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Meet Richard Saks, a prominent labor-union and plaintiffs-side employment attorney in Milwaukee who is a long-time partner at Hawks Quindel, one of Wisconsin’s top firms specializing in this area. But lest you conclude he’s all work and no play, consider this article in the August 13 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
[Saks] was arrested on July 17 when Milwaukee police saw him embracing a 26-year-old woman in the front seat of an SUV at 3240 W. Hadley St., according to a police report.
The woman — who had crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia in her purse — said the two were getting ready to have sex, the report said. They had chosen that location [photo here], she told officers, so they would “not do this in front of any children.” They’d known one another, she said, for four years.
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Saks was issued a citation for loitering and soliciting a prostitute. He has since paid the fine.
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According to the report, Saks was with a woman who was on parole. She had pleaded guilty in 2008 to a felony count of child abuse.
The woman described herself as a friend of Saks’. The 59-year-old lawyer had little to say to the cops, except that he didn’t live in that area on the north side and that he was married but not to the woman with whom he was arrested.
The amount of his fine was not included in the records provided by the Milwaukee Police Department.
Milwaukee police officers found a metal tube in her purse that they said could be used to smoke crack cocaine.
While awaiting booking, she told police that she also had a small bag of crack cocaine hidden in her purse. Officers then turned up a corner-cut baggie with 0.18 grams of crack in it.
Ordinarily such a story would be of interest principally to Saks’s co-workers, clients, friends, and family (a wife and three adult children, for those wondering). Indeed, in an e-mail Saks indicated he’s now busy “addressing underlying personal issues; apologizing to family, friends, colleagues and clients; and working to restore their trust.”
However, here the story is of current political relevance because Saks was recently hired under somewhat suspect circumstances by the highly dysfunctional Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors to try to invalidate a statute enacted in May, with Gov. Scott Walker’s approval, which slashes its budget by two-thirds, cuts its powers and supervisors’ terms, and cuts their pay in half (with the pay cut dependent on voters’ approval).
The supervisors view anyone seeking to rein them in as engaging in “political genocide,” so naturally they sought legal advice in hopes of invalidating the statute. When the Board’s corporation counsel, Kimberly Walker (a “highly qualified” attorney with impressive experience who happens to be African-American) failed to give them the correct answer, they summarily fired her without even debating the matter, in apparent violation of the open-meetings law (TV reports here and here) — “payback” against those seeking to rein in the Board, according to the Journal-Sentinel‘s editorial board.
The supervisors then voted to hire Saks and his firm, which have tight financial and personal connections with key supervisors (after they apparently gave supervisors the answer they wanted to hear) — “despite the firm’s numerous and obvious conflicts of interest,” as journalist Aaron Rodriguez has noted.
Consistent with the Board’s generally dysfunctional operation, when the Board chairwoman, Marina Dimitrijevic (who is white, and who may have fired Walker, at least in part, due to racism — indeed, the NAACP denounced the firing) learned of Saks’s brush with the law, she removed him from the case but neglected to tell others on the Board, who learned of it only two weeks later via reporter Dan Bice.
No need to worry about Saks’s firm, though — its representation of the Board continues, sans Saks.
Prominent Milwaukee talk-radio host Charlie Sykes (of WTMJ and RightWisconsin.com) devoted 15 minutes of his August 14 show to a discussion of the “provocative issues” raised by the Saks case. To listen to that segment, click on the embedded player below (or download this link).
Some highlights:
“You know it’s serious when you’re considered too sleazy to work for the Milwaukee County Board.” (8:00)
What about all the other prominent liberal organizations Saks and his firm represent? One wonders “whether or not they want the guy who was soliciting the child-abusing crack whore” to continue to represent them. (6:30)
“Here is a guy soliciting the crack whore — paying money to this woman who is on probation for felony child abuse — who is an attorney for the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, which of course represents all of Milwaukee’s teachers.” (5:00)
“If you’re an individual teacher . . . are you going: ‘So I have to go into a classroom, and I know that my lawyer is a guy who spends his time in the front seat with a crack whore who is on probation for felony child abuse — and as a teacher THIS is my lawyer? Excuse me? That’s my standard? That we have lower standards than the Milwaukee County freakin’ board?'” (14:15)
Obviously, if Saks was a conservative, he’d get the “full Todd Akin treatment”; all conservatives would have to answer for it, and they’ve have to issue statements dissociating themselves from him. (8:50).
Saks is the go-to guy for many key liberal groups on key liberal issues. If a conservative lawyer representing a similar range of key conservative groups on key conservative issues was arrested with a child-abusing crack whore, all his clients would be facing a “media firestorm.” (13:25)
With all his concern for workers’ rights expressed in high-profile litigation, did Saks pay the crack whore a “living wage” with full benefits? (10:30)
If she’d been injured while servicing him, would she have been entitled to file a workers’ compensation claim for an on-the-job injury? (11:20)
And most importantly: “WHY DON’T CRACK WHORES HAVE A UNION?” (12:45)
Richard Saks, Esq., marking time at the Sea of Troubles
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