EXPOSING HIDDEN TRUTHS
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PARENTS OF UNION GROVE HIGH SCHOOL
Nov 10, 2026 · @Jim
Dear Parents of Union Grove High School, and the people of Union Grove and Racine County:
There is a report, paid for with your tax money, that explains how the Racine County Sheriff's Office handled warnings about a deputy who lived in Union Grove and was later convicted of 21 felonies against children. You have never been allowed to read it. Neither have most of the County Supervisors who vote on the Sheriff's budget. We are writing to ask for your help getting it released.
We are H.O.T. Government — Honest, Open, Transparent — a volunteer, nonpartisan group of Racine County citizens who investigate local government by public records. We take no sides in elections. Everything in this letter comes from court files, county records and the Sheriff's Office's own statements, and every document we cite is posted at hotgovernment.com.
What the Hall Report is
In 2023, deputies warned Racine County Sheriff's Captain Cary Madrigal about Deputy Preston Kite. She handled it informally. No report was written. No investigation was opened. Nobody looked at his phone. In February 2024 the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department — not Racine — arrested Kite. He pleaded guilty and on February 28, 2025 was sentenced to 55 years of initial confinement on 21 felony counts, including crimes against children. He lived in Union Grove, on 18th Avenue, and patrolled your village in a Racine County squad.
After the arrest, Racine County hired an outside attorney, Samuel Hall, to review what Captain Madrigal had done with the warnings. His report is dated December 2, 2024, with a follow-up on February 4, 2025. The County paid $31,828.38 for it. That is the Hall Report.
Here is what you are allowed to know about it. Sheriff Schmaling used it to give Captain Madrigal a ten-day suspension, which she accepted by signing a waiver of her right to a hearing. She then went to court, anonymously, to keep her own disciplinary file secret, and the County paid a second law firm $19,586.05 to fight her — and won. The disciplinary file is public. The Hall Report is not. On August 11, 2026, Racine County Corporation Counsel denied our request for it as attorney-client privileged.
Two things about that denial matter to you. First, the privilege belongs to the County, which means the County Board can waive it by a vote. Second, Hall was hired to review one captain, not the Sheriff's Office. The Sheriff and the County's lawyers decided what he would look at. You were not asked.
Captain Madrigal herself has said the review was narrow. In July 2026 she told Racine County Eye: "I took the fall for many others to end the discussion, knowing that the investigation by Attorney Sam Hall was far from thorough." Who are the "many others"? She has never said. On November 3 she lost the election for Sheriff. On November 6 the Sheriff's Office placed her on administrative leave pending an "internal administrative review of Captain Madrigal's actions" — a review conducted by the same office, behind the same closed door.
Why this is your report
Union Grove has no police department. The Village contracts with the Racine County Sheriff's Office. The officer your children know as the "Union Grove Chief of Police" is a Sheriff's Office employee. When something goes wrong in Union Grove, the Sheriff's Office is who answers. The Hall Report is the only outside look anyone has ever taken at how that office handles a warning about one of its own. A one-page summary of the Kite record for Union Grove families is at hotgovernment.com/union-grove-kite-fact-sheet.
What Kite said in open court. At his sentencing on February 28, 2025, on the record, Kite told the judge: "I was having multiple sexual partners including two other deputy's and a supervisor within my own department. And an ADA from a neighboring county who encouraged me to go to a rest stop to engage in sexual activity that he partaked in himself." And: "I even reached out to supervision to get some advice, none was given and there was no follow up." He named no one. In the twenty months since, no one has publicly identified who he meant, no one has been interviewed about it, and no referral to any outside agency has been made. The District Attorney confirmed that in writing in June 2026: zero referrals.
He was not alone. The court records show Kite was one node in a network that reached across Wisconsin. His trading partner Adam Westbrook — then a county HR director in Outagamie County, and a friend of Kite's since school — was convicted in federal court of sending him child sexual abuse material; Westbrook's appeal is pending. The Kenosha investigators who worked Kite's phone generated referrals in seven Wisconsin communities across five counties, plus the federal case; one trading partner was never identified. Federal filings put the group's activity from May 2023 to March 2024. Kite was an on-duty Racine County deputy, assigned to your village, for that entire window. Kite was not careful: the criminal complaint ties his trading accounts to his own email address. Every one of those referrals came from Kenosha working the phone. Not one came from the office that employed him and had been warned about him.
What the District Attorney called it. When we asked DA Patricia Hanson why the 2023 warnings produced no search of Kite's devices, she answered that what was reported — Kite sending an unsolicited nude photo of himself to a fellow deputy — was not a crime: "One adult sending another adult, one unsolicited image that depicts nudity, is not a crime in Wisconsin." She is right about the criminal law. But the Sheriff's Office's own policy 1009.6.1 requires a supervisor who receives a sexual-harassment complaint to contact Human Resources. Human Resources has certified it holds no record that anyone did. In any other workplace in this county, an employee sending nude photos to coworkers gets a review or a termination. Here it got a hallway conversation.
