By Erin Petersen

A Milwaukee police detective was allowed to stay on the force after damaging city property and being cited for drunk driving in late 2003.



But the exact number of police officers with drunken driving histories could not be learned because the city, Fire and Police Commission, and Police Department would not release the information to the public, saying it would be "unduly excessive" to comply. They also would not release officer dates of births on a roster released through an open records request, making it impossible for journalists to determine the information themselves in a complete fashion.


Still, students with Frontpage Milwaukee were able to find a number of officers with drunk driving histories by cross-checking a 2005 police roster with court records.


Take the case of Detective Gerilin Gahagan. She smelled of alcohol and failed several field sobriety tests after she crashed her car into a light pole near Holt Avenue, according to court documents.


Her penalty: Gahagan was suspended for two days from the Milwaukee Police Department before she was allowed to come back to work.

The investigation of Gahagan’s crash was delegated to the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department due to Gahagan’s standing within the Police Department.


According to Sheriff David Clarke, this is not standard procedure, but it is a good idea due to a possible conflict of interest. “It’s always better to have an outside agency do the testing,’ Clarke says, “Just to be sure.”

By the time a Sheriff’s deputy arrived, there was reportedly one on-duty Milwaukee police officer and several off-duty officers in plainclothes at the scene. An investigation was conducted and Gahagan was cited for operating while intoxicated. She was also cited with failure to keep her vehicle under control and operating with a prohibited alcohol content, but these were dismissed in court, according to court documents.

In court, the detective argued that she was illegally arrested and requested that all evidence against her, including several field sobriety tests and a breathalyzer that showed an alcohol content above the legal limit, be suppressed. Gahagan spent over a year in and out of court before she was found guilty of a first offense OWI.

Gahagan then spent the next year appealing the court's decision, which was ultimately upheld.

Crashing her car


At approximately 4 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 5, 2003, off-duty police Detective Gerilin Gahagan crashed her car into a light pole near the Interstate on-ramp at West Holt Avenue. According to court records, Gahagan then called friend and fellow MPD officer Anne Marie Domurat, who was on-duty at the time. Domurat reported to the scene immediately along with several other unnamed officers in plainclothes.

Though it did not appear that any of the Milwaukee police officers present attempted to “interfere” with the investigation, according to assistant District Attorney James Frisch, Sheriff’s Deputy Karen Sharafinski was called to the scene to investigate. Sharafinski then had Gahagan wait in the back of her locked squad car while she conducted the investigation and testified in court that Gahagan “smelled strongly of alcohol” at the time. Sharafinski then conducted several standard field sobriety tests, administered a breathalyzer and placed Gahagan under arrest.

Gahagan was cited with a first offense OWI, as well as failure to keep her vehicle under control and operating with a prohibited alcohol content over the legal limit. However, the last two charges were quickly dismissed after Gahagan retracted her not guilty plea and instead pleaded no contest to the OWI charge. Gahagan’s attorney William Reddin states that this is common in OWI cases where the driver pleads guilty. “By law, the judge was required to drop the PAC charge,” Reddin says, “She didn’t get a break, that’s just the law.”

During the trial, Gahagan argued that the court should suppress the evidence collected at the time of her arrest. According to court records, Gahagan argued in her testimony that she was illegally arrested when she was asked to sit in the back of Sharafinski’s locked squad car. Because of this, Gahagan said that the field sobriety tests and breathalyzer were conducted illegally and should not be considered.

Police Officer Anne Marie Domurat also testified in court that Gahagan was illegally arrested.

In court, Frisch says the he felt that Gahagan’s testimony was truthful. “Not that she wasn’t guilty, but her testimony was honest,” says Frisch, “She seemed to have a good recollection of the events that occurred….but this may have been painted, though, by a condition…well, she’d been drinking, that’s why.”

The court found that it was necessary for Gahagan to be detained in order for Sharafinski to conduct a thorough investigation of the scene. It was also noted in court records that Gahagan’s car was slightly damaged and was not a safe place for her to wait. The court denied Gahagan’s motion and found her guilty on January 5, 2005- over a year after the accident. “The Sheriff’s Department made a good, lawful arrest.” says Frisch.

Gahagan immediately appealed her case, but the original verdict was upheld in April 2005. Gahagan’s license was suspended for 6 months and she was ordered to pay a $150 fine and complete an alcohol and drug assessment.

During this entire process Gahagan was allowed to keep her job with MPD. According to Gahagan’s personnel file, In March 2005, two years after her OWI, she was suspended for “violating the criminal laws in effect in the state of Wisconsin” and intoxication according to her personnel report. She was suspended for one day with pay and one without.

During this time, it assumed that Gahagan worked administrative duties and Gahagan’s personnel file shows that she was transferred to a different shift for approximately six months following her appeal. “You’ve got to find some busy work for them,” says Sheriff Clarke, “…but that means taking a full bodied officer out, finding room for them and paying overtime…the taxpayers get punished for this person’s transgression.”


Despite the strain it puts on police administration and taxpayer dollars, cops like Gahagan most likely won’t lose their job for these offenses.

Sheriff Clarke points out the role civil service requirements have to play in this. When officers find themselves in situation similar to Gahagan, civil service rules generally tend to protect them from losing their jobs by allowing them appeal certain disciplinary action. Clarke adds that this can make it difficult to do anything about these sorts of officers. “Civil service is a tough requirement to get over,” Clarke says, “Once you’re hired, you almost have to kill someone to be discharged.”

Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, Milwaukee chapter president Kari Kinnard says that it’s important that the MPD follow such civil service guidelines to make sure that each case is handled carefully and fairly, but says: “We need to hold our public officials and law enforcement to a higher standard as citizens.”


She adds that the punishment for each offending police officer has to be looked at individually, but that MADD hopes that these disciplinary actions are “severe enough” to get the message across.

First offense drunk driving incidents like Gahagan’s are traffic citations and are not considered crimes in Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Police Department also allows applicants who have more than one OWI on their record to be hired onto the force.

Contacted by a student working for Frontpage Milwaukee, Gahagan refused to comment on the specifics of her case. “She should be left alone,” says Reddin, “There’s no reason to make this any bigger or smaller than it is… [it’s] nowhere near the situations other MPD officers have found themselves in in recent years.”