 We'll call the meeting order for roll call. Coyunas. Here. We'll tree here. The other two are excused. They're working. I have the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the fire of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. I would need a motion to approve the minutes of June 16th. So moved. We've got a motion and a second. Any discussion? I want to bring that up. Mr. President, the minutes is currently stated. Apparently, our listing candidates in alphabetical order. The commission had chosen candidates from their number one preference to the lowest scoring candidate. These minutes do not reflect that. So I would ask that the minutes be changed to reflect the hiring order recommendations of the commission. Yes. They listed them in alphabetical order and they were given in a numerical order of hiring. I believe they should be changed. That is the intent of my motion. So your motion should probably also include the actual order. Yes. OK. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to amend my motion to reflect the following order. Thank you, Jane. Stephen Shuldes was the number one candidate. Christopher Strozewski was the number two candidate. Joshua Becker was the number three candidate. Armand Meaghan was the fourth candidate. Kyle Casasola was the fifth candidate. Sean Trell Garner was the sixth candidate. And Jackson Haig was the seventh candidate. All right, we've got a motion. Do we have a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify Aye. Opposed, motion carried. Moves item three, proceeding for the board of Police and Fire Commission related to a complaint filed by Chad Shelton. OK, so as counsel for the Police and Fire Commission, I have provided for you a pre-hearing brief. And I'll walk through that because I know you probably haven't had time to go through it. I will note that I did provide a copy of the pre-hearing brief a couple of weeks ago to Mr. Shelton, as well as to the police department as sort of the parties thus far involves. And my suggestion would be after I give you my advice and you have any questions you may have for me, I would suggest that you do give Mr. Shelton and probably Chief Delmagalsky on behalf of the PD the opportunity to give any response that they want to give and give their opinions on the issues that I'm going to raise. In essence, my issues, what I want to point out, first of all, is my issues that I'm raising today are not at all to the substance of the complaint. I'm not saying anything about whether Mr. Shelton's complaint is true or false. That would be for you to determine at a later date if you decide that he has met the threshold to obtain a hearing in front of this commission. So I'm only going to be speaking to, did he meet the threshold requirements to get a hearing? So these are procedural issues only. And so while I'll be telling you, I'll just lay it right up front. I'm going to be giving you the advice that I do not believe that he met that threshold to get a hearing. And I'll explain why. But I do want you to understand that in doing so, I'm not making any judgment either on the veracity of Mr. Shelton's statements or the veracity of the findings in what I entitled the Zemple Report, which is the response to that Lieutenant Zemple did in response to Mr. Shelton's complaint. So just sort of to lay out some of the timeline. December 21, actually already of 2020, Mr. Shelton filed what purported to be a complaint with you, with police and fire commissioners. But he did not use the complaint form provided by the PFC, at least for the most part. What he did is he kind of attached his own narrative and then just put the word see attach in each section of the complaint form. And so the substance of his complaint is in that four-page narrative that he attached. And it describes a series of alleged events that begin in 1999. Shelton describes those as, quote, a negative history of double standards and bias against myself by the Sheboygan Police Department. And so as noted, I don't think he's met the standard for consideration and so the complaint should be dismissed. So here are some of the issues. First, in the section of the complaint form, which is attached and you have that as part of your packet, the complaint form is Appendix A. Oh, no, sorry, it's Appendix B. He lists the name of the person to be named in the complaint as Sheboygan Police Department and then describes the rank of this person as chief. The attached narrative then names a number of officers either directly or indirectly. Basically, it suggests that he's blaming multiple officers for this history that he alleges of double standards and bias. Some officers are named one or actually multiple times in the narrative. Others are just sort of referred to generically as officers from the SPD. So Appendix A is actually your rules of procedure that you adopted September 24th, 2015 and those rules govern disciplinary actions that are heard by the Police and Fire Commission. And those policies require that prior to the filing of a charge against a police officer by an aggrieved person, the person shall file a complaint with the Police Department under the citizen complaint procedure. So as I noted, when he first provided that complaint to the Police and Fire Commission, he had not actually provided it