Pubdate: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 Source: Isthmus (WI) Copyright: 1995 Isthmus Contact: http://www.thedailypage.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/215 Author: Chip Mitchell 'THEY SHOT DADDY' As Scott Bryant's Killer Returns to Regular Police Duty, Folks in Dodge County Are Wondering Whether Drug Cops Are Above the Law. On the evening of April 17th, Scott Bryant left his trailer home just north of Beaver Dam to pick up a repair manual for his hot rod, a tan 1978 Chevy El Camino, then hurried back to cook supper for his 7 year-old son, Colten. After dinner, Bryant, 29, called his mother to ask her to type a school paper he needed to complete a two-year machinist's degree from a technical school. When Colten got out of the shower-- a year earlier the boy had boldly proclaimed he was too old for baths-the two read a book together before bedtime, like any other school night. With Colten nestled to sleep between his Mighty Morphin Power Ranger sheets, Bryant could finally relax. His mornings began as early as 4 a.m., followed by a 40 mile drive to Slinger, where he often put in 10 hours as a tool-and-die apprentice. This week his vacationing boss had left him in charge of the shop. Bryant was looking forward to a date the next night. He was taking a friend of nine years, only recently a romantic interest, to a Madison steak house. By 9:40 p.m., he had fired up a bowl of marijuana and kicked back with his black cat Claws in front of the television. But something stirred outside. Bryant tried to get a look, but two men burst into his living room. One lunged toward him, the other fired a gun. The bullet pierced Bryant's heart. It all happened so fast that Bryant never got a good look at the Dodge County sheriff's deputy who shot him. "The guy's dead," Detective Robert Neuman told a back-up officer at 9:58 p.m. "The gun went off. I don't know how, but I must have pulled the trigger." "Wrath of God" The shot has reverberated across Dodge County like no other event in recent years. It has pitted cop against cop, rekindled a bitter political feud, and raised the stark question of whether the police, in a fit of anti-drug hysteria, murdered a man. At the center of the tragedy is Neuman, 41, perhaps the best-known drug warrior and a political power in his own right. Last year, he snared an appointment to the Beaver Dam school board, which helped him get elected to a three-year term April 4. A member of the Lions Club, the American Legion and St. Patrick's Catholic Church, he also chairs the county Republican Party. Neuman's partisan post is especially potent in Dodge County, where the Democratic Party lies virtually dormant. The county's four state prisons (and a few others within driving distance) convince visitors that everyone in sight is a cop or has a brother who's one. Still, a June 9 finding based on a state investigation of the killing aroused wide-spread suspicion. A district attorney decided the shooting was "negligent" and "not in any form justified", but in a questionable reading of the law, cleared Neuman of criminal charges. The detective has suffered enough, says Sheriff Stephen Fitzgerald. "He has had the wrath of God on him since this happened." In a few days, Fitzgerald adds, the department will return Neuman to his regular duties, and allow him to carry a gun. This prospect has turned anxious whispers into vocal fear. In farmhouses, taverns and even squad cars, folks can't help but wonder why the police shot a guy who possessed less than an ounce of dope, whether anyone but Neuman could beat the rap, and whether he will kill again. "He was totally at fault, and he forgot what he did?" asks unemployed electrician Rae Prisk over a bottle of beer at Doc's Corner on Beaver Dam's main drag. "Shit, what can you say to that?" Over in Horicon, Police Chief Douglas Glamann also questions Neuman's forgetfulness: "The gun is just a machine. It doesn't have its own brain. There's only one person who can tell you why that gun went off." Some in the law enforcement community point to politics. "This is what happens when a sheriff gets too closely tied to a favorite son who volunteered for his campaign," Suggests former Sheriff Ed Nehls, who says he would have suspended Neuman and called for a coroner's inquest. "The sheriff doesn't have the intestinal fortitude to suspend the chair of the Republican Party. And a Dodge County deputy, speaking on condition of anonymity, warns it could get worse: "What if this man goes out and doesn't remember pulling the trigger again? It's scary." Guns Drawn Adorned with junker cars, ungroomed shrubs, kids' bicycles, and piles of gravel to be spread out on dirt roads, the North Hills Trailer Court looks like a place where people struggle to make ends meet. But Sheriff Fitzgerald claims the mobile homes, off Highway 151 about 40 miles northeast of Madison, harbor some of the pushers who have "infiltrated" this county of 90,000 people. "There's a lot of drugs right in that trailer park," he says. After informants reported marijuana purchases from Bryant, Neuman joined Patrol Lt. James Rohr and Deputy Kevin Hill for late-night inspections of his garbage bags. On april 14, citing marijuana traces in Bryant's trash four times in the previous month, the deputies obtained a warrant to search the trailer. Three nights later the three teamed up with Detective Anthony Soblewski for the raid. They had plenty of experience-all but Hill served on the department's SWAT team, while Neuman and Rohr had headed the sheriff's drug effort for years. If anyone knew how to handle a