Then it happened again. On October 22, 2026, a letter about the Union Grove superintendent reached that same Sheriff's Office. According to the criminal complaint, he was contacted the same day. By the next morning, the complaint says, his devices were "suspiciously clean." It was the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department, again, that made the arrest. The superintendent has been charged, not convicted, and is presumed innocent. But who inside the Sheriff's Office contacted him first, and why, is unanswered — and it is the same question the Hall Report was hired to answer about Kite.
Your children are in that school. The deputies on your streets work for the office the report is about. You have more reason than anyone in this county to want to read it.
This is not one bad deputy
Since Kite's arrest, two more Racine County Sheriff's investigators have been found misusing police records for personal reasons. The office handled them differently, and the difference is the point.
- Investigator Emil Ortiz, 2025. The Sheriff's own internal affairs unit found he ran 19 license-plate-camera searches and other restricted database queries on a private citizen for personal reasons. The unit cited no criminal statute and made no referral. He got the same ten-day suspension Captain Madrigal got. In October 2026 a judge who read the full file found his conduct "did exceed his authority." He was never charged.
- Investigator Jonathan Bechman, 2026. Found using police records to locate a person for personal reasons. Referred out, prosecuted by a special prosecutor, convicted August 21, 2026 — because an outside police department already happened to be investigating him.
The lieutenant who wrote the no-referral memo on Ortiz is the same lieutenant who runs internal affairs, speaks for the Sheriff's Office, and announced on November 7 that Captain Madrigal is on leave pending a review by his own unit. The full record is at hotgovernment.com/investigations/handled-in-house.
We are not telling you what to conclude. We are telling you that the one independent review the County ever paid for is in a drawer, and the people who decided what it would look at are the people it was about.
What we have done, and what the County said
H.O.T. Government has been asking for this report since the spring of 2026.
- We requested it under the Wisconsin Public Records Law. Corporation Counsel took months to answer and then denied it in full as privileged, while conceding that the written balancing analysis the law requires does exist — and withholding that too.
- On June 28, 2026 we sent a formal written demand to every County Supervisor to waive the privilege and release the report. The Board took no action.
- We asked the District Attorney whether anyone had been referred for the supervisor and the deputies Kite named in court. Her answer: no referrals.
- We wrote to the Sheriff's Office repeatedly. It has never answered a records request from us.
- This month we wrote to the County Board again and to the Sheriff-elect.
In our conversations with Supervisors, most told us they had never seen the Hall Report. Some did not know it existed. They approved paying for it. They have never read it. Neither has anyone who votes on the Sheriff's budget on your behalf.
What we are asking you to do
Call or email your County Supervisor this week and ask for one thing: a Board vote to waive privilege and release the full Hall Report and its February 2025 follow-up. Not a summary. Not a redacted version prepared by the office it reviews. The full report.
Your Supervisor's name, phone and email are on the Racine County website under County Board. If you are not sure who represents Union Grove, call the County Clerk at 262-636-3121 and ask.
If you want words, use these:
My name is ______ and I live in your district. I am a parent at Union Grove High School. I am asking you to put a motion on the County Board agenda to waive attorney-client privilege and release the complete Hall Report on Captain Cary Madrigal's handling of the Preston Kite warnings — the full report, not a summary. The County paid $31,828 for it. Our village is policed by that office. We have the right to read it. Will you support that motion? I would like a written answer.
Then tell us what they said: hotgovernment@gmail.com. We will publish every answer, and every silence, by district.
Three hundred phone calls from Union Grove will do what two years of records requests could not. Supervisors answer to voters. The Sheriff's Office does not.
One more thing
We are not asking you to believe us. We are asking you to read a document your county paid for, about an office that polices your town, concerning a deputy who lived among you, patrolled your streets, and harmed children. If the report shows the Sheriff's Office did everything right, releasing it costs the County nothing. If it does not, you are entitled to know before the next letter arrives.
Release the Hall Report. All of it.
H.O.T. Government Honest. Open. Transparent. hotgovernment.com · hotgovernment@gmail.com
Every document referenced in this letter — the captain's disciplinary file, the County's denial, the June 28 demand to the Board, the court filings in the Kite, Union Grove and database-misuse matters, and the District Attorney's letters — is posted at hotgovernment.com under Investigations: The Kite File and Handled In-House, and summarized at hotgovernment.com/union-grove-kite-fact-sheet. The Union Grove superintendent is charged, not convicted, and is presumed innocent. No child, complainant or family member is named by H.O.T. Government in any of its work. Corrections: hotgovernment@gmail.com.