to the Police Department. Chair LaTrie had received that document. He consulted with me as counsel for the Police and Fire Commission and he then advised Mr. Shelton that he should then file that complaint with the Sheboygan Police Department and that if he's not satisfied as your procedures provide, then he would have the option of filing a new charge or if he wanted, he could reinstate the complaint that he'd previously filed. So he did go and file that complaint with the Police Department under that citizen complaint procedure and basically what he did is he just took that four-page complaint and he turned it into the Police Department. So it's the same thing that you've received as part of the complaint filed with you. Captain Zemple investigated the complaint and issued a six-page report dated May 13th, 2021 and throughout I've referred to that as quote the Zemple Report just so that you know what is being talked about and the Zemple Report is attached as Exhibit C. And the Zemple Report identifies 16 allegations or complaints made by Shelton in his complaint and identifies either directly or indirectly a large number of officers who in some way are alleged to be connected with the events that Shelton alleges. The Zemple Report though also either exonerates each officer involved in the allegations or at the very least fails to sustain each of the allegations. After receiving a copy of that Zemple Report and Shelton did talk to Chair LaTrie and Chair LaTrie talked to me again and got my advice and he reiterated with Mr. Shelton that again he could file a new set of charges in response to what he received in the Zemple Report that would more closely track the requirements of PFC policies or if he wanted to he could just simply turn in the document as he'd previously done. And that's what Shelton decided to do. He declined to create a new set of charges and just indicated he wanted his initial complaint to serve as the complaint that's now the subject of this matter. So that's kind of the timeline. And so now I'm kind of thinking about the procedure here. How do we proceed with this? And the first thing you look at is Section 14 of your policies, of your PFC complaint policies indicate that the first order of business at any scheduled hearing you can take certain actions and that would be things like hearing and deciding procedural motions, trying to determine if there are any issues that are not contested, trying to simplify the issues, conducting other procedural matters as maybe deemed necessary. In essence, it basically says the first thing you do is you deal with the procedural stuff before you get into the substance. And so that's what we're here to do today. And so what I'm recommending to you today is that you limit your scope initially to just determining whether or not Mr. Shelton has met that procedural threshold in your rules for allowing the complaint to continue. And so what I'm gonna do is just kind of lay out my analysis of why I think he's not met that threshold and then give you some advice on what further proceedings may take place depending on what you decide. So as noted, I don't think his complaint meets the procedural standards and here's why. First, he does fail to identify the person against whom charges are brought as required in Section 5C of your PFC policies. What he does is he just simply names the Shcherboygan Police Department as the respondent. Now, I think there is perhaps an argument to be made that when he says person to be named as the complaint, Shcherboygan Police Department and then as after that rank, Chief, you could take from that that maybe what he's trying to do is name Chief Damogalski, but he doesn't actually name him. And then as you look at the complaint, it really does list actions taken by officers, not by the Chief per se, but by a variety of officers and as noted, also by more generic reference to officers from the SPD. And that's why I think the Zemple report, I think Captain Zemple really did, I call it a valiant attempt to interpret the complaint. He really took very seriously what was said in there, tried to interpret what was in there and then identified 16 events that were complained of by Mr. Shelton and named them, named 16 different officers as being potentially involved. Wait for your turn. You'll have a chance to speak. So what the Zemple report does is it names 16 separate officers as potentially being involved in one or more of those events. None of those officers is actually named in the required complaint form. So we haven't named them as actually being respondents here to the complaint. If at some point we determine that those officers are meant to be respondents, we'll have to do some procedural things to get them the proper notice. So that's my first reason why I think the complaint needs to be dismissed. He hasn't met the requirement of Section 5C. Second requirement that I believe he's not met yet at this point is that he's failed to state the specific code of conduct, rules and regulations, city work rules, and or any state or federal law which the accused is charged with violating. That's a requirement of Section 5E of your policies. So if you read through his complaints, he never cites to any specific violation relative to the various allegations being made. He does, at the very