Milwaukee Man Detained After Shaking His Head At Sheriff

MILWAUKEE, WI — For all that can be said about tough-talking lawman David A. Clarke Jr. — not that plenty hasn’t already been said about the Milwaukee County sheriff who unapologetically says exactly what he thinks about hot-button issues like the Black Lives Matter movement and is under consideration for a position in President Donald Trump’s administration — no one can say he isn’t making good on promises to run his office with transparency. Some of the things the sheriff freely admits to saying do often leave those on the other side of the argument shaking their heads in disbelief, though. And, in a bizarre incident earlier this month unfolding in public documents on the sheriff’s office Facebook page, it was exactly that gesture — no, really, a 24-year-old Milwaukee man shook his head at Clarke — that prompted the sheriff to order him detained at General Mitchell International Airport.

After the head-shaker, Don Black, lodged an official complaint, Clarke retorted on Facebook that Black is a “snowflake” — a term Trump supporters popularized in describing college students and millennials who protested election results last November. And as Trump has done with Twitter, Clarke used Facebook as his own bully pulpit, warning on the sheriff's office social media account that if “anyone else pulls this stunt on a plane they may get knocked out.”

Head-shaking, of course, isn’t a criminal offense.

Still, what happened aboard American Airlines Flight 1534 from Dallas-Fort Worth to Milwaukee around noon on Jan. 15 is sure to be written into the increasing body of folklore surrounding the former homicide detective who was appointed Milwaukee County sheriff in 2002, then returned to office by voters four times.

Volumes of it precede this latest skirmish. Clarke has a long history of incendiary remarks, including calling Trump protesters “anarchists” who “must be quelled.” He boasted “you heard it here first” in an October 2015 tweet speculating the “Black Lives Matter will join forces with ISIS to bring down our constituted republic.” He's also a member of an anti-government extremist group, Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the organization that keeps track of hate groups.

Clarke has not only survived the criticism, but seems to invite it, if only to bolster his status as an authentic American hero among law-and-order conservatives. He is a regular on Fox News and has the backing of the powerful National Rifle Association, whose members cheered Clarke’s suggestion in a keynote address to add an assault rifle to the national seal.

There’s no reason to think the latest controversy will end differently.

Clarke’s defense is something along the lines that Black looked at him funny. The sheriff wrote on Facebook that he doesn’t have to wait “for some goof” to assault him and that he “reserves the reasonable right to preempt a possible assault.”

In his version of events outlined in the complaint, Black claims Clarke overreacted and there was nothing menacing about the encounter.

Black wrote that he wasn’t even sure the man seated in the first-class cabin was Milwaukee County’s infamous sheriff. He had reason to be confused. The man seated on the airplane wasn’t wearing the trademark 10-gallon cowboy hat Clarke wears on TV, and he was sporting Dallas Cowboys gear. That seemed odd to Black, given the Green Bay Packers were playing the Cowboys in NFL divisional playoffs later that day.

So he asked the man if he was the Milwaukee County sheriff. Clarke said he was. Black said he shook his head — because, Packers — and was heading to his own seat in the back of the plane when Clarke asked if he had a problem.

“I shook my head ‘no’ again and continued to my seat,” Black wrote. “I was surprised that he was wearing Dallas Cowboys gear, as I hadn’t seen the media stories about his Dallas fandom (I have since seen them). I intentionally did not say anything more to him because I did not want to make a scene or get in trouble as a Milwaukee man did in September when confronting Clarke on an airplane. I just moved on and took my seat.”

“When I asked for clarification, the deputies said they couldn’t tell me, and when I asked if they even knew the context of my ‘remarks,’ they responded ‘no,’ ” Black wrote in the complaint. “After questioning me for about 15 minutes, asking me who I was, why I was in Dallas, what my views of Sheriff Clarke were and essentially treating me as a threat, they escorted me all the way out of the airport in front of everyone there.”

Black wrote in the complaint that he was publicly humiliated by Clarke’s alleged “abuse of power” and claims even the deputies who questioned him “agreed the stop was ‘stupid’ and ‘ridiculous.’ ”

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The kerfuffle has reignited his critics and refueled calls for the sheriff to resign or face a recall election. In hundreds of comments on the Facebook post linking to Black’s complaint, critics attacked from every direction, many flat out mocking Clarke and some faulting him for using the official government Facebook page to settle political and personal scores. Others inextricably linked Clarke’s response to Black’s gesture to the sheriff’s fervent support for Trump.

The Milwaukee Coalition Against Trump immediately responded with this:

“We are appalled by Sheriff Clarke’s belligerent remarks threatening to ‘knock out’ anyone who shakes their head at him. Clarke’s offensive and negligent behavior illustrates the hateful agenda of Trump and his accomplices, and why this agenda must be stopped. At the rally and march on Friday a thousand people will join together to shake their heads at Sheriff Clarke.”

Clarke said he would not attend and instead would be in Washington, D.C., for Trump’s inauguration.“Sheriff Clarke regrets that he cannot attend this juvenile, leftist, anti-cop tantrum,” the response read. “He is pleased that he has their attention however.”

Clarke is a Democrat and campaigns as such, but he stepped in as a surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail and was among the law-and-order themed speakers at the Republican National Convention last summer. Clarke has met with Trump since the election and had been mentioned as a possible secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

On Friday, the U.S. Senate confirmed John F. Kelly for that position. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Clarke had been a top consideration for the post and that he will be involved in the Trump administration at some level.

At a pre-inauguration party dubbed the “DeploraBall” and organized by some of the president’s prominent supporters on the alt-right, Clarke distanced himself from his party’s most liberal factions.

“You may know me, you may not,” Clarke told a reportedly fired-up crowd. “I am one of those bare-knuckle fighters. When I hear people say we need to reach across the aisle and work with the Democrats, you know what I say? The only reason I’ll be reaching across the aisle is to grab one of them by the throat.”

It wasn’t his first salvo against the party’s left. Last August, after riots broke out in Milwaukee to protest a police shooting of an armed suspect, Clarke called in the National Guard and blamed “liberal Democrats.”

“The Milwaukee riots should be the last time the policies of liberal Democrats are held up as anything other than misery-inducing, divisive, exploitative and racist manipulation of the urban populations,” he said at the time. “Unfortunately they won’t.”

Photo of Sheriff David Clarke speaking at the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons