Six Pages Out of a $31,828 Report: Why the Hall Report Must Be Released

Racine County paid a Milwaukee attorney $31,828.38 to investigate how Sheriff’s Office supervisors handled warnings about Deputy Preston Kite. Attorney Samuel Hall produced two reports. The public has seen neither.

What the public has seen is six pages written by Sheriff Christopher Schmaling. He chose what went into them. He corrected his own investigator inside them. He used them to suspend one captain for ten days. Then his name appeared on that captain’s campaign advertising, under the words “Leaders We Trust.”

The person who decided what the public would learn about the Hall Report later asked the public to elect its subject. That alone is reason enough to release the full report. This analysis lays out the rest.

What the Sheriff chose to show you

The six pages are the Sheriff’s disciplinary complaint against Capt. Cary Madrigal, File 25DC20, dated Feb. 19, 2025. The document says what it is: “This document is a summary of Attorney Hall’s investigative findings.” Its conclusion begins: “Based on the findings of Attorney Hall’s investigation, I have determined that there is ‘just cause.’”

So everything below comes from Hall’s investigation, as the Sheriff chose to present it. Names are redacted by the County. “Explicit photo” is our wording for the cruder term the file uses.

A deputy reported the photo to her directly, with a witness. After a hearing in the fall of 2023, a deputy went to Madrigal’s office and told her Kite had sent him an explicit photo. A second person in the room corroborated it. The deputy also objected to Kite being considered for the LGBTQ liaison post. According to the file, she answered, “I guess we will have to address it,” and said it would need some “closed door meetings.”

Months earlier, she had already asked someone to handle it quietly. Hall wrote that a witness “was unequivocal in that Madrigal expressly asked [him] to ‘talk to Kite’ about the incident.” She told him she had “heard about the Kite stuff” and that “it was coming back around.” Hall wrote that she “did not mention any discipline or suggest any further action,” and wanted to “informally address the issue with Kite, without any formal action being taken.”

After the arrest, she said it was news to her. At an open forum about Kite’s arrest, “multiple deputies thought it was unusual that Captain Madrigal stated this was the first she had heard” of the photos. When the deputy who had reported it confronted her, “Madrigal told him she ‘did not know about that’ despite [his] directly reporting the incident to her.” The file also records that she told someone he was “on thin ice” when he said Kite was a pedophile.

Hall did not accept her explanation. She told Hall she thought the photo had been an innocent mistake. Hall wrote: “However, if that explanation was accurate, there also would not have been any cause for Madrigal to ask [the witness] to address the inappropriate photo with Kite.” Asked about that request, she said she did not recall it but would not “call him a liar.”

The Sheriff called it serious. His complaint describes “serious misconduct committed by Captain Madrigal” and ends: “Such misconduct cannot be tolerated and warrants a TEN-DAY SUSPENSION WITHOUT PAY.” She accepted the suspension and waived a hearing. The one rule cited is Policy 1009.6.1, for taking no appropriate action when she “was made aware of Kite’s inappropriate behavior.”

Six signs the summary is not the whole story

Nobody outside the County knows what the Hall Report says beyond these six pages. That is the problem. But the six pages themselves show there is more.

1. The Sheriff said “supervisors,” plural. He disciplined one. His own introduction says he was informed “that supervisory staff were aware of these allegations and did not take formal steps to address the situation,” and that he reported the matter because of “Captain Madrigal’s and other supervisors alleged lack of responses.” The summary then covers one captain. What did Hall find about the others?

2. Witnesses called it an “open secret.” One told Hall he heard about the photos “years ago,” that Kite would “test the waters,” and that it was an “open secret.” Another said “everyone … knew.” The deputy who received the photo said he disclosed it at a training within about a month, in 2022. If it was an open secret for years, who else in command knew, and what does the full report say about them?

3. The Sheriff corrected his investigator inside the summary. The six pages carry the Sheriff’s own bracketed notes. One says “Attorney Hall’s original investigative findings incorrectly concluded” when a key conversation took place. Another says part of Hall’s account “is somewhat incorrect.” A third comments on Madrigal’s statements: “These two positions are inconsistent with each other.” The public is reading the Sheriff’s edit of Hall and cannot check it against what Hall wrote.

4. There are two Hall reports. The summary lists an Internal Review Report dated Dec. 2, 2024 and a Follow-Up dated Feb. 4, 2025. The Sheriff asked for the second one. Fourteen months of billed legal work became six pages.

5. Witnesses raised a personal connection, and no one followed up. One witness told Hall he believed Madrigal and Kite “may have been close.” Others said they were not confident she would act because she had a “personal relationship” with Kite. DA Patricia Hanson later wrote to H.O.T. that there was “no follow-up by Hall” on the claim that Kite rented from Madrigal. County deed records show Madrigal never owned the property, so that specific claim was wrong. The point is that the investigation recorded the concern and, as far as the summary shows, did not test it.

6. The summary is silent on what Kenosha was told. A Kenosha County detective wrote that Racine supervisors told him there had been complaints about Kite’s conduct toward other deputies. He also recorded that no call for service was created when a citizen phoned Racine dispatch about Kite on Feb. 3, 2024. The Sheriff’s summary mentions neither. We do not know whether Hall examined them. The County says it has no document defining what Hall was asked to investigate.

The ethical problem

Sheriff Schmaling holds four roles in this story, and they cannot all be held by one person without a conflict.

• He is the editor. He alone decided which of Hall’s findings reached the public and which did not.
• He is the judge. He decided the penalty: ten days, for conduct he called “serious misconduct” that “cannot be tolerated.”
• He is the boss of everyone else in the report. The “other supervisors” his own introduction mentions all work for him. Any finding about them is a finding about his department on his watch.
• He is an endorser. In 2026 the Madrigal campaign’s own advertising listed “Chris Schmaling, Current Sheriff” among the “Leaders We Trust” backing her for his job.