end of his complaint, simply lists two Wisconsin statutes. He also lists the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution basically saying they're applicable statutes but never ties those provisions specifically to any particular activity that's been complained of in the complaint. He doesn't specifically refer to any particular actions as being violative of either statute or of his constitutional rights. I did provide you a copy of the language of those statutes and the language of the constitutional amendment as Appendix D. But based on his failure to do that, I think he's also failed to meet the requirements of 5E. And so based on his failure to meet the requirements of both 5C and 5E, it's my opinion that the complaint needs to be dismissed. Now, again, this is just as a preliminary issue. There may be other issues that may get raised at a later point if you decide to continue with this. There may be other issues that get raised either by Chief Damogalski on behalf of the PD or by Mr. Shelton. But these are sort of the initial issues that I see that lead to my advice and require you to deal with the issue at this stage of the process. Now, a few other sort of pieces of information that I think you need to have. As noted, he hasn't identified a person. And so the only parties to this process at this point are Mr. Shelton and the Sheboygan Police Department generally. And all the other persons named, I did provide them information, notice of this hearing as potential parties as a matter of transparency so that they're at least aware that there's the possibility that at some point they could become involved in this, but none of them yet have any rights that attach as a party. And so if you decide to move forward, decide to determine that certain people are meant to be parties to this, we will have to do that. You're not gonna be able to hold the substantive part of the hearing today. We'll talk about that if you decide not to take my advice and decide to continue, which you may certainly choose to do. If you decide that in the end you're going to dismiss the complaint, it's a pretty simple process. You just vote to do that and notify the complainant he's here, but we would also send a written notification of that. If you were to decide to proceed with hearing the substantive portion of the complaint, then you would also need to do some things. You would need to determine specifically which potential parties are the persons against whom charges are brought. You would need to determine what specific code of conduct, rules of regulation, city rules and federal or state laws. Each person is charged with violating and then you would also need to set forth a schedule for hearing the matters that takes into account all of the rights of all of the parties. I think that section 16 would probably apply where you'd still have two additional phases to the hearing as provided for under section 16. Now I do think one thing that you could do if you decided not to immediately dismiss, you could potentially also basically hold this matter in advance and instruct Mr. Shelton that what he needs to do is go back and cure the defects in his complaint and that could be done by drafting a new complaint for your consideration or amending the complaint to cure those defects. But you're not required to give him that opportunity. You could also just tell him, sorry, this one, it's done at this point. You can file another complaint if you want to do that. Given that, I'll sort of, I think you should probably open the floor probably first to Mr. Shelton and then second to Chief Darmigalski on behalf of the SPD basically to talk about and what I would suggest is that you limit each of them to talking about just those specific procedural issues that we've talked about and to stay away from sort of the substance, to stay away from the facts because you may end up having to decide but that'll be at a different time and we don't wanna sort of dive into those waters until it's time to do that and until the people whose rights it is to be involved in this have been informed of those rights. All right, Mr. Shelton. Thank you, commission. What some of you may not know but Chief Darmigalski and Mr. Adams are well aware of is that I have stage form metastatic colon cancer. I do not bring this up because I want or desire any sympathy whatsoever. I bring this up merely as a statement of fact that I have as little as six months to live. I have doctors who can verify that. I have paperwork that can verify that. As stated, this complaint was filed in December. It has already been more than I have been given to live that the police department has dragged this out. They received my initial complaint in February and did not issue the simple report until June. They are May, May 21st, I apologize. The chemotherapy affects my memory and so sometimes I get my dates confused but somewhere around May 21st is when the Zemple report was finally completed. They had 30 days. They dragged it out for three months. In my complaint, I did my best to identify the officers in incidents that have been over a decade since they've occurred. My memory is not what it once was and certainly anyone can be forgiven for forgetting the names of officers that they interacted with 10, 15, 20 years ago. I did my