3 ways Milwaukee plans to address violent crime in the city

After three full years of historic gun violence in Milwaukee, police and other public safety officials Thursday presented a 27-page outline about how they plan to approach violent crime.

The “Violent Crime Plan,” as the Milwaukee Police Department called it, includes an overview of a range of strategies and community partnerships that the department has mostly disclosed publicly before.

But it does offer a more detailed look at the priorities and initiatives the department is undertaking within each of its seven police districts, down to the neighborhood level. And it did announce new strategies and reallocations of resources regarding domestic violence prevention, youth outreach and support for offender re-entry programs.

"This plan covers firearm violence, but it covers more than just we're going out and arresting (offenders)," Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said. "We're talking about prevention."

Norman was joined Thursday by Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Office of Violence Prevention Director Ashanti Hamilton, the president and CEO of Sojourner Family Peace Center President and CEO Carmen Pitre, and Adam Procell, an offender re-entry specialist.

"I want to applaud the chief and the Milwaukee Police Department for the creation of a safety plan that includes everybody," Hamilton said. "There’s a role for everybody."

The full plan released Thursday can be found here.

Here are three main takeaways:

There’s a focus on domestic violence

Officials in Milwaukee have been sounding the alarm for the last several years on increased levels of fatal domestic violence.

Norman called it a “root cause of a significant amount of violence in our city.” Pitre said the issue in Milwaukee is the worst she’s seen in her 38-year career.

The two announced a series of new initiatives Thursday:

• Seven police officers would be reassigned to the department’s Sensitive Crimes Unit, which investigates domestic violence.
• Aided by a $1 million grant from the state and the additional officers, the Milwaukee County Domestic Violence High Risk Team – a highly effective domestic homicide prevention unit – will no longer meet once a week. It will meet every day. That is expected to occur within about two months.
• District Two will launch a pilot program in which domestic violence prevention workers will deploy to crime scenes with officers to offer immediate resources and advocacy for victims.
• Police and Sojourner are developing a process to connect domestic violence survivors with culturally specific social service providers in hopes of expanding access to resources. That is expected to be completed in around three months.

“Not everyone wants to call Sojourner or will come to the corner of 6th and Walnut to the Family Peace Center,” Pitre said. “We are getting the message out: you don’t have to call Sojourner, but you’re 94% more likely to survive if you speak to just one person.

"If not Sojourner, if not police, talk to another program.”

Police will bring back last summer's shooting initiative

Last summer, police announced the Summer Guardian initiative. It was a plan to add police units in eight neighborhoods to improve response times for alerts from Shotspotter – a technology that involves a citywide system of global positioning-enabled sensors to detect outdoor gunfire within minutes or less.

Police said preliminary data suggests the deployment worked. During 88% of those deployments, there were no gun shot detections in the targeted neighborhoods, and the department reported fewer homicides and nonfatal shootings in those areas overall.

The officers who were deployed on those assignments were given refresher trainings on constitutional policing, and community feedback sessions organized by department came back positive, according to the Violent Crime Plan document.

The plan emphasized that making arrests were not a goal of the deployments. Only 10 arrests were made during the initiative, which ran roughly from July to September.

The department did not disclose which neighborhoods would be subject to the deployments in 2023 on Thursday, or for how long. But the Violent Crime Plan said the department would “replicate Summer Guardian on a regular and ongoing basis.”

Hyperlocal crime plans are in the works

Norman announced Thursday that each of the seven police districts in Milwaukee are in the process of coming up with “micro-level” crime plans to address issues in certain problem areas.

The Violent Crime Plan includes some details about where and what police will concentrate on for each district.

For the downtown and the east side, there’s a focus on preventing guns from being stolen out of parked cars. In the far northwest corner of the city, there’s an emphasis on better communication with property owners where crime occurs. On the near-south side, there will be increased bicycle patrols and better training on apprehending violent offenders.

Each district lists several neighborhoods that have been identified as containing high concentrations of crime to focus on. The Violent Crime Plan also identifies 12 neighborhoods throughout the city as a broad focus area for preventing homicides, shootings, aggravated assaults and robberies.

According to the Violent Crime Plan, each district's "micro-level" crime plan will undergo a review with the department's executive command staff, community partners and other elected officials within 30 days. They will be approved and rolled out within the next two months.

Contact Elliot Hughes at elliot.hughes@jrn.com or 414-704-8958. Follow him on Twitter @elliothughes12.