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5 charged in election-day tire slashings
Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann announced this morning that five of the seven men arrested in the election-day slashing of Republican vehicles' tires - including the sons of two prominent Milwaukee Democratic politicians - have been charged with felonies and will appear in court this afternoon.The five who were charged with felony criminal damage to property for slashing 40 tires on 25 vehicles are:
* Michael Pratt, 32, of the 400 block of N. 16th St., Milwaukee. Pratt is the son of former acting mayor Marvin Pratt.
* Sowande A. Omokunde, 25, of the 4000 block of N. 19th Place, Milwaukee. Omokunde is the son of U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore.
* Lewis G. Caldwell, 28, of the 2900 block of N. Summit Ave., Milwaukee.
* Lavelle Mohammad, 35, of the 4700 block of W. Lloyd St., Milwaukee.
* Justin Howell, 20, of the 2400 block of N. Olive St., Racine.
The vans had been rented by the state Republican Party to transport voters to the polls on election day Nov. 2. If convicted, each of the five faces up to a $10,00 fine and up to 3 1/2 years in prison. The crime met the $2,500 damage threshold as a felony because the slashed tires and towing costs totaled more than $5,300, according to the criminal complaint filed today. It says the men were caught after a security guard in the Republican Party headquarters parking lot saw the vandalism and wrote down the license-plate numbers of a fleeing car.

McCann said the state's relatively clean political history makes such election-day sabotage without precedent in his memory. "This isn't what goes on all the time in Wisconsin," he said, citing his recollection of contentious elections from the late 1960s. "... There might be signs town down in those campaigns, but never anything like this." He said the investigation had taken nearly 12 weeks because witnesses had dispersed after the election to states including Georgia, Virginia, Maryland and New York, and FBI investigators were sent to conduct the interviews. "Lying to an FBI agent is a federal offense," McCann explained. He said the FBI reports only got back to his office Jan. 14 because the slashings, though locally controversial, probably weren't the highest priority for federal investigators more concerned with terrorism threats. "You've got to understand how this looks elsewhere," McCann said. "It's a tire-slashing case. ... I never got a call from (Attorney General John) Ashcroft about the case."
Election 2004 - the gift that keeps on giving

Posted by: Steve 2005-01-24
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=54531