gun, it was Neuman, the SWAT team sniper. In the previous five years alone, he had attended at least 57 classes and conferences on topics ranging from "cannabis detection to "SWAT shoot." The four jogged around to Bryant's front door. Rohr, the only deputy without his gun drawn, told investigators he saw Bryant start for the door, hesitate, then begin to move away. Rohr claims he suspected Bryant was going to destroy evidence, so he knocked, announced they were from the sheriff's department, and used his shoulder to force open the locked door. Witnesses who stood 100 feet from the door dispute Rohr's account, saying the officers did not knock or announce themselves before entering (see sidebar, page nine). Rohr leaped to put Bryant down for handcuffing, while Neuman crossed the door's threshold with his finger on the trigger of a Beretta 92SB in double-action (uncocked) mode. They moved so forcefully and quickly that neighbor Kathryn Patroelj, who watched from her trailer stoop, calls the shooting "an execution." Rohr told a deputy that night that he could feel Neumann's bullet pass his arm. "I don't know how Rohr wasn't shot," Neuman said, shaking his head. An ambulance sped away and a neighbor telephoned Bryant's parents, Boyd and Shirley, of nearby Fox Lake. "The Sheriff's Department didn't even have the guts to call us," says Shirley, who thought the victim was Colten until they arrived at Beaver Dam Community Hospital. "We didn't even know which hospital. We had to guess." At 10:46 p.m., doctors pronounced Bryant dead. "We were never allowed to see him," Shirley adds bitterly. "They didn't even let us say goodbye." The deputies did not take Colten from his bedroom where he hid through most of the commotion, for a full hour after the shooting. When he finally arrived at the hospital, he still did not know the police had killed anyone. An officer noted Boyd's painful words to his grandson. "You have to be strong," he said. "They shot Daddy." A Lot to Lose Hours after the shooting, state investigator's scoured Bryant's trailer, collecting several plastic baggies containing a total of 24.57 grams of marijuana-less than an ounce. The city of Madison regards the same amount of pot as a simple ordinance violation, subjecting the owner to an $86 ticket. Boyd Bryant knows his son smoked weed, but denies he peddled it, saying an informant who claims to have bought from Scott was trying to ameliorate her own problems with the law. Boyd, a Waupun prison guard himself, calls Sheriff Fitzgerald "a damn liar." Scott Bryant's friends agree, saying he had crossed too many hurdles to deal drugs. In the old days, Bryant was short-fused and no stranger to tavern fist fights. "He wouldn't go look for it," says Mike Malak, who met him in 1988 on the night shift of a Beaver Dam shoe factory. "But he could take care if himself when he needed to." Police busted Bryant in 1987 for driving under the influence. In 1991, they caught him driving while his license was suspended, and his road violations earned him the state label "habitual traffic offender." This didn't stop him from netting two more speeding tickets during the next 60 days. Nor did the fast pace distance Bryant from his other problems. He and his wife separated not long after Colten was born in 1987. In December 1989, he broke down her back door and pushed her around, for which he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct and paid fines and court fees totaling $180. Bryant sought custody of Colten when he filed for divorce in 1991, but a court affirmed the mother's primary role. That changed in September when, during a party she attended, the boy suffered burns that required hospital treatment. The next day, Bryant petitioned again for custody, to which his ex-wife agreed in court-supervised mediation. This seemed to inspire a transformation in Bryant, a change noticed by his drinking buddies. "After he got Colten, I'd barely ever see him," Malak says. In 1992, Bryant bought his two-bedroom, 70-foot trailer for $12,500, then enrolled in a two-year machinist's program at Moraine Park Technical College in West Bend, where he earned straight A's. As a single father, he still faced many challenges. "He had trouble with his son, like most parents," recalls Dawn Patroelj (Kathryn's daughter), who lived with the two for eight months last year. After a report that he struck Colten, Bryant was forced to enroll in a weekly county-run parenting class, which he completed this spring. Bryant's brother Stephen says he gave it his best: "If we messed up when we were kids, we got a belt. Scott didn't want to raise his kid that way." He dreamed of opening his own tool-and-die shop, and he was going to teach Colten how to deer hunt this year. The boy loved to be at his father's side. Politics and Glory Before the shooting, Bryant had little or no contact with Neuman. Others in Dodge County did. Neuman was hired in 1979 after four years with the Menasha Police Department. "He's a smart cop," says former Sheriff Nehls. But he's got an attitude problem-a bad one." Responding to an isthmus open-records request for citizen complaints against Neuman, Sheriff Fitzgerald provided only a stack of letters praising his performance. The department claims his personnel file contains "no allegations or complaints for use of excessive force." But a 1984 commendation from Sheriff Ted Meekma obliquely reveals the standard beef with Neuman. The letter notes his "vast improvements made in communicating with people" he encounters on duty. Neuman's demeanor riled farmer Ken Macheel, for instance, whose barn outside