Police hasty to interview accused developer
Investigation triggered independent ethics probe
Milwaukee police hastily arranged to interview prominent real estate developer Kalan Haywood, Sr. at the Sojourner Family Peace Center about a sexual assault allegation perhaps before it was wise to do so because he was about to join the board of a newly formed fundraising organization for the department.
Documents released Thursday about the investigation reveal police rushed to interview Haywood in August 2019 despite the objections of the accuser and the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s
Office. It was also done without notifying the assigned investigator to the case, who was on vacation at the time.
The timing of that interview, which was conducted by a detective who had little time to prepare, could have benefited Haywood and put the case against him at a disadvantage, according to the documents.
The interview was the subject of an independent probe by the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission that examined a series of ethical questions raised during Haywood’s sexual assault investigation.
The probe, conducted by former U.S. Attorney Mel Johnson, found evidence that Haywood’s interview was rapidly arranged after several high-ranking
Milwaukee Police Department officials, including Chief Alfonso Morales, inquired about the status of the case because Haywood was being courted to join the newly formed Milwaukee Police Foundation as a board member.
MPF was formed in the fall of 2019 to raise money for the police department, according to the report.
Johnson’s report stopped short of saying the pressure to quickly interview Haywood rose to the level of misconduct.
But it nevertheless resulted in an interview that took place in an inappropriate setting – a domestic violence shelter for women that had expressly forbid police from interviewing suspects there – and ignored the concern of its assigned investigators and Haywood’s
accuser, who worried about retaliation from Haywood, a well-connected real estate developer, if he knew her name before it was necessary.
Police informed the accuser of the interview prior to it happening and assured her her name would not be revealed. But a recording of the interview showed that police did tell Haywood the name of his accuser, the report said.
Haywood denies the sexual assault allegation and has not been arrested or charged. The case is under review by the district attorney’s office.
The Journal Sentinel first reported on the interview in December 2019 after obtaining video showing that the chairman of the Milwaukee Fire and Police
Commission accompanied Haywood to it.
Expedited interview
The accuser first reported the sexual assault to police in late July 2019. She said Haywood drugged and raped her nearly five years ago.
She said she waited so long to report it because she feared retaliation and was also concerned Haywood’s connections in the city could influence the investigation. Haywood’s real estate company, the Haywood Group, has received millions of taxpayer-backed loans for development projects over the years.
The case was assigned to an officer in the Special Crimes Division, Zachary Thoms, and an assistant district attorney, Abbey Marzick, the report said.
Over the course of the next few weeks, a captain in the Special Crimes Division, James Corbett, received several phone calls from Morales and Erik Gulbrandson, Morales’ administrative lieutenant, who inquired about the status of the case, the report said.
Corbett told investigators it was the only time in his career the chief called him about a case.
At the time, Morales and Gulbrandson were in the process of establishing a separate, private organization to raise money for the Police Department. Haywood was invited to be a board member of the Milwaukee Police Foundation one week before police received the sexual assault allegation against him, the report said.
When word about the allegation reached Morales and other high-ranking officials, they wanted to verify whether the allegation was legitimate in order to avoid the embarrassment of an MPF board member getting charged with a sex crime, the report said.
Morales and Gulbrandson admitted to calling Corbett about the case but denied trying to influence the investigation. In his report, Johnson wrote that their conduct didn’t rise to the level of misconduct given that its their prerogative to check the status of any investigation.
Although Corbett said those phone calls had nothing to do with the timing of the interview, Johnson determined that Morales “must have told or at least implied to Corbett that he needed to know quickly because it affected MPF business.”
When the situation came to a head on Aug. 13, 2019, the assigned investigators, Thoms and Marzick, were on vacation. Corbett directed a detective named Steven Wells to interview Haywood as soon as possible and they arranged to meet the same day. Wells had no previous knowledge of the case and had little time to prepare, the report said.
The interview was held at the Sojourner Family Peace Center, which also hosts a police station. The two organizations have a written agreement to not interview or detain suspects there, but nobody involved, including Morales, knew about it, the report said. The agreement was made under the administration of former Chief Edward Flynn.
Marzick and one other assistant district attorney were informed of the decision to hold the interview early and they “strongly objected” to it, the report said. Thoms was not informed. He and Marzick later told Johnson the timing was ill-conceived because they wanted to gather more evidence before approaching Haywood, who didn’t know about the investigation prior to the interview.
The accuser, meanwhile, was “horrified” when told in advance of the interview, fearing for her physical safety if Haywood knew who made the allegation. Corbett told her that her identity wouldn’t be revealed in the interview, but it was, the report said.
‘Good faith disagreement’
Corbett defended his decision to expedite the interview, saying the type of crime alleged was serious and deserved urgency, the report said. Morales also agreed with that sentiment.
In his report, Johnson said the urgency surrounding the interview was “not necessarily unreasonable” and didn’t rise to the level of misconduct. But it could have been to Haywood’s advantage.
“That timing seems based on a good faith disagreement as to what was best, not upon any provable misconduct,” he wrote. “A strong argument can be made for the proposition that the Haywood interview should not have been done as early as it was.”
Three hours after Wells interviewed Haywood at the Sojourner center, Morales met with Haywood during an MPF meeting and asked him to withdraw as a board member, to which he agreed, the report said.
‘Unusual’ to interview at Sojourner
Apart from the timing, Johnson determined that Haywood wouldn’t have received any benefit from the setting of the interview, the Sojourner center, but did acknowledge that it was “unusual.”
Although nobody who was interviewed by Johnson was aware of the written agreement that MPD had with the Sojourner center forbidding such interviews, police did know it was “frowned upon” to interview suspects there, the report said.
Wells, the detective who interviewed Haywood, said maybe one suspect a year is interviewed there.
The reason the Sojourner center was selected as the setting was convenience, the report said. Haywood was contacted about the interview the same day it was conducted, and he happened to be working out of an office across the street from Sojourner at the time.
Carmen Pitre, the executive director of the Sojourner center, told Johnson it’s important not to mix victims, children and suspects in the same facility. Victims cannot be afraid to run into suspects, or perhaps their own assailants, at the center.
Pitre said police did not ask her to make an exception to the rule that day and did not know it happened until a reporter informed her of it.
Haywood’s accuser was unhappy that Sojourner was used as the setting of the interview, the report said, because she visited it several times to meet with Thoms, the assigned investigator.