Team Of Evils: It's Gonna Be A 'Dead Baby In the Jail Cell' Kind Of Day

Sure he's 'pro-life.' But this one was already born, so no big.

The Gathering of the Trumpalos, and additional news of just how awful they are, continues apace, and so we shouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that there's a scandal a-brewing around Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, another Fox News face being considered for a cabinet appointment (maybe Homeland Security, if he can beat out Joe Arpaio, Rudy Giuliani, and Actual Cthulhu). Beyond his belief that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group, which is a plus in TrumpWorld, there's only one tiny bump in the road for Clarke:  Four people have died in the Milwaukee County Jail since April, one of whom was a newborn baby. That might be a problem, we don't know anymore. Maybe letting people die in your jail is the kind of refusal to bow to the forces of Political Correctness Donald Trump is looking for.

Clarke's qualifications for the position of coordinating the nation's protection against terrorism are obvious. For one thing, he's on TV, a regular fixture on Fox News. Trump has seen him on the shows, so that's almost like a job interview right there. Also, Clarke likes Law And Order: in response to the first two days of protests against Mr. Trump's election, Sheriff Clarke explained on Twitter that the First Amendment doesn't count when it goes up against the Electoral College count:

As a showman, Trump must surely appreciate the chootzpah of a guy waving around a copy of the Constitution as part of a call for protests to be "quelled." Clarke has since clarified that he's OK with free speech, but not with "riots," and apparently every single demonstration since the election has been a "riot."

And just like Donald Trump, Sheriff Clarke is "pro-life," explaining in 2014 that if Black Livesreally Matter, then all the protesters would be marching around outside abortion clinics, since Planned Parenthood is secretly a plot to do genocide to the black community by forcing black women to have abortions they don't want, or something.

Which brings us back to that baby that died in Sheriff Clarke's jail. In fairness to Sheriff Clarke, we must note that at least the woman didn't have an abortion, so he's probably in the clear from a moral standpoint.

The baby's mother, Shadé Swayzer, is planning a lawsuit against the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, claiming jail staff ignored her request for medical help when she went into labor in July. Swayzer was being held in the jail's "special needs" section in jail due to an unspecified severe mental illess, and was nearly nine months pregnant. Swayzer has had several arrests on charges including burglary, battery, and resisting arrest, so she's not one of our best people. At the time she went into labor and her baby died, she was jailed on a probation violation, and has since been released.

Her lawyer, Jason Jankowski, filed a "notice of claim" seeking $8.5 million in damages:

[Jankowski] wrote in the notice of claim that Swayzer told a corrections officer her water broke and she was going into labor, but the officer laughed and ignored her. Swayzer said she told the officer that she was going into labor around midnight, gave birth at about 4 a.m., and finally received attention from officers at 6 a.m. Her child was pronounced dead later that day, although it's unclear at what time.

Ah, but there are two sides to every story -- the Sheriff's Office said in a statement several days after the baby's death that Swayzer never said nothing about birthing no baby. Also, the company contracted to provide medical care at the jail says the infant was stillborn. Swayzer seems to think otherwise, saying the child was "born alive, cried profusely and was breastfed." Eh, she's only a convicted criminal, so probably safest to assume she's lying, just like all those women who say Donald Trump groped them. In Donald Trump's America, women lie about pretty much everything. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel says an autopsy was conducted on the child's body, but no results have been released, possibly because they're under IRS audit. A spokesperson for Sheriff Clarke said his office would have no further comment either, which is pretty unusual for the voluble law-n-order advocate, who seems to never stop talking on Fox News.

Sheriff Clarke seems to be rather challenged when it comes to keeping prisoners alive. A 2014 investigative report by the Journal-Sentinel found that ten people had died in custody at the Milwaukee County Jail over a four-year period. In April of this year, 38-year-old Terrill Thomas, who suffered from bipolar disorder, died of "profound dehydration" while in the jail's segregation unit. That death was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner; inmates in nearby cells said Thomas had been begging for water for days before he died. Inmates said the water faucet inside Thomas's cell had been turned off by corrections officers since he'd been flooding his cell and acting erratically. Guess he learned HIS lesson! Thomas's death is under investigation by state and federal prosecutors.

Considering Mr. Trump's promise to bring back torture in the fight against ISIS, we don't see why letting an inmate die of thirst should be a knock against Sheriff Clarke. Maybe the president-elect will tweet a funny joke about how at least Thomas wasn't waterboarded, and there's just no pleasing liberals when it comes to bad guys. You give 'em too much water, it's torture, you let 'em die of thirst, it's homicide. Maybe if more people died in jails they'd think twice before being mentally ill.

In addition to the deaths of the newborn and Thomas, there have been two 2016 deaths at the jail since July. Incredibly, virtually no details at all -- other than the ages and genders of the dead prisoners -- have been released by the Sheriff's office about the two most recent deaths, in August and late October. In the October case, the Sheriff's Office wouldn't even confirm the identity of the dead prisoner. Donald Trump ought to be very impressed by Sheriff Clarke's ability to keep secrets from America's true enemies: reporters. And "rioters."

[ Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via Twitter tip by Derick Willis / The Hill / Journal-Sentinel / Journal-Sentinel ]