PALMYRA, WI (WTAQ) - The lawyer for a former small-town police chief in southeast Wisconsin says he'll sue a panel that fired the chief last week.
The police committee in Palmyra voted 2 to 1 to fire Charles Warren, after concluding that he mishandled several cases which involved drugs and sexual abuse.
Warren's attorney, Paul Bucher, called the firing racially motivated. Warren is an African-American who was with the Palmyra police force for five years.
Retired Milwaukee police detective Gary Byers brought 3 cases to the police commission and said Warren did not follow his department's policy. But after a proceeding last November, a hearing examiner said Warren had "room for improvement" but did not commit misconduct.
One case involved the police department's handling of a drug that killed a 34-year-old woman in an overdose.
Another incident accused Warren of parking a personal truck full of confiscated marijuana plants in front of Palmyra-Eagle High School.
And the third case accused the former chief of not prosecuting a school volunteer suspected of exposing himself several times to 3rd-grade boys.
