Just after his acceptance of President Trump’s offer to be assistant secretary of Homeland Security, things have taken a downward turn for Milwaukee Sheriff David Clark.
This Sunday, CNN published a report saying Clark had plagiarized portions of his masters thesis from when he attended California’s Naval Postgraduate School. The report shared a lengthy list of side-by-side comparisons of segments from Clark’s thesis and the sources he allegedly plagiarized it from.
From CNN:
In all instances reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Clarke lifts language from sources and credits them with a footnote, but does not indicate with quotation marks that he is taking the words verbatim.
The screen shot below is just a small portion of the sizable list provided in the report.
In an apparent response to the fallout, the school removed the thesis from its website this past weekend.
@KFILE Clarke’s thesis has now been removed by the Naval Postgraduate School. https://t.co/SBoXBgSBVN pic.twitter.com/AMf28FQZNe
— Adam Steinbaugh (@adamsteinbaugh) May 20, 2017
The plagiarism policy posted on the Naval Postgraduate School’s website says if “a passage is quoted verbatim, it must be set off with quotation marks (or, if it is a longer passage, presented as indented text), and followed by a properly formulated citation. The length of the phrase does not matter. If someone else’s words are sufficiently significant to be worth quoting, then accurate quotation followed by a correct citation is essential, even if only a few words are involved.”
Clark responded to the accusations on Twitter and called one of the authors of the report a “hack,” linking to a New York Times profile on CNN reporter Andrew Kacynski.
This @CNN hack @KFILE oppo research MO is to accuse plagiarism. I’m next. Did it to Rand Paul, Monica Crowley et al. https://t.co/KgoHKermpe
— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) May 20, 2017
Last summer, Clarke made waves when he referred to Black Lives Matter as a “hate group.” He is also under fire for his management of a Milwaukee County Jail where an inmate allegedly died after going a week without water. The Huffington Post back in November 2016 found that four people, including a newborn baby, have died at the jail since April. “For a facility with a population cap of 960 that previously averaged a couple of deaths per year, the string of deaths is concerning,” HuffPo’s Ryan J.Reilly reported.
Featured image via YouTube
