Newsmakers: State Patrol Superintendent Stephen Fitzgerald
Wisconsin State Patrol Superintendent Stephen Fitzgerald worked his first riots and protests as a Chicago police officer in 1968, the year that civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated and protesters disrupted the national Democratic Party convention. In February 2011, only days after becoming State Patrol superintendent, he took off his uniform and watched large protests in Wisconsin’s Capitol — protests that at times were worked by more than 100 troopers.State law sets the number of troopers at 399, although there are dozens of vacancies. In a Newsmakers interview on June 22, Fitzgerald explained why troopers became the face of Capitol security during those protests and then manned TSA-like security stations and metal detectors until June 23. Fitzgerald also said he was upset when, as a career law officer, former Dodge County sheriff and U.S. marshal, bloggers said he got his State Patrol job because he is the father of the two top leaders of the Legislature, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald and Senate Majority Leader Jeff Fitzgerald.
