When our roommate and close friend Paulie was killed by Officer Heimsness, he was just trying to come home.
Paulie had moved in only a few days before, and in the dark he mistook
the nearly identical house two doors down for ours. Our neighbor
recognized him and tried to make sure he made it home safely. His wife,
unsure of what was going on, decided to call the police as a precaution.
Paulie never made it home.
Officer Heimsness shot Paulie even though he was unarmed and, according to eyewitness accounts, backing away with his hands up.
Paulie was one
of our best friends. When he decided to move back to Madison after 8
years in New York, we were thrilled. Paulie was your go-to guy for
lending a helping hand or repairing broken stuff: your car, your
computer, your heart. He played music with our daughter and read to her.
Officer Heimsness ran onto the scene without identifying himself as a police officer, with his gun already drawn.
Despite years of training in non-lethal tactics, he shot Paulie three
times in the chest. His backup officer, by contrast, had just arrived
with her Taser -- not a gun -- drawn.
Heimsness'
record of allegedly using excessive force stretches back to 2001. He's
apparently even gone so far as to beat one man into a bloody pulp. We
don't trust someone with this record of poor judgment to patrol the
streets of Madison.
Police most
effectively keep neighborhoods safe when they have the trust of those
they protect. Thanks to Heimsness' reckless actions, that trust has been
seriously eroded. Megan O'Malley, our neighbor who called the police
that night, told one reporter, "I feel terrible I called the police. I
wouldn't call them again."
Thanks for your help,
Nathan and Amelia Royko Maurer
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