Three Cops
Monday, May 27,1991
Between them, Officers John Balcerzak, Joseph Gabrish, and Richard Porubcan had sixteen years of police work and a stack of citations for meritorious service when they entered the Oxford Apartments in the early hours of that Memorial Day Monday, trying to figure out what was happening between the big white guy and the zonked Asian male. They knew that any number of things might happen as a result of whatever decision they made in such a field investigation, for in any dispute, someone would be unhappy and
might complain to higher levels of the Police Department. But they had no idea whatsoever that they were about to unleash a whirlwind that would rock their employer, the city of Milwaukee, to its foundations.
They coaxed the two males who were the center of the disturbance through the wooden door of apartment 213 and stepped into a rectangular room that was a combined kitchen, dining area, and living room. At the far end was a sliding window, the curtains partially open, and in the right-hand corner an aquarium containing a couple of fish sat on a small table beneath some sort of horn hanging by a strap. Between the aquarium and the open door was a sofa, and beside it an end table littered with beer cans and cigarette butts in an ashtray. The door would swing open until it bumped into a combination refrigerator-freezer that stood beside a sink and four-burner stove. The side wall was taken up with a dining table and two chairs and a squat, floor-standing freezer. The sliding door to the bedroom and the bath area was closed. In other words, they saw a typical one-bedroom apartment, one that was unusually tidy for being the residence of a single male. A couple of power tools lay on the living room carpet. Polaroid photographs of men in various stages of undress were strewn about, and the Asian’s clothes lay on the couch.
Dahmer had provided a piece of identification that had his picture on it, so the officers knew who he was, and when they got into the apartment,
he handed them some Polaroids of the younger guy, who was pictured wearing only some briefs. A union lawyer would eventually report that while the interview was being conducted, the Asian sat quietly on the sofa, making no attempt to flee nor raise a ruckus about his treatment.
The emergency medical technicians that had arrived had determined that there were no serious injuries involved, and Dahmer was calm and cool in talking with the officers, very persuasive in his spiel that the incident was nothing but a disagreement between himself and his gay boyfriend. He said that the Asian was nineteen years old, which meant he was an adult—and adults could do what they damned well please behind closed doors.
So it came down to a decision that would be based upon the experience gleaned by the three cops over the years. According to a copyrighted story in the Milwaukee Journal, Balcerzak had been wearing a shield for six years, Gabrish had begun police work by doing the dirty-fingernail clerical duties of an aide in 1982, and Porubcan, the youngest of the three, was a computer fanatic fresh out of the academy, class of 1990, and already credited with five merit arrests while still in his probationary stage. Balcerzak and Gabrish had qualified to be field training officers who could guide rookies through the minefields of law enforcement out on the streets, where things can look different during a midnight frontline confrontation
than they do under the glare of fluorescent lights in an office somewhere, when men and women in civilian office garb comb through your reports for mistakes before they go to lunch. The three had a reputation among their fellow street patrolmen. They were good cops.
And in this case, they saw nothing to indicate that foul play had either taken place or was about to. Like many people before them, they were bamboozled by the courteous Dr. Jekyll side of Jeffrey Dahmer’s personality. The Mr. Hyde part, after having had many run-ins with the police, now hid somewhere deep inside Dahmer when badges came on the scene.
A veteran of the Milwaukee department who wished to remain anonymous spelled it out. There had been a complaint, and it had been answered. One guy is barely able to speak, but not trying to run away. The other guy is apparently sober enough to explain the situation and has pictures that indicate a homosexual relationship may be involved. Okay, so what’s your call?
The three officers made the mistake of their lifetime. They believed the story put forth by Jeffrey Dahmer and they walked away, leaving Konerak Sinthasomphone to his horrible fate. Then they compounded the error, probably committing professional suicide in the process, by joking around when they called into the District Three station house on West Vliet Street. They laughed about the boyfriends they had just encountered, and the uncaring tape recorder
caught it all. The conversation would be played a thousand times in a thousand cities when the case exploded in the headlines.
In two months, after the extent of Jeffrey Dahmer’s butchery became known to the world, things happened fast, particularly when Glenda Cleveland let it be known that police had been called to that slaughterhouse and had walked away. Five people would be murdered there between the time the three officers left and the day Dahmer’s butchery would finally be brought to a halt.
While the nation was astounded by the mass slaughter, Milwaukee’s minority population was furious. They wanted to know if it was a tragic case of racial discrimination, if the white policemen had given Jeffrey Dahmer easier treatment because he was white while his victim was Laotian, a brother of colored skin. It was a question that would rattle Milwaukee for months.
In answer to the rising chorus of protest, Police Chief Philip Arreola suspended the three policemen pending an investigation, and later filed adminstrative charges against them for failing to conduct a proper investigation. Mayor John Norquist said he would not prejudge the officers, but that he was outraged by what had happened. Suddenly, the Dahmer situation was more than a murder case, it was a morality play with a heavy dose of politics involved, and a demoralized police force hit the streets to deal with minority residents who had found still another reason not to trust them.