A man accused of gunning down three people within thirty minutes used his taxpayer-funded Milwaukee County Jail tablet to send a witness a message saying ‘stop lying’ and promising that ‘they will pay’. On Friday, a judge took two minutes to ask why violent inmates have those devices at all. Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany gave a more straightforward explanation: David Crowley had approved the scheme which equipped inmates with these devices.
Thomas S. Zollicoffer, who is charged with three counts of first-degree intentional homicide in the Aug. 8 slayings of Vanessa DeHerrera, 26, Scott Bucholz, 29, and Shamarla Hare on August 8. According to the prosecutors, he shot his former girlfriend and Scott Bucholz in an apartment close to the intersection of 21st and Pierce, before riding across town to kill Shamarla Hare. He is currently held on a $1 million bond, and his trial will take place on November 16.
Almost a week after his arrest, Zollicoffer took full advantage of his jail-issued tablet, messaging an associate to tell the witness to ‘stop lying.’ He followed up with a threat: ‘Mark my words, I’ll be out even if it’s only for a short time; they will pay for having everything in motion.’ The witness saw the first two murders. Only then did Judge David Borowski finally yank Zollicoffer’s phone, visitation, mail, and device privileges, except for the ability to contact his lawyer, order him to be isolated in jail, and place a protective order on witness identities.
Then the judge said what county officials will not:
Borowski stated that there is no constitutional or other reason why a defendant should have a tablet while they are in jail, “and it makes no difference to me whether the charges are burglary or armed robbery or, indeed, a case of domestic violence; in this instance it is a triple homicide and this defendant does not need a laptop.”
A.J. Bayatpour, a reporter with CBS 58, put the obvious question again: why is the sheriff’s office handing out tablets to men who have been accused of murder? The sheriff’s office had not replied by late Friday morning.
As Tiffany pointed out, David Crowley not only approved of Milwaukee County’s free tablet program for inmates but also expanded it, which allowed violent criminals and domestic abusers to have access to tablets while in prison. Currently, inmates are using the tablets to threaten witnesses, making more than 1,500 attempts to contact a domestic abuse victim in order to intimidate her, and gaining access to child pornography. This represents a total failure to protect victims, and it occurred during David Crowley’s tenure and with his approval.
In May, the prosecutors stated that Amier Jones Jr., who was detained on charges of domestic violence including stalking, victim intimidation, fleeing and possessing a firearm, had tried to contact his victim over 1,500 times using phones from jail and a county-provided tablet, about 300 of the messages having managed to get through the no-contact order. They also said that he had sent a message to a Milwaukee police officer and had added that officer to a “hit list” by writing “u already on my hit”. The district attorney then requested that Judge Ana Berrios-Schroeder remove the tablet and increase Jones’s bail, but she rejected both requests. The Fraternal Order of Police regarded this as a serious mistake, and the sheriff subsequently transferred Jones to restricted housing and limited his contacts with his attorneys.
Borowski also mentioned another prisoner who used a jail tablet or laptop to intimidate witnesses and to access child pornography. That is not a ‘reintegration tool’; it is a weapon which is being given directly to the very people who the public has paid to keep behind bars.
On March 29, 2022, Milwaukee County entered into an agreement with Inmate Calling Solutions in order to provide phones, video facilities, and tablets to both the jail and the so-called Community Reintegration Center. Crowley signed the agreement. The company carried out the installation, and as a result, every inmate was given a tablet so that they could engage in instant messaging, send emails, access the law library, use educational apps, and, of course, watch movies and television. Although messaging and entertainment still involved a cost, the tablets themselves were provided free of charge. Progressive county supervisors presented this arrangement as an expression of ‘compassion’. They said that families would be able to stay ‘connected’ and that recidivism would magically decrease. Since kickbacks from inmate calls had already caused political embarrassment, the answer was straightforward: free minutes and free tablets for everyone.
Crowley was only at the beginning of his plans. In his 2024 budget, he increased tax-levy spending by $1.9 million in order to provide more free phone and video time for prisoners, and he highlighted the taxpayer-funded benefit in a press release. The ACLU of Wisconsin thanked him by name. In 2025, he inked a three-year extension of the communications contract, securing the use of the tablets until 2028. The tablets remained in the cells, instant messaging continued, and the county carried on its Orwellian practice of referring to inmates as ‘people in our care’.
This is the philosophy that Crowley wants to take to Madison. Soft language. Frightening consequences for everyone except the criminal. Milwaukee County is already living the progressive dream: a jail that hands out devices to triple-homicide defendants, a judge reduced to lecturing the sheriff in open court, and victims who soon realize that ‘no contact’ is merely a suggestion when the county provides the defendant with a tablet.
Tiffany said that, as governor, he would stop the distribution of free tablets to prisoners while at the same time ending tablet access completely for violent offenders, murderers, and sex offenders; when people are in prison, their victims should finally be kept safe from them, and we must never provide violent offenders with another means of terrorizing their victims from within a prison cell.
Prisons are intended to stop crime rather than to provide a platform for it. Having a tablet is not a constitutional right. Simply being able to stream content does not count as rehabilitation. Moreover, a county executive who signs the contract, funds the privilege, and then gives it another three years is not in a position to claim innocence when a man accused of murdering three people begins sending threats from his cell.
Wisconsin voters ought to regard Friday’s hearing as just a preview of what will happen if Crowley has his way; Milwaukee County has already served as the test bed for this progressive experiment, and the victims have had to pay the price. The rest of Wisconsin needn’t suffer the same disaster.
