Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who likes to wear a cowboy hat and ride a horse in parades, is best known nationally as a (rejected) candidate for Trump’s Homeland Security chief. Locally, he’s a highly controversial attention-seeker. And, it seems, an all-around jerk.
It seems that last Sunday a Milwaukee resident named Dan Black was flying home from a Dallas wedding when he recognized Clarke on the plane. He asked Clarke if he was the (infamous) sheriff, and when Clarke said yes, Black just shook his head and moved on to his seat.
After deplaning in Milwaukee, Black was met by “six Milwaukee deputies and two dogs” and was “detained, questioned and then escorted out of the airport.”
That wasn’t the end of it. After Black filed a complaint, Clarke taunted him on the sheriff’s office’s official Facebook page by posting a photo of Black with the blurb, “Cheer up, snowflake. If Sheriff Clarke were to really harass you, you wouldn’t be around the whine about it.” This from a guy who, instead of confronting Black himself, hid behind six deputies and two dogs.
Clarke’s office also released a statement saying, “Next time he or anyone else pulls this stunt on a plane they may get knocked out. The Sheriff said he does not have to wait for some goof to assault him. He reserves the reasonable right to pre-empt a possible assault.” (This actually sounds like a threat rising to prosecutable assault.)
All of this was prompted by a head shake. Black never said anything to Clarke, other than asking if he was the sheriff.
Oh, and there’s also this: “At least four people died last year in the jail run by Clarke, including an infant and a man who died of thirst as he reportedly begged for water for days. Clarke has blamed a health care worker and the inmates themselves for the deaths.” And I won’t even get into what Clarke has said about people who want to protest Trump’s election.
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As the image above shows, Clarke isn’t universally popular among his constituents.