absolute best to identify the officers and I told Sergeant Walsh and Captain Zemple all of the relevant information that they needed to be able to find the correct officers and the incidences that I needed the reports for. Despite giving them as much information as I possibly could, they still falsely identified numerous officers and then exonerated them because of course those officers would be exonerated because they were not the officers involved and instead of investigating the officers involved, which they could have easily found because the records clerk was able to find it, they instead went with wrong information and returned a report of exoneration. Now as to Mr. Adams' advice, I would like to note a few things. First and foremost is the language with which he chooses to address my purported complaint. This is a complaint. I have filed it officially and gotten it notarized before a notary public after reading that I could be tried criminally for lying about it. This is not a purported complaint. This is not a piece of fiction. This is me giving my best attempt to explain the circumstances behind why I'm here before you today. I admit that I am not a professional clerk who knows every procedural rule but to the point there is in Mr. Adams' own pamphlet, the procedures which although do spell out some of what Mr. Adams is saying also clearly states that information regarding filing a complaint, if you choose not to use the enclosed form but wish to make the board aware of a complaint you have about the actions of a police officer or a firefighter, you may write a letter to the board detailing your concerns. It says right there that you don't even have to use the official form, that a letter will suffice. That's what I turned in back in December and yet Mr. Adams advised that that would not do, that I needed to go through many more months of delaying this process and in the meantime, I have been in the hospital three times, the latest for five days because I had an intestinal blockage. I don't expect everybody to be medical experts and know all of the things that can happen but what you need to know about colon cancer and intestinal blockage is that I was as close to dying during those five days as I have been since I got cancer. I was scared and knowing that this was still hanging over my head and not resolved, only added to my feelings of despair and hopelessness and absolutely as confirmed by my doctor had a physical effect on my recovery. I am not asking that the commission bend over backwards and allow me special treatment. I am asking that I be allowed to present the evidence of what has been occurring for two decades now. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Schell. Chief Telekowski, you want time to respond? Yeah, the only comments I have is that for the process, whether it's an investigation by the police department or whether it's a hearing in front of your commission for due process to occur, specific allegations have to be made. No officer or myself can defend myself or the officer can't hire an attorney to defend them in front of the commission if they do not and are not given proper to notice about what the allegation is. And so that's what the process requires. I don't want to sit up here and really make this more of what it is, but Mr. Shelton really challenges me with some of this. And so if he wants to file a complaint with the police department and we're going to investigate that, Captain Zempel or Sergeant Walsh can only investigate the information that he gives. So for him to stand up here and say that they're skewing this because he didn't provide them the proper information is not on them. They don't know what his complaint is, only he does. And so he has to cooperate in that complaint process in order for that to happen. Second, he brought up timelines. The normal complaint process deals with 30 days. If you read our rules and policies, it talks about essentially the fact that not every situation is the same. And so things could take longer. So the normal complaint process would be done in 30 days because it would be one complaint. When somebody files 16 complaints over a 10 year plus time period, that's not gonna happen in 30 days. It's gonna require more time than that. So I think if you really look at the timeline of what we did, the investigators were very diligent in trying to do things as fast as possible. All right, good, Chief. So basically where that leaves you is you need to sort of decide how you're going to handle this initial question of whether Mr. Shelton's complaint meets the threshold to actually be a complaint pursuant to your rules. I've provided my opinion and the other Mr. Shelton has provided his information as has the Chief. