By Peter Cameron, For Wisconsin Watch One officer was accused by a supervisor of snoozing in his squad car while on duty. Another had multiple drunken run-ins with police, including after bar fights. A third repeatedly sent lewd photos to a female officer. All of them were fired or forced out. And all of them […]
Tag: Wisconsin Watch
Posted inBreaking
Could ‘baby bonds’ close Wisconsin’s racial wealth gap?
By Ben Baker and Zhen Wang, Wisconsin Watch On a recent weekday, Donald Robert Greengrass Jr., 29, was smiling, greeting locals, and chatting with staff at his restaurant in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The young entrepreneur — wearing long braids and sporting a tattoo of an eagle on his right forearm and a sea turtle on […]
Posted inGovernment, Local news, Politics
Your Right to Know: Wisconsin Lawmakers Seek to Keep Their Misconduct Secret
By Bill Lueders WISCONSIN- Even Staush Gruszynski didn’t want this to happen. The former state Assembly representative from Green Bay is the subject of an ongoing legal battle over records regarding his sexual harassment of a female staffer. A judge ruled in late June that the Legislature violated the state’s open records law in denying […]
Posted inCORONAVIRUS
FEMA offers generous funeral aid to those grieving COVID-19 deaths. Getting it isn’t easy.
By Noelle Alviz-Gransee, Wisconsin WatchKristin Byrne, TMJ4 News Shenora Staten-Jordan felt lost when her father, Gary Lee Staten, died of COVID-19 in May. She hadn’t expected to lose him so soon at age 61 — or for a contagious disease to hinder her goodbye. All of that only strengthened her Milwaukee family’s wishes to give Staten […]
Posted inCommunity, Letter to the Editor
Your Right to Know: No Private Email Accounts for Public Business
By Tom Kamenick, Wisconsin Watch Imagine that a developer has been lobbying your local town board to approve a controversial development. You file a record request asking for all emails between that developer and the board’s three members. None of them have official government email accounts, so they search their personal emails. Two members each […]
Posted inLocal news, Schools
Drop out or drown in debt? Many Black students in Wisconsin face stark choices in paying for college
By Alyssa Huglen, Wisconsin Watch When Clint Myrick graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2010, he left with two consequential pieces of paper: a diploma for a bachelor’s degree in music education — and an eye-popping student loan bill. The Milwaukee native was one of the first in his family to attend college, and […]
Posted inCORONAVIRUS
‘He shouldn’t have had to die’: COVID-19 infects half of Wisconsin inmates, five times the overall state rate
By Vanessa SwalesWisconsin Watch Calvin Johnson spent his final weeks at Prairie du Chien Correctional Institution wracked in pandemic anxiety, a former cellmate recalled. He closely tracked COVID-19’s spread in and outside of the medium-security state prison — eyeing daily infection counts in surrounding Crawford County and across Wisconsin. Johnson, who grew up in Milwaukee and […]
Posted inCORONAVIRUS
Wisconsin’s No. 1 mink farming industry now seen as a COVID-19 risk
By Kate Golden For Wisconsin Watch The first sign of trouble was that the mink stopped eating, said Hugh Hildebrandt, one of two main mink vets in Wisconsin. Next came coughing and sneezing, lethargy and labored breathing. Hildebrandt had worked with mink for 30 years. He wrote the Merck Veterinary Manual section on mink. But […]
Posted inCORONAVIRUS
So you’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19. What next?
By Bram Sable-Smith WPR/Wisconsin Watch Morganne Seiner struggled to decide whether to visit her sister’s family in Marshfield, Wisconsin for Christmas. The 29-year-old Waterloo resident is five-months pregnant with her first child, a girl. She knew that traveling could put herself and the baby at risk of exposure to the coronavirus. On the other hand, […]
Posted inHealth, Local news
‘The happiness and joy has been sucked out of me’: Wisconsin dairy farmers face mental health crisis
By Jack Kelly For Wisconsin Watch It was Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016. David Fischer had just arrived for work at his dairy farm in Rio, Wisconsin. A slight breeze punctuated the freezing, grey morning. His drive to work is just 2 minutes. From where he parked his pickup truck on the farm’s gravel driveway, he […]
Posted inGovernment, Local news, Politics
Wisconsin caucuses pose thorny safety issues during pandemic
By Anya van Wagtendonk Wisconsin Watch This article is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. Every January across Wisconsin, some towns and villages hold time-honored, in-person caucuses to nominate candidates for local offices. Residents gather in town or village halls, schools, and other community spaces to […]
Posted inElections, Government, Local news, Politics
Wisconsin’s nonvoters could be a powerful bloc — but barriers, disillusionment stand in the way
By Nora Eckert Wisconsin Watch This article is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. When Angela Lang reflects on the thousands of conversations she and other members of her community organization, BLOC, have had with Milwaukee residents, one floats to the top of her mind. Angela […]
Posted inCORONAVIRUS
A Wisconsin hospital promised to stop suing most patients during the pandemic. Then it filed 200 lawsuits.
By Bram Sable-SmithWisconsin Watch/WPR Alysa Gummow didn’t know what to think in October when the letters from bankruptcy law firms arrived in the mail. She had filed for bankruptcy in 2017 to restructure nearly $50,000 in debt — mostly stemming from a hip surgery two years earlier. But that was resolved. Why was she getting […]
Posted inElections, Government, Local news, Politics
Wisconsin GOP lawmakers call for tighter voting rules; Dems call election hearing a ‘sham’
By Anya van Wagtendonk and Nora Eckert Wisconsin Watch This article is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. About two hours into a joint legislative hearing Friday, state Rep. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, said he had enough of the “sham” gathering called by Republican lawmakers to investigate […]
Posted inCommunity
Aggressive policing escalates violence at protests, research shows. A former Madison police chief touts a better way.
By Clara Neupert Wisconsin Watch At least 1,500 young people gathered on Madison, Wisconsin’s Mifflin Street in April 1973 for a block party featuring street dancing, potato salad and sunshine. People drank beer, smoked weed and tossed Frisbees in the neighborhood near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus known informally as Miffland. Police officers observed the […]
