Franklin Mayor Faces Growing List of Sexual Harassment Allegations, Workplace Investigations

Franklin Mayor John Nelson. Photo taken June 17, 2024 by Graham Kilmer.

Franklin Mayor John Nelson is facing a raft of allegations related to sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace conduct while serving as a Town of Waterford Police Officer.

This isn’t the first time Nelson, elected in 2023, has faced workplace harassment allegations. More than a decade ago, Nelson was accused of sexual harassment while working as a Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) deputy, according to internal affairs reports. He was also alleged to have abused his position as a sheriff’s deputy to gain early access to the sale of evicted person’s belongings.

Following his MCSO tenure, Nelson was a part-time police officer with the Town of Waterford from 2015 to 2024.

He was suspended pending a workplace investigation last year and later resigned. A transcript of an interview with Nelson, detailing some of the allegations against him, was recently released by Waterford Town Board Supervisor Robert Ulander.

Nelson told the investigator in the Waterford matter that the allegations against him while an MCSO deputy were “dropped because they were baseless.” However, the cases were closed or transferred when he resigned, before investigators could interview him.

The Waterford interview raises a number of workplace conduct violations, including sexual harassment of fellow police officers and civilians — which have been corroborated by female and male officers, according to investigator Steve Riffel of Community Security Solutions.

Nelson allegedly, according to Riffel, showed his fellow officers “inappropriate images” of women he has “dated or had sexual relations with,” improperly used town resources for his mayoral campaign in Franklin and showed preferential treatment to some officers while retaliating against others.

“I have been battling this situation, which has included attacks on my commitment to law enforcement and the people of Franklin, my integrity and professionalism, for almost a year,” Nelson wrote in a Facebook post on his mayoral page. “Some of the accusations have been mortifying and could not be further from the truth.”

Nelson held a town hall Wednesday night to address the allegations and answer questions from the public. He called them a “witch hunt,” which is precisely how he described the sexual harassment allegations from more than a decade ago when Riffel asked about them.

While an MCSO deputy, Nelson faced allegations he created a hostile work environment, using his position of authority to get a subordinate’s private cell phone number, calling and texting her outside of work, using his authority to get her a job working below him in the agency and making inappropriate comments and physical contact.

Nelson previously declined to speak on the record and could not be reached for comment following the public release of the allegations against him in Waterford.

Records detailing some of the internal affairs investigations into Nelson’s conduct at the MCSO came to light as part of a federal lawsuit more than a decade ago. In 2013, Nelson, who is white, sued former sheriff David Clarke, who is Black, alleging racial discrimination and retaliation. Nelson argued he was passed up for promotion because he was white and that internal affairs cases against him were retaliation for his complaint about racial discrimination.

However, Nelson was the subject of nine internal affairs investigations between 1998 and 2011, according to federal court records.

Beginning in 2024, Nelson has filed several lawsuits attempting to block the release of these internal affairs case files that, according to the civil complaint filed by his attorneys, “could result in irreparable harm to Nelson’s reputation.”

The sexual harassment complaint was brought against Nelson in 2011 by a woman working as a correctional officer for the sheriff’s office, according to an investigative summary by MCSO lieutenant Doug Holton Jr., now a captain, working on internal affairs investigations. Not long after she was hired, Nelson, a lieutenant shift commander, asked her to shadow him for the day.

“I thought it was a little weird because he didn’t do it with any of the other new officers,” she told investigators.

While she shadowed him, Nelson gave her a phone number and told her to call it after work. She did, but no one answered. She then received a text message from the number stating, “See, I told you I’d get your number.” Nelson would go on to text and call her “sporadically,” off-duty, typically once a week. After she declined an invitation to a social gathering, he stopped texting her for a while.

Weeks later, she received an email from him telling her about a clerk position in the process division where Nelson was currently working. She didn’t apply for it, but was interested in moving off of second shift. In September 2011, Nelson called her while she was at work and told her to meet him so she could interview for the clerk position.

