Despite the state facing a $5.4 billion deficit, it appears Wisconsin taxpayers are about to become the proud owners of Supreme Video, an adult video store in Oshkosh. In order to clear land to widen U.S. Highway 41, the state Department of Transportation is negotiating to purchase the video store, rather than using eminent domain. There’s no word on whether taxpayers will be able to lay claim to the store’s contents.
Of course, during the negotiations, there appears to be no discussion of what a historical site Supreme Video has become in Wisconsin politics. You may remember that Supreme is the place former Wisconsin State Senator Gerald Lorge was arrested in August of 2000, for soliciting sex from an undercover male police officer. From the Wisconsin State Journal’s account:
Former state Sen. Gerald Lorge exposed himself to an undercover police officer at an adult bookstore and then begged the officer not to arrest him, according to a complaint charging him with lewd and lascivious behavior.
The charge was filed Tuesday in Winnebago County Circuit Court involving an Aug. 2 incident at Supreme Video in Oshkosh.
Lorge, a 78-year-old Republican from Bear Creek, faces $ 10,000 in fines and nine months in prison if convicted of the charge.
The complaint said Lorge exposed himself to an undercover police officer while in a booth at the store and asked the officer to perform oral sex on him.
After he was arrested, Lorge told the officer that he had been ”a state senator for 30 years and that this would ruin him,” the complaint said.
Of course, that is the sanitized version of what happened. At some point, I had in my possession the actual police report, which likely remains the funniest legal documents ever produced in Wisconsin. I’d try to quote from it, but I’d want to get it just right, and the actual details probably don’t belong on this blog anyway. Just trust me – it’s one of the more fantastic arrest reports that has ever existed.
In any event, the state is about to own this site. So highway or no highway, I think the DOT could at least commemorate the piece of land with a plaque of some kind. It deserves at least that much.
UPDATE: The text of the criminal complaint has been obtained. Get your popcorn and read it here.
January 14, 2009 at 5:17 am
Hey asshole:
You better be chicken shit of me. If I ever see you, you will get what you deserve. Seems you are too damn chicken to publish my comments huh? You are a sick fool and a very sad piece of crap. You should be fearful of what is coming your way.
March 28, 2009 at 7:58 am
I REMEMBER this when it made its way around the Capitol back in 2000. Truly one of the most classic pieces of police reporting in Wisconsin political history.
How many former elected officials could claim that a police officer had personally certified that they had the “biggest balls in the state of Wisconsin?” Hilarious!
November 29, 2009 at 3:33 am
Who ever wrote this is a dumb ass.