Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donavan Said What?
In the letter Alderman Bob Donavan calls for Mayor Barrett for leadership in the area of public safety and to come up with a strategy to curb violence in the city; especially during the summer. Alderman Donavan was asking the Mayor to do the following:
1. Create ten investigator positions to speed up the background checks on police recruits.
2. Add a fourth police class of 66 recruits for 2007. It is essential that we fill the vacancies and begin to do so now.The reality is that additional officers won’t have an impact for about a year. Steps need to be taken in order to salvage as peaceful a summer as possible. That’s why I am proposing these additional steps:
3. Call upon the Governor to deploy 50-75 National Guard military police to augment our police force.
4. Work with the Milwaukee County Sheriff to relieve the County of freeway patrol duties in order to have deputies available to assist MPD. State patrol could assume the freeway responsibilities.
5. Begin the process of allowing lateral transfers. Qualified individuals that work for other law enforcement agencies can simply do an abbreviated training on Milwaukee’s specific policing strategies and then and more quickly transfer in to MPD.
6. Implement a program that has been successful in Chicago whereby officers assigned to desk duty are put on street duty one day a week, staggered.
7. Put a moratorium on all promotions within MPD since these have a trickle down effect, diminishing the lower ranks where the actual patrol officers are. These are the officers that are doing the work and promotions take from their numbers.
8. Lead a delegation of civic leaders, business owners, social service groups, and public officials to Madison to call on the Governor and the Legislature to increase state shared revenue to pay for these public safety efforts.
The National Guard is seldom utilized. Last June, New Orleans, for the second time needed the National Guard in response to the deadliest weekend in the cities history. One hundred National Guardsmen with law enforcement experience and 60 state police officers were sent to that city. This was the first time the National Guard had been used for law enforcement in the United States since the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Mainly, Guardsmen were posted in heavily flooded neighborhoods to free police to concentrate on hot spots elsewhere in the city.
Has violence escalated to the point of needing to declare a state of emergency? If we have, then we better get in line behind 15 other cities in the country; especially in St. Louis and Detroit which are the two most violent cities, per capita, then any other city in the country. As this Graph below from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel shows, these two cities have more then twice the violent crime per capita then Milwaukee. Our Friends to the south also better call in the National Guard.
Like I said, I agree that there needs to be a strategic plan to curtail violence in our city that is based on reality. I would also call upon all city and county leaders to work together on this critical issue. But calling for the National Guard is very improbable and would be a waste of our efforts.
3 comments:
Hello. I am writing from St. Louis. The point you are making about the National Guard is right on. It's absurd to say that Milwaukee should use the National Guard in this circumstance. As you point out, if Milwaukee needs the National Guard, then certainly the other 15 cities do. But I can tell you that here in St. Louis there is absolutely no discussion of that. In fact when the story came out about the statistics cited in the table you cite, everyone did not panic, but instead roundly criticized the statistics, and found out they are badly flawed for several reasons. Within a couple days those flaws came out and no one believed the report. No one here believes that St. Louis is the most dangerous city in America, and if you came here you would not believe it either. One of the biggest flaws in the statistics is that the stats are based on the CITY of St. Louis, which has city boundaries that were fixed in the Constitution in the 1800s and it has not been allowed to annex any cities since then. So note that the table says St. Louis has about 350,000 people. But yet the metro are has 2.5 million people. So the stats concentrate on the most violent 350,000 people surrounding the central city. If any city computed their crime statistics by computing them around their most violent core they would look horrible.
The person above just made a great observation, that seems to undermine their own argument. In general, they said that because they didn't include the rest of the city of New Orleans, that there isn't a problem. That the average crime rate for greater New Orleans wouldn't be that bad. While I'm sure they are correct, and that there are some apples to oranges comparisons, does that mean that you don't have a problem if on average there doesn't seem to be one. Obviously that area of New Orleans is a terribly violent area and needs drastic help. Burying a problem under some nicer stats, doesn't solve it, it just hides it.
On the flip side, Milwaukee's numbers, while high, do contain many areas of the city with much lower crime statistics. If you only included the troubled areas of Milwaukee, the number would be sky high also, and the need for help, would be that much more apparent.
Milwaukee has areas of high crime, no doubt about that. But, grand-standing by Donovan does nothing but hurt the city's image and undo all the positive things that have occurred in the last 10-15 years. His words make it sound like Milwaukee is the South Bronx of the '70's, or Anacostia in DC. And why all the hysteria now? When I moved here in the late 1980's, there were more murders for several consecutive years than there are now, and the overall rate of violent crime is only now approaching this late '80's, early 90's level, from the relatively low rate of the last few years. This of course is of little consolation to the people who are victims of crime, and in some neighborhoods the chance of being victimized is high. But all this rhetoric and hyperbole that Donovan has been spewing does nothing, repeat, NOTHING except instill panic, give the city an undeserved black-eye (we are not the only city with rising crime rates, and our rate is considerably lower than other urban "tourist" destinations"), and chase away any business or person who might think of relocating here. So, Mr. Donovan, please take time for a reality check, stop the empty talk, and as an alderman put your energy to work trying to solve this problem in collaborative fashion.
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