Menasha PD hired a wandering officer. Now he’s been arrested and the city could get sued.

The city’s police department hired Cristian Morales in 2025 after he was forced out of another agency. He is now facing a felony for stalking his ex. Research says wandering officers are more likely to commit misconduct.

By Annie Pulley, THE BADGER PROJECT

In March 2025, the Menasha Police Department hired what some would call a wandering officer. Cristian Morales had been forced out of his previous law enforcement agency, which flagged him with the state.

Now he is staring down a criminal charge, and his actions could expose the city to a lawsuit.

The situation raises questions about the hiring practices of the Menasha Police Department and highlights the dangers of hiring a wandering officer.

Morales was arrested in January after his ex-girlfriend accused him of using his Flock account to track her location multiple times. Flock is a massive system of automated license plate readers used by law enforcement agencies nationwide.

He faces a charge of felony misconduct in public office and could be fined up to $10,000, imprisoned up to three years and six months, or both. He resigned from the police department in January and pleaded not guilty to the felony in February.

After his arrest, his ex asked the court for a restraining order against him.

“I am concerned for my personal safety and am requesting a four-year restraining order,” she wrote in a petition to the court.

The Badger Project is not naming the ex-girlfriend.

Progress ‘not acceptable’

Menasha isn’t the first law enforcement agency to oust Morales. The Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department also forced him out in 2024.

“During our meeting with Cristian, we explained his progress was not acceptable and we would not be continuing his employment,” Capt. Nathan Borman wrote in a 2024 email to his superior in the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department. “We offered him the option to resign instead of being terminated.”

Morales took the first option in August 2024.

An investigation from the sheriff’s office cited one of Morales’ traffic stops that “nearly caused crashes with two other uninvolved vehicles.” The documents also note how Morales was repeatedly reminded not to use his phone on the job, including while interacting with the public, driving his patrol vehicle and completing his reports. The officer was also knocked for turning his body camera off while still on scene and requiring too many assists from his field training officer.

“I indicated to him that I am questioning if he is ‘cut out’ for this line of work,” Borman wrote about an exchange he had with Morales.

The Menasha Police Department hired Morales eight months later. 

An investigator from the Appleton Police Department reviewed Morales’ Flock account and found five searches between Oct. 7, 2025, and Oct. 14, 2025, that corresponded to his ex-girlfriend’s vehicles, according to the criminal complaint, which The Badger Project obtained in a records request. His ex told the Appleton investigator she believed Morales used it to see if she was where she said she’d be.

In her petition for a restraining order, his ex wrote that they broke up in September 2025 after dating for more than a year. Throughout their relationship, she wrote that he would end it and accuse her of cheating before they would get back together. She described an incident where Morales “bent my wrist so far back I was unable to move it.” 

“We were arguing and he became extremely angry and punched the walls and then asked me to leave,” she wrote, describing another incident. “I did because I feared for my safety based on how angry he was in that moment.”

The criminal case is scheduled for trial in July. A hearing for the restraining order is set for May.

The possibility of a lawsuit

Morales is being prosecuted criminally, but people wronged by police can also seek financial damages through the civil justice system.

“It sounds as if an officer might have misused the information made available to the department for improper purposes,” attorney Robert Kasieta, founder and managing member of Madison’s Kasieta Legal Group, said about Morales’ case. “And if that is proven, then there could be potential exposure on that level.”

Bad policing can lead to municipalities and police departments getting sued and possibly having to pay out financial penalties to plaintiffs. And even successfully defending against a lawsuit still costs money. Taxpayers’ money.

In Wisconsin, however, state law offers strong protections to municipalities from lawsuits alleging they did something wrong.

An attorney would have to prove more than just that the municipality was negligent, Kasieta said. If the police department had turned a blind eye to Morales’ behavior, that would be different, Kasieta said. But Morales affirmed in his interview that he used the Flock system at home and with his own phone.

Other ways to sue the city and win financial damages exist, but “this one would not be easy,” Kasieta said.

To the city’s knowledge, a lawsuit has not been filed against it, Menasha city attorney Margaret Struve told The Badger Project in March.

Wandering officers

Morales wasn’t the Menasha Police Department’s only wandering officer – cops fired or forced out of one policing job who get hired at another. Jacob Quella also resigned from the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department in 2023 after an internal investigation. Quella admitted to posting photos of a citizen and a corresponding police report on Facebook and to writing unprofessional comments. 

The citizen had been sitting with a four-foot-tall stuffed fox and a metal gong on a public park bench, according to Quella’s interview testimony. When Quella approached him, the subject told him he was there filming a music video. Quella captioned his Facebook post: “You know… A normal human interaction. Happy Friday.”

“It was something I should have put more thought into,” Quella said in an interview with the sheriff’s office. “I don’t think I went into it with any ill intent.”

The Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department flagged both officers as negative separations in a database maintained by the state Department of Justice and available to all law enforcement agencies in the state to conduct background checks.

The Menasha Police Department did not respond to repeated requests for comment on its decision to hire Morales. The department’s chief Nick Thorn, who presided over Morales’ hire, resigned in March after 17 years there, the last three in the top spot.

According to a huge study in The Yale Law Journal titled “The Wandering Officer,” Florida cops who had been fired from a previous law enforcement job were more likely to be fired from their next job or to receive a complaint for a “moral character violation,” compared to rookies and officers who had never been fired.

“I guarantee the root cause of (wandering officers) is the lack of background investigations,” said Patrick Solar, a former Illinois police chief and a criminal justice professor at UW-Platteville. “The secret to not having problem officers is: don’t hire them in the first place.”

Police departments are under a lot of pressure to hire, and they don’t always dig deep enough when they recruit, he said. They should inspect applicants for disciplinary issues, substance abuse issues, anger management issues and relationship issues.

Foregoing an intensive review process doesn’t guarantee a bad hire, “But occasionally, you get a train wreck that way,” he said. “You can avoid those train wrecks by simply doing thorough backgrounds. And you don’t hire people when there are red flags.”

The Badger Project is an independent, reader-supported news nonprofit in Wisconsin.