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have about my advice. But in the end, it's really your decision as to the next step to take. And then whatever you decide on that, I'll assist you in taking the next steps from there. Now what is it? Can you repeat the options to the commission? Sure. So your options are first, you could dismiss the complaint. That's my recommendation. And so that's one option that you could take. You could take no action yet. And basically explain to Mr. Shelton that his complaint doesn't meet the requirements but give him an opportunity to either amend or file a new complaint that meets the requirements. Third thing you could do is decide that it does meet the requirements. And then if it does, there's a series of things that you'll have to do in order to provide notice to the proper parties, you'll have to start with, determine who those parties are so that we can provide notice to them so that you can then move on to the substantive portion of that process and so that they can be provided counsel for the officers who are alleged to have violated these rules. I would just, I guess, ask a question. Is an allegation a narrative? What we have here is a narrative. Right. And is an allegation a narrative? Or can a narrative be an allegation? Yes, the fact that he chose to staple four pages to the back of your complaint form, that is not what makes the complaint an inappropriate complaint. But the problem when one does that is that it does, the form is designed to assist a person in meeting the requirements of your rules to name who the officers are and what are the allegations against them. So he has every right to do what he did, unfortunately in doing that, he in some ways may have hamstrung himself in actually providing a proper complaint. Mr. Shelton, are there any area you've acknowledged to us that you perhaps have medical conditions that impact your memory? I don't know if that short term or long term, but just in reference to what attorney Adams has said regarding the criteria that you need to meet, is it clear to you or do you have any questions or need further explanation on what you are required to do? Have to go to the mic. We can't hear you, can you go to the mic, please? Is there any way you could? Microphone be brought to him? Is it possible that the microphone could go to this table, I'm not sure. I don't think it moves. There's one there. I understand that my format may not be entirely correct. But I believe that I have met the requirements. I have named the officers and now that I have gotten the reports, I have all of the officers' names that we need in order to proceed, as well as the fact that I did not make a mistake in naming the Sheboygan Police Department, specifically Chief Dalmugalski as the primary respondents in this case. My complaint is against the entire Sheboygan Police Department for fostering an environment in which now me and my estranged wife will never call the police again. In fact, the last time I did, they refused to even take my report. So I believe you're saying that you understand everything, Brett? I do understand everything and if there needs to be clarification about which officers and which specific charges in the charges page apply to those officers, I can certainly clear that up. I thought it would be obvious based off of the statutes, which officers I was accusing of violating which statutes, as well as the Fourth Amendment, which was violated by officer prey. And they knew that it was officer prey and still decided to go with a different officer because I wasn't able to name him. And so therefore disregarded and exonerated that specific complaint despite them knowing at the time that it was officer prey who attempted to force open my front door with no warrant. That is a violation of the Fourth Amendment plain and simple. Thank you. I don't know. It's 20 years is more than Chief Domogalski was in charge of the police department as well. So that's incorrect. In terms of the police department is most guided by someone else at that time, the beginning of the complaints. It seems as if you want something from the police department and I don't know what it is. I don't know. I don't think, I read everything. I read everything two weeks ago. And Officer Zempel's report is based on records and that would be evidence that we would use. And I feel as if the report is using the sources that you refer to with the police department's records and videos. Mr. Adams. So one thing that may be worth Mr. Shelton indicates that really his complaint is against the entire police department as a whole. I don't know whether he means that in contrast to against specific officers. But you do have to consider your role in that regard. You do have a role in terms of the potential discipline of individual officers who violate the law or who violate policies. And so there's a sense in which if he names specific people with specific violations, you could proceed with that. You don't have authority to just sort of take a complaint against the police department as a whole because there's nothing you can do about that. Basically saying, police department equals bad. What do you do with that? There's nothing you can do with that. You don't have any authority to exercise discipline in that regard. Really Mr. Shelton's appeal in that case is really to the political system. It's basically to vote in people that he thinks will handle things differently and that he can do or appeal to the court of public opinion. But the only thing that he can appeal to you for is to appeal a decision of the police department regarding discipline of individual officers. And that's why you're here today. And so that, and again, it may be that he wishes to pursue that as well, but as far as it relates to his sort of statements about my complaints against the whole department, that was my