She met him in the secure skywalk of the safety building. She followed Nelson up a set of stairs and, while walking, thanked him for the job opportunity and attempted to shake his hand. “Then he pulled me in and said, ‘give big daddy a hug’ and kind of pulled me in, I didn’t really, I didn’t hug him, but he hugged me,” she told investigators.

The brief encounter made her uncomfortable: “I thought, ‘Ok, let’s get this interview done and get out of here.'” She added, “I didn’t know what to feel, I just knew it was not right.”

She sat for the interview with Nelson and two other MCSO personnel and was later offered the job. Initially, she planned to accept the position. However, when Nelson brought her to the office to show her where she would be working, he allegedly told her he was putting her in the “first desk because he wanted to be able to see his ‘baby girl,'” according to the investigative summary.

“I was uneasy, nervous and like wanted to get out of there,” she told investigators. “I just felt real uncomfortable.”

The woman also alleged that on another occasion, Nelson once came up behind her at her desk and started rubbing her shoulders with the palms of his hands.

According to the complaint, the woman would come to believe that Nelson wanted something in return for getting her the job and she decided to stay in her current position. After this, Nelson would accuse her of refusing the job because she was dating another employee, according to the investigative summary.

Nelson resigned in 2012 before the investigators could interview him about the harassment complaint. He later alleged, in his suit against Clarke, that the investigation was retaliation for filing an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint against Clarke. Nelson’s EEOC complaint alleged he was passed up for a promotion because he is white.

Then-Senior Commander Richard Schmidt, the future acting sheriff, alerted Clarke to the EEOC complaint in an email. Clarke responded: “I’m not surprised. I think it’s a move to offset his discipline case, then he’ll cry retaliation. I won’t be deterred by this in his discipline case. He’ll get what I believe is appropriate.”

Nelson’s resignation blocked the MCSO from interviewing him, but it did not close the case. The county has a policy requiring MCSO to turn over unresolved sexual harassment cases to the county’s Human Resources (HR) department.

The MCSO investigation concluded that the allegations against Nelson should be sustained. Later, a county employment relations manager decided Nelson deserved “further discipline.” However, that decision was based on a different, though related, sexual harassment violation.

When Nelson sought to move the woman to a different position in the MCSO, he told HR it was because she was being bullied by her co-workers. He said they were “spreading rumors about her being promiscuous,”  according to a report submitted by Jacqueline Russell, a county employment relations manager.

Nelson was in a supervisory position over the woman, and she brought the complaints of bullying and harassment to him. Instead of reporting these complaints, Nelson tried to get her another position, “but she changed her mind at the last minute.” It was during this same period of time that the woman alleges he began sexually harassing her, including accusing her of dating another co-worker after declining to work directly below him.

Russell concluded Nelson violated his duty to report the harassment claims and “jeopardized his position as her supervisor.” Though, Nelson told HR she wanted to keep the claims confidential. In any case, the woman told HR she would sue Nelson if the county was unable to discipline him, according to Russell’s report.

Eagle Movers Complaint

When Nelson resigned from the MCSO in 2012 he also cut off an investigation into whether he misused his position as a deputy to get early access to foreclosure sales.

The complaint alleged that Nelson gained early access to a foreclosure sale held by Eagle Movers because of his position as a sheriff’s deputy. The moving company was selling items it had obtained while helping the MCSO’s Civil Process unit with evictions. When the people who are evicted are unable to pay the storage fee for their belongings, Eagle Movers sells them.

An MCSO employee saw Nelson and others perusing the items before the start of the sale, while the rest of the interested buyers were waiting for a locked fence to be opened. She said Nelson offered to help her get in early next time, and that an Eagle Movers employee told her Nelson and the other deputies were “friends of ours.”

Nelson resigned before he could be interviewed for the investigation and it was closed in March 2012.