Make that injustice.
Remember Katherine Windels, the unhinged early childhood teacher charged with sending death threats to Gov. Walker and Republican members of the State Legislature and claiming to having planted bombs at the State Capitol?
Sure you do. We first covered it here and here.
This is what we wrote at the time:
Prediction: she pleas out to a misdemeanor charge, serves no jail time and gets community service.
Guess what happened?
She effectively entered a plea of nolo contendere and will be placed in a first-offender program and serve no jail time. Once she completes the program, the charges will be dismissed.
A Cross Plains woman who emailed death threats to 15 Republican state senators pleaded guilty Thursday to making a bomb threat and was placed in a first-offenders program.
Dane County Circuit Judge Julie Genovese said that although the threats made by Katherine Windels, 27, were serious, she has no prior criminal record and had mental health issues that affected her actions.
According to letters written by mental health treatment providers, Windels suffers from anxiety and depression and had been largely housebound for a period including March 9, when she sent the emails to the GOP senators, upset over their support for legislation stripping most collective bargaining rights from most Wisconsin public workers.
So, in the end, she won’t be convicted of anything — not even a misdemeanor — and will have the charges dismissed.It’ll be as if nothing ever happened
Contrast that with the aggressive attitude of law enforcement toward anyone engaging recall petitioners, including a man who did nothing more than scribble on a recall petition being charged with a felony and facing a year and a half in prison and two more years of extended supervision and another woman arrested and charged for destroying a sign supporting the recall of Gov. Walker. Other incidents of verbal altercations have resulted in citations and charges but only for supporters of the Governor. Clearly, law enforcement and the criminal (in)justice system in Wisconsin has taken sides, with their unionista brethren and against the taxpayers. It’s a shame that two entities that we trust to protect all of us — law enforcement and the prosecutors — have become so corrupted.
This is Dane County. Dane County and the Capitol Police took a hands-off approach toward dealing with the out-of-control rent-a-mobs in Madison protesting the attempts to fix the state budget and the message got out: pretty much anything was OK. Apparently that now includes threatening to kill the Governor as well as members of the Legislature as well as blowing up the Capitol.
Again, contrast that with the man who posted a sign on his truck that his business will not be hiring until Barack Obama is gone. What happened? He received a visit from the Secret Service.
Back to Windels. Apparently the diagnoses of anxiety and depression are her get-out-of-jail-free card — literally.
“I am convinced that she never intended to truly threaten or disturb anyone,” wrote Jennifer Branks, co-executive director of SOAR Case Management, which is involved in Windels’ treatment.
So, in the eyes of one bleeding heart, what Windels did was OK because she suffers from anxiety and depression. It’s OK to threaten to kill the Governor and members of the Legislature and to blow up the State Capitol.
Anxiety over what? She had a job. Since the article says she rarely left home. we’ll presume she lost that, certainly after the notoriety of her arrest. But unless she is living under a bridge, she has a roof over her head and food. Probably living with her parents, no doubt. Probably was at the time she sent the death threats.
By the way, as of mid-May almost 90 threats of violence against Gov. Walker were in the process of being investigated.
Authorities have investigated 89 threat cases against lawmakers of both parties, Gov. Scott Walker and others after the governor introduced his controversial anti-collective bargaining bill in February and Democratic senators fled the state to avoid voting on it, according to Department of Justice records released Thursday.
The records cover 78 closed cases reviewed by the agency’s Division of Criminal Investigation between Feb. 19 and March 25, including one by a Department of Corrections employee who was arrested for disorderly conduct for allegedly making a verbal threat to shoot Walker. DOC spokeswoman Linda Eggert confirmed that the man, Jeffrey Renock, 37, is a correctional officer at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility and made the purported threat while at work.
“This particular incident was investigated internally, and appropriate action was taken,” Eggert said, declining to offer further details.
Excuse me, but a specific threat made by a correctional officer to assassinate Gov. Walker is an internal matter?? This is not a personnel matter say like surfing the Internet on company time or even stealing pens. This is an individual paid by state taxpayers in the position of supervising inmates in the state prison system committing a crime of his own by threatening to assassinate the Governor.
What did they do? Place a letter of reprimand in his personnel file?
Just imagine if Renock had made the same threat against the President. Would that have been investigated internally with “appropriate action” taken?
