MPA on overtime: Pure politics

You gotta love the Milwaukee cops union. They certainly know how to play politics. Even when it makes them look foolish, they step up to the plate to stand by their candidates.

When Gov. Jim Doyle and Chief Nan Hegerty announced Friday that the state would make $200,000 available for police overtime, to put more officers on the street, the MPA had this response:

John Balcerzak, president of the MPA, said the increased overtime will be stressful on police. “Right now officers are working with cancelled off-days this summer, cancelled vacation days this summer. How long is that going to last?” asked Balcerzak. “You’re going to have an incident where an officer is involved in situations and is not going to react based upon their training, but react based on their stress and the nature of the job and the hours that we place on them.”

The union, of course, has endorsed Republican Mark Green, Doyle's opponent. Doyle has been elected statewide four times, always without their support, because he's a Democrat.

On Wednesday,when Paul Bucher, the MPA's endorsed candidate for attorney general, proposed enough overtime to put the equivalent of 90 more cops on the street for 90 days -- 3600 hours of overtime every week for the whole summer, here's what Balcerzak and the MPA had to say:

Nothing.

Some officers showed up at Doyle's news conference to harass him, too. But at least they didn't beat him up or stick anything in his ears.