Put those together. In February 2025 the Sheriff told the Grievance Committee that this captain failed her basic duty as a supervisor. In 2026 his name was on her campaign ads, backing her to run the whole department. He has never explained how the two fit together. The full report is the only way for the public to judge that for itself.

There is a second problem. A summary written by someone with a stake in the outcome is not a neutral record. The Sheriff had reasons to show the public a problem that began and ended with one captain. A report that reached further, into what other supervisors knew, or into how the office handles complaints, would reflect on him. H.O.T. does not claim he left anything out. We cannot know, and neither can anyone else. That is exactly why a summary by an interested party is no substitute for the document.

The County’s legal position makes it worse. Corporation Counsel says the Hall Report is privileged legal analysis. But the County did not treat it as confidential when it was useful. The Sheriff quoted Hall word for word, filed those quotes with a county committee, and the County released them. It used the report in public to justify a decision, then sealed the report so no one could test the decision. A county cannot fairly do both.

What the full report could answer

The six pages are about one photo, one deputy and one captain. The Sheriff’s Office runs the county jail and polices Union Grove and other communities under contract, and its former deputy is serving 55 years for crimes against children. The public’s questions are larger than the summary:

• Who else knew? What did Hall find about the “other supervisors” the Sheriff’s introduction mentions?
• How long? If the conduct was an “open secret” for years, when did command staff first hear of it?
• What was Hall told to look at? The County says it has no document setting his assignment. Did he examine the Feb. 3, 2024 dispatch call, or the complaints supervisors described to Kenosha?
• What did Hall get wrong, and what did the Sheriff change? The Sheriff says Hall’s first report reached an incorrect conclusion on timing. The public has only the Sheriff’s version of that disagreement.
• Did Hall recommend anything? Changes to policy, training, or how complaints are logged? Referral to an outside agency? The County has confirmed it holds records about referring the matter out, and is withholding them.
• Why ten days? County Human Resources told H.O.T. it has no records of how the penalty was chosen.

None of these questions is about embarrassing an employee. They are about whether a public safety agency can be trusted to act on warnings. Wisconsin law says the public is entitled to “the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government” (Wis. Stat. § 19.31). A circuit judge applied that principle to this same file in May 2026, ordering the six pages released over Madrigal’s objection because the public has a strong interest in how public agencies discipline their own.

Release does not mean exposing victims or witnesses. The County redacted names in the six pages and can do the same with the rest.

What say you, Supervisors?

The privilege the County is claiming belongs to the County. The 21 members of the County Board can vote to waive it and release the report with lawful redactions. A new Sheriff takes office in January, and he campaigned on cooperation with records requests.

H.O.T. wrote to the Board and asked each supervisor for an answer by Nov. 10, 2026. Here is the count.

Supervisor Wishau also wrote that none of this was “ever shared with the board by the county” in his time on it. If that is right, the County Board has let the Sheriff’s six pages stand in for a report the Board itself has never read, on a matter the County spent $31,828.38 to investigate.

Two of 21 is not oversight. Supervisors Rossi and Wishau both endorsed Madrigal, and both still want the facts out. That is what the job requires, and they deserve credit for it.

The other 19 owe their districts an answer. Silence leaves residents to draw their own conclusion: that the Board’s loyalty runs to the Sheriff’s Office and not to the people who elected it. H.O.T. would be glad to be proven wrong. Each supervisor can do that with one sentence.

The questions for every supervisor:

1. Have you read the Hall Report? If not, will you ask to?
2. Will you vote to waive privilege and release it to the public, with lawful redactions?
3. When will it be on a public agenda?

What say you, Supervisors?

What we are not saying

• We are not saying the Sheriff hid anything. We are saying no one can check, and that he had a stake in what was shown.
• We are not saying the Hall Report contains any particular finding. The questions above are questions.
• We are not saying any supervisor did anything wrong by endorsing a candidate. We are asking them to act on the report now.
• We are not saying anyone in the Sheriff’s Office knew Kite was abusing children before his arrest. The warnings in this file were about his conduct toward adult coworkers.
• We do not identify the redacted deputies and witnesses, and we ask readers not to guess.
• Whether the County’s use of the report legally waived its privilege is a question for a court. H.O.T.’s point is about fairness: the County used the report in public and then sealed it.

Sources

• Racine County Sheriff’s Office Internal File 25DC20, Disciplinary Complaint of Sheriff Christopher Schmaling to the Racine County Grievance Committee, Feb. 19, 2025 (six pages), and Capt. Madrigal’s signed Acceptance of Disciplinary Charges and Waiver of Hearing. Released by the County in 2026; posted at hotgovernment.com.
• Racine County Clerk production, Oct. 13, 2026: Crivello, Nichols & Hall invoices totaling $31,828.38.
• Racine County Corporation Counsel letters to H.O.T., July 29, Aug. 3 and Aug. 11, 2026.
• DA Patricia Hanson letter to H.O.T., June 18, 2026.
• Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department report 2024-00304801 (Kenosha Joint Services production, July 2026).
• Racine County Register of Deeds records for the Union Grove property.
• Friends To Elect Cary Madrigal, campaign endorsement advertising, 2026.
• Madrigal v. Racine County, Racine County Case 2026CV000280.
• Supervisor Taylor Wishau, public comments on H.O.T. Government’s Facebook page, November 2026; Supervisor Ernie Rossi, statement to H.O.T., Nov. 10, 2026.
• Related: Leadership at the Racine County Sheriff’s Office and The Kite File: Off the Books.

This is analysis and opinion by H.O.T. Government based on public records. Everyone named is presumed innocent of any charge not proven in court. H.O.T. Government is nonpartisan.