Toy soldier and Trump’s yapping lapdog David Clarke has more dishonor to add to his already dishonorable history as Milwaukee County sheriff. On Monday, three staffers at the jail Clarke ran were charged with felonies in the dehydration death of 38-year-old Terrill Thomas.
Lt. Kashka Meadors and correctional officer James Ramsey-Guy are each charged with neglecting an inmate, a felony. Sheriff’s Maj. Nancy Evans is charged with felony misconduct in office and misdemeanor obstruction. Clarke, who oversaw the jail until his retirement last August, was not charged in the matter.
Prosecutors allege that Meadors gave the order to shut off water in 38-year-old Terrill Thomas’s solitary confinement cell in April 2016 and that Ramsey-Guy was the jail staffer who physically closed the pipes, according to the Journal Sentinel.
After Thomas died, this group of torturers tried very hard to cover up their dumb and cruel actions. The problem is that these are dumb and cruel people and their actions could not be glossed over.
A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation exposed details of Thomas' death, including incomplete investigative work by the Milwaukee Police Department, which had neglected to interview fellow inmates who witnessed Thomas' death. Detectives interviewed additional witnesses once the Journal Sentinel reported the lapses.
But less you think this is one of these “bad apples” stories about law enforcement under former Sheriff Clarke, it isn’t. This was the drill.
The practice of cutting off water to an inmate is against the jail's written regulations, the complaint says, but Ramsey-Guy said it was common practice. Within three weeks of Thomas' death, water was cut to two other inmates' cells, according to the complaint.
"The incidents demonstrate an institutional practice of punitively shutting off water to unruly inmates," it said.
Clarke’s Milwaukee County Jail has a history as something of a house of horrors with 10 people dying there between 2008 and 2013, and Sheriff Clarke doing his best Joe Arpaio impression, reports the Washington Post.
Scandal has plagued the Milwaukee County Jail for years, and inmates and their families have long decried what they call mistreatment by jail staff. The tough-talking Clarke retired in August to join a political action committee supporting President Trump. Clarke was known for waking up inmates with bullhorns, eliminating prisoner programs and dishing out harsh punishments to wayward prisoners.
Clarke resigned from his position last September with the hopes that he would quickly get work in the Trump administration. That hasn’t panned out so far—though he continues to get orange dust all over his nose tweeting away like a publicist for Trump online.