On February 25, 2022, Darreon Parker-Bell walked into Milwaukee Police District 5 with a semiautomatic handgun. He spoke briefly with an officer about a friend who had died in custody. Then he opened fire. Prosecutors said one round punched through a partition inches from an officer’s head. Three civilians and police employees were in that lobby. Officers returned fire. Parker-Bell fled armed, ignored commands to drop the gun, and was shot. Nobody else was hit. Milwaukee later installed bulletproof glass at all seven stations because of that afternoon.
In 2023 he pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon, under a not-guilty-by-reason-of-mental-disease-or-defect plea. A court committed him to the Department of Health Services for 30 years. That was the deal the system struck with a man who shot up a police station.
Less than four years later, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Nidhi Kashyap ruled he is a candidate for conditional release and ordered a community treatment plan. A status conference is set for December 7. The Milwaukee Police Association President, Alexander Ayala, asked how a man who opened fire on officers and civilians is already headed back toward the street. Former officer Steven Holmblad, who was in court, said mental illness deserves treatment, but public safety also matters.
Kashyap ran unopposed for office in April 2022 and took the bench that August. David Crowley put his support behind her and formally endorsed her. The line she posted from him is the tell: she has
“a well-rounded understanding of our system, and how we must improve.”
Not how we apply the statutes. How we “improve” the system. But what does “improve” the system actually look like? My assumption is that the Crowley’s dominant worldview on this issue means measuring courts and prosecutors by racial outcomes first and by the defendant’s conduct second. A judge looking for a reason to move a police-station shooter toward the street is not a surprise under that theory. It is the theory working as designed.
When a circuit judge or district attorney leaves mid-term, the governor fills the seat. The appointee serves out the term. Voters get a say later, often after incumbency has already done its work. I would even bargain to say that most people don’t pay attention to their local district attorney elections and certainly their local judges races.
Eight years of Tony Evers have not been a insignificant in this department. He appointed 29 of the 71 district attorneys now serving, roughly 40% of the prosecutors in this state. He appointed 68 of the 261 circuit judges now on the bench, about 26%. Separate branches on paper, but people fail to see the huge impact the executive branch has on the judicial.
Representation is a fine talking point until it becomes the sorting mechanism. A governor who treats the bench as a diversity project, and a county executive who treats justice as a racial-outcomes project, are not hunting for the judge who reads the statute and applies it.
Wisconsin does not need judges who shop for a reason to let people out. Voters treat the governor’s race as a fight over taxes, schools, and veto pens, which it is. However, the fight over who gets to appoint district attorneys and appoint judges is a little known fact about the governor’s authority that should not be over looked.