Randolph burned down in April 1994. A few weeks later, after three other mysterious barn blazes nearby, Macheel called the sheriff's department. The detective, according to Macheel, pressed a "ridiculous" theory that the culprit was Macheel's sister-in-law. "Neuman got pretty rude and obnoxious," he said. I had no insurance on the barn-nothing to gain. He caused a lot of heartache for us." Macheel says he wasn't surprised to learn Neuman fired his gun during the trailer search: "He's very quick to make decisions without real thought behind them." Nehls and several active deputies say Fitzgerald for years has turned a blind eye to Neuman's excesses and reward him for political loyalty. Neuman, they point out, has campaigned for Fitzgerald since he was first elected in 1988. The sheriff-as a payback, they say-promoted Neuman to detective the next year and turned him into the county's highest-profile narcotics cop. For his part, Fitzgerald, whose son Scott won the area's state Senate seat in November, says Nehl's accusations amount to sour grapes over losing his sheriff's post in 1988. In the campaign, Fitzgerald criticized him for deputizing his son Todd, who was on criminal probation for a 1985 battery in Madison. Released from probation in 1989, Todd Nehls himself unsuccessfully challenged Fitzgerald in last September's Republican primary. Whatever the merits of these charges and countercharges, it's clear Neuman has enjoyed prominence in Fitzgerald's administration. Last September, just 12 days before the sheriff's primary, the department fed a story to the Beaver Dam's Daily Citizen on, "the largest drug bust in Dodge County history." The front-page report ran with a photo of Neuman up to his waist in marijuana plants. (The department, according to the story, played only a supporting role for Milwaukee and federal authorities.) On March 17, less than three weeks before Neuman's school board election, he showed up again on the Citizen's front page again, this time with Fitzgerald and Rohr. The photo pictured the three accepting a check from the Internal Revenue Service for $10,373, the amount seized during a 1993 drug investigation. (See page 9.) Just 11 days later, the department pushed Neuman onto the front page one more time. The story detailed his county coordination of the state funded Cannabis Enforcement and Suppression Effort. "I don't think it's fair for me to take all the glory," explains Fitzgerald. 'Not Justified' The four deputies thought their April 17 raid could lead to another big bust. Experience showed small fry like Bryant sometimes helped catch bigger fish. They admit they had no reason to believe Bryant would be armed, that he offered no resistance when they barreled through the door, and that the hunting weapons found later in the trailer played no role. 'The shooting of Scott Bryant was not in any way justified,' the DA ruled. But he said no charges should be filed. "The shooting of Scott Bryant was not in any form justified," according to the June 9 finding from the Sheboygan County District Attorney Robert Wells, who accepted the case from his Dodge County counterpart to eliminate conflicts of interest. Wells' report, based on a Justice Department investigation and his own interviews, says Neuman's primary mistake was entering the trailer with his finger on the trigger. As Rohr rushed toward Bryant and shouted "search warrant," Wells theorizes, Neuman's gun hand may have clenched either as he jerked his weapon toward the noise and struck the door, or in "sympathetic physical reaction" to his other hand, which was also grasping. How credible is this? The gunmaker said it designed Neuman's pistol to prevent shootings exactly like these. "In stress situations," a Beretta catalog reads, "it can be a natural reflex to flinch or involuntarily squeeze the trigger finger, when confronted with unexpected movement or sounds. Beretta's double-action draw length helps reduce the chance of these inadvertent discharges." Indeed, a trip to the gun shop shows it takes considerable trigger pressure (12 pounds) to fire the pistol with its hammer in the uncocked position. "That's a grossly unfair comparison," snaps Wells. "What was happening was not a calm, quiet situation." Wells implies the real problem resides with the department for allowing officers to put their finger on the trigger during searches. "Studies have shown that approximately 80% of all accidental shootings by law enforcement officers are directly related to this," he notes. A March/April 1993 Police Marksman story sp ells out the golden rule: "Keep your finger off the trigger until you've decided to shoot rather than until you're ready to shoot." The story exhorts trainers to adopt the rule: Today's professional firearms instructors would be remiss in their duties if they did otherwise." Many police trainers have heeded this advice. "In recent years," says Sgt. Lee McMenamin, a Wisconsin State Patrol Academy program director, "officers have been trained to keep their fingers off the trigger in all cases." But Dodge County officials claim there's still widespread discord on the matter. "At the University of Deershit, Montana, the answer may be 'yes,'" says Sgt Stephen Allerman, the firearms instructor for 17 years. "But at the University of Wisconsin, the answer may be 'no.' Is there just one way to bake a chicken?" No Charges Because he believed the shooting was unintentional, Wells said he could not file homicide charges. He also ruled out criminal recklessness, saying Neuman could not have had a conscious, subjective awareness" that his gun handling