MADISON, Wis. — Prosecutors have accused a Wisconsin police officer of going on a burglary spree, stealing two vehicles and leading officers on a high-speed pursuit.
Prosecutors in Barron and Green Lake counties filed a host of charges against Waupun Police Lt. Bradley Young on Friday, including felony burglary, car theft and fleeing an officer.
Young remains in custody in Burnett County, where he was arrested last week. Online court records don't list an attorney for him. A message left at the Rice Lake public defender's office Tuesday wasn't immediately returned.
According to the Green Lake County criminal complaint, Young told an investigator he broke into a Berlin grocery store in June and stole $1,000. Employees told police someone had used an axe or other tool to crack the store's safe.
Young, 43, also told the agent he broke into a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Markeson last month but couldn't get anything out of the safe. Surveillance video from the store showed someone striking the safe multiple times with a splitting maul, an axe-like tool often used for splitting wood.
The burglar then tried to open the safe with a pry bar and other tools. He eventually gave up, raising his middle finger toward the camera, the Green Lake County complaint said.
On Aug. 5 someone broke into Walker's Kohlerville, a restaurant in the Town of Green Lake. A sheriff's deputy responding to an internal alarm at the restaurant spotted someone in a camouflage shirt, dark jeans and a mask matching Young's build fleeing from the building. The man escaped into a cornfield.
Deputies discovered someone had pulled the restaurant's ATM machine out of the floor and pried off the front cover but couldn't get at the cash inside. They also found Young's car near the scene; inside was a large amount of cash, a splitting maul and a pair of black gloves, the Green County complaint said.
