The Right Is Using Waukesha As a Weapon Against Bail Reform [View all]

Brooks has a lengthy criminal history, with more than a dozen arrests going back to 1999, the Journal Sentinel reported. On Monday, the office of Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said Brooks’ bail was set “inappropriately low” and “not consistent” with the DA’s “approach toward matters involving violent crime,” and pledged an internal review of the bail recommendation.

But although Chisholm’s office quickly said Brooks’ low bail was a mistake, conservative politicians and commentators immediately seized on the story as evidence that the broader push for bail reform is at fault for the tragedy.

In particular, they highlighted a 2018 tweet from Chisholm—who was first elected in 2006—promoting an assistant district attorney’s quote on the office’s effort to “not keeping individuals held unnecessarily on cash bail in the Milwaukee County Jail.”


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On Tuesday, Masters tweeted a screenshot from a 2013 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report on Chisholm’s office’s diversion programs for nonviolent drug offenders, which references a Chisholm quote from six years before that. “Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into treatment program, who's going to go out and kill somebody?” Chisholm told the Journal Sentinel in 2007. “You bet. Guaranteed. It's guaranteed to happen. It does not invalidate the overall approach.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3abqmn/waukesha-darrell-brooks-bail-reform