Jacob Maclin And Ray Robokowski Were Two Bitter Enemies But Became Best Friends After All

Jacob Maclin was a drug dealer with a long rap sheet. Ray Robokowski was a Milwaukee police officer

Jacob Maclin was a gang member and Ray Robokowski was a Milwaukee police officer

For years, Jacob Maclin was the bane of the Milwaukee police force. A gang member and drug dealer, Maclin had been arrested so many times that a collection of his mugshots could serve as a timeline of his troubled past. His enmity toward law enforcement was real and deep but was particularly focused on one man, a hard-nosed, old school cop named Ray Robakowski.

“I wasn’t a social worker, I was a police officer,” officer Ray Robakowski said. “My job was to take care of what needed to be taken care of.” And in the case of Jacob Maclin, what needed to be taken care of was keeping a long-term drug dealer behind bars.

Which was why Jacob Maclin didn’t like him. “Oh, I definitely didn’t.”

The relationship between the two was soon to change, however, thanks in large part to a forced meeting in a Milwaukee coffee shop.

The district attorney’s office arranged for the two men to meet, with the idea that, by coming together, they might be able to break a cycle of re-offending and re-arrest. Both Maclin and Robakowski were less than thrilled by the prospect of working together, but persisted with the arrangement, as the officer helped the career criminal find employment.

“He sent me on maybe 14 or 15 interviews in two weeks,” Maclin says, “and one of them was Community Warehouse.”

Community Warehouse is a non-profit home improvement store that hires former convicts. In his eight years with the store, Maclin has risen to the level of management. The job has kept Maclin off the streets and has provided him with an honest way to provide for his four children.

In 2014, Robakowski retired from the Milwaukee Police Force. Not content to live a life of leisure, he sought another way to serve his community—and then he remembered Community Warehouse, and his former nemesis, and gave Maclin a call.

“He laughed,” Robakowski says, remembering that phone call. “Now he held all the cards. But I wanted to be here.”

Since joining Maclin at Community Warehouse, Robakowski has helped over a dozen released prisoners find meaningful employment. And his new business partner vows that the cycle of crime in his family stops with him.

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