Former Officer Alvin Brook Charged with Robbing Bank

A disgraced former officer with the  Mukwonago Police Department was charged on Jan. 17 in federal court with robbing a M&I Bank in June 2010.

According to the federal complaint, Alvin J. Brook was off-duty on June 15, 2010 when he allegedly jumped over the service counter at the M&I Bank in Mukwonago and used his department-issued firearm to strong arm three clerks into giving him more than $50,000 in unmarked cash.

The complaint states that Brooks, 41, threatened to kill the employees if they exited the bank vault and then fled the scene.

One clerk told police investigating the robbery at the time that the suspect seemed to have police or military training, according to the complaint. Another employee said the gun used in the robbery resembled one issued to the investigating officer, a glock model 23.

Police noted that in the surveillance footage it appeared the robber had a hand-held radio antenna protruding from his pocket. One victim said in the complaint that she heard “police chatter” during the incident, as if the suspect had a police scanner on him, the complaint states.

The Wisconsin State Crime Lab was able to pull a latent finger print from a plastic bag left at the scene, according to the complaint, but they could find no matches for the print in the state database.

That changed after Brook was charged in November 2010 with felony misconduct. According to the criminal complaint in that case, Brook falsified preliminary breath tests for his 39-year-old live-in girlfriend, who was ordered to maintain absolute sobriety by a Waukesha County court after being convicted of her third drunken-driving offense.

Brook resigned from the Mukwonago Police Department in December 2010 after 21 years of service. He pleaded no contest to the charges in September 2011 and was sentenced to two years probation with a minimum five-month jail sentence.

Last August law enforcement received information from an unspecified source that Brook had committed the M&I Bank robbery, according to the federal complaint.

The Wisconsin Crime Lab tested the latent print developed from the plastic bag and found it matched a print for Brook. Investigators note in the complaint that it was standard procedure for Mukwonago Police officers to take home hand-held radios and Brook was issued a glock model 22 by the department.

Brook is expected to appear at a bond hearing at the Milwaukee federal courthouse on Monday, Jan. 27.

Brook’s attorney Paul Bucher said that he hopes to get his client out on bail.

“He is presumed innocent and we will have to look at the evidence available to us,” Bucher said.

Brook is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Margaret B. Honrath, according to court records.