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The Milwaukee Police Department said Thursday that a police officer — whose fatal shooting of a man in August set off violent unrest there — has been arrested after being accused of sexual assault while the demonstrations were ongoing.

Officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown was arrested on Wednesday night after a police investigation that ended with the Milwaukee County district attorney filing criminal charges, the department said in a statement. Heaggan-Brown, 24, was charged with five counts, including two felony counts of second-degree sexual assault.

Police said a man told authorities he was sexually assaulted by Heaggan-Brown while turmoil still dominated Milwaukee’s streets two days after the officer killed Sylville K. Smith, 23.

In court documents, authorities say the man told police that the officer, who was off-duty, had raped him at about the same time that other Milwaukee officers were responding to reports of gunshots, making arrests and having rocks thrown at them in the area of the demonstrations.

Heaggan-Brown shot Smith on a Saturday in mid-August, prompting an eruption of violence that stretched for hours that night and into early Sunday morning. While things were less volcanic as the tension continued Sunday night, violence continued to break out, as an 18-year-old man was shot in the neck in the Sherman Park area where the demonstrations were centered. Seven law enforcement officers were also injured that night, police said.

According to the complaint, the man who said he was raped told police Heaggan-Brown had picked him up at the same time that the 18-year-old was shot near the protests. The two men went to a bar, where they “sat and watched television, as coverage of the Sherman Park protests aired,” according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.

The following day, police were contacted about the report of an assault involving an officer, even while city officials were attempting to tamp down the simmering rage in the city sparked by the shooting. They announced plans for a limited curfew beginning later that day, following two nights during which buildings were set on fire and officers injured.

Police were also pushing back against suggestions circulating in the city that Smith was unarmed and shot in the back when he died after a traffic stop two days earlier. Officials said Smith had run from a traffic stop before turning to the officer while holding a gun. The shooting remains under investigation.

The complaint filed Thursday stated that Heaggan-Brown and the man who told police he was raped had connected through Facebook because they were both musicians. When they went to the bar, the complaint said the officer had “bragged about being able to do whatever [he] wanted without repercussions.”

Surveillance video shows that the men spent a little more than an hour-and-a-half drinking at the bar, according to the complaint.

In a police interview described in the complaint, the man — who was not identified — told police that he had difficulty remembering what happened after he left the bar and described waking up to being assaulted. The man told police that he tried to move away and said no, but told authorities he felt drugged and threatened. The complaint stated that this man “exhibited signs of trauma” during his interview.

No defense attorney was initially listed in court records for Heaggan-Brown. The Milwaukee police union did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Hospital surveillance video showed that the two men arrived at the hospital at about 4:16 a.m. and that the officer left a little more than 20 minutes later, police said.

A nurse at the hospital who attended to the man said Heaggan-Brown had told her that this man “began to act weird and unresponsive” at the bar, which is why the officer said he brought him to the hospital. The nurse also told police that the man became very agitated, yelling that he had been raped by the person who took him to the hospital.

Later that morning, police said Heaggan-Brown sent a text message to a sergeant who had mentored him. In the text, police say Heaggan-Brown described having “a separate situation” and saying he had messed up “big time,” adding: “But need to handle this the most secret and right way possible.”

The sergeant later met with Heaggan-Brown and, according to the complaint, the officer described the sex as consensual but acknowledged that the man who said he was raped “was drunk and had ‘medical issues.’ ”

 

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