created a grave risk, since his partner was in the line of fire. This, Wells said, left only one possible charge-criminal negligence, which requires that the accused merely "should realize" the risk. This is different from simple negligence-failing to exercise ordinary care. But Wells' report employed an outdated legal definition of criminal negligence, according to UW-Madison criminal law professor David Schultz. A Wisconsin Judicial Council member who helped forge the last major revision of the state's homicide code, Shultz says Wells' mistake was to ask whether Neuman's actions created a "high probability" of harm. Since 1989, says Shultz, criminal negligence has not required this standard, which was often misunderstood as a likelihood of greater than 50%. Wells' report, in fact, shows exactly this misunderstanding: "Despite the fact that this is the cause of the majority of accidental shootings, the vast majority of times that law enforcement officers have executed search warrants...with their finger on the trigger shows that it was not highly probably that such and even would take place." Filing the charge, Shultz adds, would have required only "probable cause" of Neuman's guilt. In other words, Wells could have used the "relatively low standard that there were reasonable grounds to believe a person has committed the crime," he says. "That does not mean more than a 50% probability. Wells replied indignantly, "I'm one of the few prosecutors in this state who has won a criminal negligence case," and asks what courtroom experience Shultz has. But even some of Neuman's peers are disturbed with Wells' decision. "If you take out a gun and accidentally shoot you wife," posits one veteran deputy, "you're going to face criminal charges." The disquiet doesn't surprise Horicon Police Chief Glamann either. "I can understand why officers are saying that Neuman is making fools of us," says Glamann, who headed the Dodge County Drug Task Force for three years until this January. "It very well could be that he doesn't remember shooting, but it breeds the mentality that cops are above the law." No Knock, Bang-Bang In deciding not to file criminal charges, for the April 17 killing, Sheboygan County District Attorney Robert Wells said it was "irrelevant" whether the four deputies knocked and announced themselves before breaking into Scott Bryant's trailer. Wells notes that the first officer through the door, Patrol Lt. James Rohr, was fully uniformed. "The problems that have led to shootings are usually because the person inside was not aware that it was law enforcement," he says. "Mr. Bryant was aware that it was." But a uniformed officer barging into your living room is quite different from a knock at the door," says David Shultz, a U-W Madison criminal law professor. "Before entering, you knock and identify yourself and your purpose and leave a reasonable amount of time for an answer," he says. Wells' report on the incident, observing the "chaotic" and "tense" nature of searches, fails to acknowledge that the officer's decision to break through the door intensified the chaos and increased the likelihood of an unintentional shooting. Instead of waiting for Bryant to answer, Patrol Lt. James Rohr rammed his way in shouting "search warrant, search warrant." Wels himself notes that Detective Robert Neuman's "attention and weapon were drawn towards the noise." "The whole thing took two or three seconds," he says. Sheriff Stephen Fitzgerald points out that, in 1994, the Wisconsin Supreme Court granted a blanket exception to the state's knock-and-announce rule. Over the dissent of Justices Shirley Abrahamson and Nathan Hefferman, Wisconsin v. Stevens overturned 68 years of previous rulings by cops to abandon the rule in felony drug cases. Justice Donald Steinmetz's majority opinion said the rule was "no longer valid in today's drug culture" because cops need a new way to prevent evidence from being destroyed and to protect themselves against heavily armed dealers. "By announcing their presence, police may actually increase the likelihood for violence." He wrote. Six other states have adopted similar "no knock" rules for drug search. Madison defense Attorney Stephen Hurley describes the resulting duel: "On one side you have these gun nuts that want to protect their homes from intruders. On the other side, the police know you don't know who they are when they batter down your door with guns in hand and fingers on the trigger. So what we have is a legally sanctioned race to see who can pull the trigger first." On May 22, the U.S. Supreme court's unanimous Wilson v. Arkansas ruling affirmed that the knock-and-announce rule has basis in the Fourth Amendment. The decision, however, left it to lower courts to determine exceptions. The court subsequently refused to hear a Stevens appeal, which means the Wisconsin exception still stands. But for misdemeanors, such as a small-time pot offense, the knock-and-announce rule is still the law of the land, according to Assistant Attorney General Dave Perlman. "Marijuana is a pretty minor offense," he notes. When Horicon Police Chief Douglas Glamann commanded the Dodge County Drug Task Force, he told his officers to observe the rule in all but the most extreme circumstances. "When police visit your home, people get excited and do unpredictable things," he says. "But if we treat you fairly, we expect some level of cooperation from you.' Glamann says police should discard the rule only "when they have someone who is violent and has a record like battery to a police officer or weapons violations." Scott Bryant had neither.