Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s longtime aide participated in an anti-police demonstration outside a Wisconsin police officer’s home during which the cop and his girlfriend were violently assaulted, according to police reports obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Tiffany Henry, who has served as Baldwin’s Milwaukee office director since 2017, was part of a caravan of activists that drove to former Wauwatosa police officer Joseph Mensah’s home on Aug. 8, 2020, where agitators smashed Mensah’s windows, bludgeoned the officer over the head with a bullhorn, slashed his tires, fired a shotgun, and threatened to kill him and his dog, according to police records.
Henry allegedly yelled at Mensah over a bullhorn, shouting “this is what democracy looks like,” and called the former officer a “punk-ass bitch,” according to police interviews with other protesters. She also allegedly offered to help pay the bail of another participant who fired his shotgun at the cop’s home.
Henry’s involvement in the anti-police demonstration was first reported by Wisconsin Right Now in July 2021, but she continues to work for Baldwin. Henry was reportedly arrested for violating curfew during another anti-police protest in October 2020.
Baldwin’s office told the Free Beacon that Baldwin wasn’t aware that Henry was participating in the protest at Mensah’s house and didn’t authorize it. The office said the senator didn’t know about Henry’s subsequent arrest until after the fact.
“Tiffany Henry was not acting as a representative of the Senator at these protests and Senator Baldwin did not authorize or know of Tiffany’s involvement until after the events,” said Baldwin’s spokesman Eli Rosen. “The Senator has formally reprimanded Tiffany for the unauthorized actions and required her to undergo ethics training.”
The news comes as Baldwin has sought to distance herself from the “defund the police” movement and run ads that feature Wisconsin sheriffs defending her border policies.
It also comes a week after the Free Beacon reported that Henry cohosted a radical anti-police podcast, where guests praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, accused Jews of exploiting the black civil rights movement, and called police “slave catchers” who should be “abolished.”
Henry—who boasted about her involvement with Baldwin’s police policies on the show—was disciplined over the unauthorized podcast, a spokesman for Baldwin told the Free Beacon.
Henry is associated with the People’s Revolution, an extremist anti-police group that has organized violent protests around Wisconsin, including the one outside Mensah’s house.
Mensah, who is black, came under scrutiny in 2020 for his involvement in three shootings in which young men, who were also black, were killed. Mensah, who said he was acting in self-defense, resigned from the police department and was later cleared of wrongdoing in the cases.
On Aug. 8, 2020, around 50 members of the People’s Revolution descended on the house where Mensah was living with his girlfriend. The home “was vandalized, [Mensah and his girlfriend] were beaten, multiple individuals in the [protest] group were armed, and a shotgun was fired,” striking the house, according to a police report written by a responding officer.
People’s Revolution member Ronald Bell told police that one of the attendees was Henry, whom Bell described as a “representative of Senator Tammy Baldwin.”
“Henry [spoke] on the bullhorn at the protest stating, ‘This is what democracy looks like,’” said Bell in a police interview.
Another protester, Niles McKee, also told police that Henry worked for Baldwin. McKee said Henry was at the protest and was “calling [Mensah] a ‘punk-ass bitch’ and using ‘other colorful language,’” according to his police interview.
Bell said Henry didn’t do “anything violent at the house,” but she stayed through the demonstration, which ended after Bell fired a shotgun near Mensah. Henry then drove with the group to a nearby park afterwards, where another People’s Revolution organizer warned members to delete any videos they had of the violence, according to Bell.
Bell said Henry called him the next day to ask if he was the person who fired the gun and said police were looking for him. She also allegedly offered to help pay for Bell’s bail if he got arrested.
On the call, Henry and another activist “told Bell they had a lawyer for him and they would pay his cash bail,” said the police report. “They did not tell him who the lawyer they had for him was.”
Bell told police that “none of the protests [the People’s Revolution] have been doing lately have been peaceful.”
He said he and other protesters hit and punched Mensah, and one participant bludgeoned Mensah over the head with a bullhorn. The bullhorn was then given to the sister of Alvin Cole—one of the young men whose death the group was protesting—”as a trophy.”
Bell pleaded guilty to battery to a police officer and was sentenced to two years in prison in 2022. McKee, who owned the shotgun that Bell fired, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
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