This reporter is an apologist for all the lawlessness in Milwaukee. Every story that he writes in the Milwaukee Journal always comes to the same conclusion. That the people that act out in this way are just like the rest of us, except that the police and the system are just trying to make their lives miserable. They are just victims of an oppressive local government.
This is the kind of crap we are up against.
Celebratory gunfire landed ex-felon back in jail
ON WISCONSIN : JS ONLINE : NEWS : MILWAUKEE :
Celebratory gunfire landed ex-felon back in jail
By JAMAAL ABDUL-ALIM
[email protected]Posted: Dec. 29, 2005
When midnight struck last New Year's Eve, Milwaukee police Officers James McNichol and Chris Elser were forced to take cover underneath the roof of the Fondy Farmers' Market on W. Fond du Lac Ave. because "firearms were being discharged all around them," court records state.
The officers spotted one man in particular firing shots outside a home in the 2100 block of W. Meinecke Ave.
When the officers later approached the residence, they saw a man shoot a gun twice into the air, then run inside.
A minute later, records state, McNichol noticed a red laser beam coming from a kitchen window. The beam was pointed at his chest. He and his partner called for backup.
Officers then entered the house and saw an open bedroom window, which they suspected was a means of escape. A few moments later, they found a video camera and cardboard box full of marijuana.
They watched the videotape and saw on it "firearms that were lined up." The guns included a nickel-plated .45-caliber Llama semiautomatic pistol with a laser sight.
Police later stopped Ray "Black" Thomas, 34, and an acquaintance in a white Cadillac that pulled up to the house. They found a chrome derringer .38 special underneath the seat.
Thomas later admitted that the gun in the car and the ones on the videotape belonged to him. His daughter's mother, Kim Taylor, told police that Thomas apparently started carrying a gun a week earlier, around Christmas. Taylor's daughter told police Thomas had been shooting the gun into the air.
As a felon, Thomas wasn't even supposed to touch a gun. He was charged a few days after the incident and convicted in August of being a felon in possession of a firearm and of marijuana possession. He was sentenced on Dec. 15 to two years in prison on the gun charge and five years of extended supervision.
Some of the last scenes on the home video seized by police show Thomas hugging and kissing his daughter.
Being separated from his daughter and his other seven children, Thomas says now, is difficult.
"It's killing me," Thomas said in a recent interview at the county jail.
From the Dec. 30, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel