Milwaukee police civilian employee election fraud, woman fined

MILWAUKEE - A former civilian employee with the Milwaukee Police Department has been fined $250 after prosecutors said she voted in the city of Milwaukee even though she did not live within the city limits.

In court:

Marcey Patterson, 45, pleaded guilty to felony election fraud as part of a deferred prosecution agreement last year. On Tuesday, the court found Patterson had complied with that agreement, and as a result, found her guilty of misdemeanor attempted election fraud. She was then ordered to pay a $250 fine.

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Pay discrepancy

The backstory:

According to a criminal complaint, Patterson worked as a Milwaukee Police Department community relations, engagement and recruitment director from May 2022 until July 2025, when she resigned.

The complaint went on to say that when Patterson applied for and got the job with MPD, she listed a Milwaukee address on 40th Street as her primary residence. She was a part-owner of the home and was listed on the deed. 

But in 2025, Patterson filed new forms with MPD that said she had moved from 40th Street to a new address in Glendale in 2018 and then Brown Deer in 2024. In a questionnaire, court filings said she listed her primary address as the one in Glendale but listed it as being in the city of Milwaukee. When human resources brought up the discrepancy, she said that the 40th Street address in Milwaukee was her primary residence.

Court filings noted Patterson was eligible for a 3% residency pay incentive while she was an MPD employee, and from May 2022 to July 2025, she received that incentive after her position was reclassified. She received $8,226.78 in overpayments as a result, which the police department noted it would not have authorized if not for Patterson's false assertions about where she lived.

Voting discrepancy

Dig deeper:

Prosecutors said the investigation into Patterson's address and the pay discrepancy led authorities to look into her voting records. Those records showed that, since 2006, she had been consistently voting at the designated polling place for the address on 40th Street – contradicting forms she had submitted to the department.

What they're saying:

In July 2025, Patterson told investigators that she considered the 40th Street address as her primary residence, according to the complaint. She had previously lived at one time, and added that her mother still lived there, so she helped her mother and had occasional overnight visits. However, she said she currently lived – slept, woke up, left for work – at an address in Brown Deer and, before that, Glendale.

Court filings said Patterson further told investigators that she was living in Glendale when the Milwakuee Police Department hired her in 2022. She said she wasn't aware of the 3% pay incentive until her position was reclassified and thought living within 15 miles of the city was sufficient.

Patterson said she thought that residency within the city meant you lived within 15 miles of the Milwaukee border, the complaint stated, as that was the incentive policy in the mayor’s office where she previously worked. The mayor's chief of staff and office manager, however, told investigators that there was no such 15-mile residency rule and that all employees had lived within the city limits since 2011.

And according to the complaint, when asked about voting under her Milwaukee address, Patterson said she did that because it was the address listed on her driver's license.

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