perception in the first place and that's one of the reasons why my advice is that the complaint is not sufficient. Can we have a couple minutes to deliberate? You can deliberate, yes. Can we leave the chamber or do we have to deliberate? You can't do it outside of the chamber. You can't have a separate meeting. You can do it right here. I see. An open discussion or a private discussion? You can have an open discussion. There's no basis to go into closed session. That's what I thought. Mr. Shelton, my name is Larry Samet. I'm one of the commissioners. I have listened and read all of your material that you presented to us. There are policies, criteria, ordinances, laws, guidelines that all of us in society have to follow, including commissioners. We are being advised by our council to dismiss this and I understand his reasoning and he feels and is recommending to us that you have not met criteria at this point. You may not like that recommendation, but that is recommendation and he is our attorney and we rely on his expertise to advise us accordingly. That said, speaking for myself as one commissioner, it's in your court, in my eyes. You can either say I've done everything and leave the door closed or I am prepared at this time not to take any action and give you another opportunity to meet the criteria as laid out as attorney Adams has advised. If you choose not to do this, in my opinion, I feel I can do nothing further at this point, but I, speaking for myself, I'm prepared as of today to take no action, okay? You can use the mic right there. First of all, thank you, commissioner. I appreciate your candid honesty and I would just like to state that I don't know your name but you had stated that you feel as though I want something from the police department. I do. I want justice. I want the police department to follow the law and to apply the law equally and fairly for the rest of the time that I have here on this earth. That is what I have wanted for a long time now and that's all I want. Mr. Dolmogalski may not have been the chief of the police department, but to say that if there's a corrupt police department for 20 years that there's just nothing to be done, that is not the America that I know and I believe wholeheartedly that there is a wave of change sweeping this nation and that police departments are being held to the standard that they should have been held to from the beginning. That means that they cannot rip an infant child from a parent's arms without a court order to do so. It is a civil matter. That means that they cannot force open mine or any of your front doors without a warrant. That's in the constitution. That means that when I call the police because my neighbor is threatening me that they take that as seriously as anybody who calls the police on me. That is what I want and I am willing to do whatever it takes to get it. If that means that I have to fill out paperwork more correctly in order to move forward then yes, commissioner, I will do whatever it takes in order to satisfy whatever procedural requirements are laid out before me. And so I thank you for being honest with me about what would be needed in order to proceed and I am 100% willing to accept that and do that. Thank you. I'm only one of three commissioners though. The majority rules here, okay, Jean. I would accept your offer to revise your complaint in terms of the guidelines of the commission. And I would hope that you would seek the help of the attorney if you need it in terms of doing the thing correctly so that you don't do extra effort on this especially in your condition. So I would concur that or I would say that we accept his offer to resubmit the complaint. Complaints I should say. As long as you understand what they're saying is that the second option was to take no action and they give you the opportunity to amend or refile. You understand that, right? Use the microphone, just it's loud enough. Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. Do we need to put that in motion? Yeah, you should put it in a motion. I would suggest that you make it a motion and give him a whatever period of time you feel is appropriate to accomplish that. Okay, I move that we take no action at this time. Well, he wants us to give him time. What are you suggesting, Mr. Sheldon? 10 days would be fine. 10 days? Yes, sir. Give him two weeks, take a motion and give him two weeks. Okay. Yeah, all right. Do you want me to make it or do you want me to? You can make it. It's up to you, see either one of us. Mr. Sheldon, at this time, the red is on. I'm on now, okay. Mr. Sheldon, at this time, I will put forth the motion that we will not take action and give you two weeks from today to file a complaint with the following the appropriate procedures. Is that accurate? That sounds good. Second. All right, we got a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? All in favor signify with aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed and carried. So Mr. Sheldon, you know what you need to do. Thank you very much. I'll motion to submit to dismiss, I mean adjourn. We've got the motion. I move that we adjourn this meeting. Second. We have a motion and a second to adjourn. Any discussion? All in favor signify with aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried or adjourned.