect my girls or one of my clients it’s always something.
“Then when something bad happens they tend to point the finger at others because they don’t give a (expletive)! I can only advocate so much and I’ve really reached my breaking point with the police!”
But in her statement last week — some four years after the posts — Ashley said she “experienced multiple incidents of harassment and dissatisfaction with MPD.” She then cites two incidents, though she offered no dates or other details.
In one case, she said she called police after being threatened by a client, but her concerns fell on deaf ears. The other occurred while driving her husband’s new car.
“I was pulled over on suspicion of theft, thrown to the ground and surrounded by a dozen officers, only to be told what I already knew: they made a mistake,” Ashley wrote. “No apology was offered.”
Ashley was married in September 2013, which was before two of her antipolice posts but after two others.
Contacted late last week, Ashley declined to discuss her two run-ins with police. She said she was working and couldn’t talk about her campaign. She did not return calls after that.
Her campaign also did not respond to questions posted on her Facebook page.
Alexander, her general election foe, said Ashley is not walking back her antipolice rhetoric.
“I’m concerned that we have a candidate for public office here who has been caught telling cops to kill themselves and only regrets the vulgarity she used, not the actual message she sent,” Alexander said.