Madison Police Goon Squads Not What They Appear to Be

Lawmaker Says Cops Really Didn't Go Wilding When They Saw Him Walk Through the Door

At first blush, the item on Yahoo News looks rather ominous: a Democratic lawmaker in Wisconsin is tackled by police as he tries to enter the Capital in Madison
Cops have been trying to limit access, but you'd think they'd let in someone who actually works there. Apparently not, as the raw footage captured by WISN-TV shows.
So, it's easy to leap to the conclusion that Republican Gov. Scott Walker has unleashed the goon squads on the opposition after getting really, really cheesed off about the budget standoff. Not so fast.
The Yahoo item actually spends most of its column inches giving a broader brush of the Wisconsin impasse and actually spends precious little time focusing on tackled House member Nick Milroy.
So, if you want to find out more (and you should), there's a bit of a surprise when you go to the WISN site, where a follow-up story quotes Milroy as saying he was "aggressive in trying to enter the Capitol, and they were aggressive in trying to stop me."
Oh.
"It may have looked violent on the video, but I had a puffy jacket on."
Double oh.
Now, questions do need to be answered as to why police turned him away after he showed I.D. So far, radio silence. So, Milroy, who took off the puffy jacket for a news conference, will have to do.
"I wasn't putting anybody to a test. It's been a long couple of weeks for law enforcement officers; it's been a long couple of weeks for me."
As Milroy told TPM, he doesn't blame the officer who took him down. Instead, he blames Walker and whomever made the decision to disable the Capital's keycards.
He has plenty of company.