This is an interesting development in the Milwaukee County prison tablet scandal. At least four inmates were using their prison-issued tablets to threaten witnesses, harass their victims, and put police officers on hit lists. That tablet program was authorized by Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in 2022 and renewed last year. One of those inmates was Thomas Zollicoffer, who was arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree homicide for allegedly murdering his ex-girlfriend and two others.

David Crowley refused to suspend the program, which Milwaukee County Judge David Borowski slammed in court during a hearing in Zollicoffer's case. For weeks, Crowley even defended the program as a "best practice."

Republican Tom Tiffany hammered Crowley on this issue, and it must have damaged his campaign, because Crowley said he suspended the program. But it didn't end there; attorneys for Crowley issued a laughable cease and desist letter demanding the Tiffany campaign stop using the political ad about the tablets. The letter misidentified Judge Borowski as "Judge Daniel Borokowski" and contained other errors and laughable legal claims.

But in an interview, Crowley seems to have admitted the program is not, in fact, suspended after all.

"The practice of giving inmates those tablets, you made a public comment about it, I believe last week. Did something change? Did you just decide to be more clear on this issue?" asked host Steve Scaffidi. "What was the take on that?"

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"As the information began to come out, we were already starting to have conversations with the community reintegration center, with the Sheriff's Office, with the District Attorney," Crowley said. "And what we realized is that the safeguards that were in place, I think also conversations with our vendor, IC Solutions, they weren't good enough. And so all of the residents, all of the inmates, they still have access to the tablets, what we did was just paused the messaging app, right?"

"They'll still have access to visitations ... still be able to talk to family and friends, free phone calls. They'll be able to do video calls," Crowley added. "But to make sure that we're protecting witnesses, to where we're protecting victims, we're pausing this until we find a permanent solution."

Incredible. After Judge Borowski said that an unnamed inmate had reportedly hacked the tablet to access pornography, Crowley thinks pausing the messaging app will suffice.

The permanent solution here is to not allow inmates to have tablets. It's not a best practice; it's stupidity.