John Balcerzak

Three women, Sandra Smith, Tina Spivey and Nicole Childress, discovered the victim,[2] 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, after he had managed to escape from Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment, naked, bleeding from the rectum and heavily under the influence of drugs. Childress called 9-1-1; Balcerzak, Joseph T. Gabrish and Richard Porubcan were dispatched.[3] Though the Laotian immigrant had been in the country for ten years and spoke English fluently,[4] in his drugged and brain-injured state, Konerak was unable to communicate his situation to authorities. Dahmer found the boy with the police and convinced them that the boy was his 19-year-old lover.[5]

The three women recognized the boy from the neighborhood and were convinced that Sinthasomphone's life was in peril. They communicated this to the officers and tried to save the boy. However, the three officers returned Konerak to Dahmer's apartment.[6] Balcerzak said he smelled nothing unusual, but Gabrish said he did detect an odor,[7] which was the decaying corpse of a previous victim in the bedroom,[8] but made no attempt to investigate. The officers listed the incident as a "domestic squabble between homosexuals."[9] Later that evening, Dahmer sexually abused, murdered, and dismembered the boy.[5]

Balcerzak's, Gabrish's positions and roles within the Milwaukee Police Department were terminated and Porubcan got put on job probation for 1 year,[10][11] after their actions were widely publicized,[2] including an audiotape of the officers making homophobic statements to their dispatcher and cracking jokes about having reunited the "lovers".[12][13] The officers did not check Dahmer's identification; had they done so, they would have discovered that Dahmer was a sex offender previously convicted for molesting Sinthasomphone's older brother, who was 13 at the time, in 1988.[13] The city of Milwaukee later paid the boy's family a sum of $850,000 to settle a lawsuit over the police's handling of the situation.[14]

Both officers later appealed their termination. In 1994, Judge Robert J. Parins decided the case and ruled in favor of the officers, allowing them to be reinstated.[15] They were reinstated in June 1994 after an appeal.[16]

In May 2005, Balcerzak was elected president of the Milwaukee Police Association, defeating Sebastian Raclaw by a vote of 521 to 453. As president, he was criticized for failing to protect officers from mandatory overtime and not supporting African-American officer Alfonzo Glover,[17] who was charged with homicide on 30 May 2006, and later committed suicide on the same day.[18] By June 2006, the union vice president had resigned because of disagreements with Balcerzak's "leadership style".[17] A petition to remove Balcerzak was filed and a recall election was held in August 2006. The results were 213 for a recall and 397 to retain him. At an October 9, 2009, trustee election, John Balcerzak was not re-elected as a trustee, thus having to vacate his position as president on December 31, 2009.[19]

• "Officers Tell Jury of Letting Dahmer Keep Boy – New York Times". The New York Times. February 12, 1992. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
• "No. 98-1602. – BALCERZAK v. CITY OF MILWAUKEE WISCONSIN – US 7th Circuit". caselaw.findlaw.com. Retrieved December 15, 2011.