THE CRIME THAT MADE MILWAUKEE FAMOUS

Results of a survey by the Police Executive Research Forum were published in the December 1, 2006 edition of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

It presented a devastating picture of the dramatic spike in Milwaukee's violent crime rates.

Milwaukee is among the leaders in a spike in violent crime being reported this year in numerous cities across the country, according to figures presented at a conference here this week.

In the first six months of 2006, robberies were up 36% and aggravated assaults were up 31.6% compared with the same period in 2005, according to a survey published by the Police Executive Research Forum. Of the 55 U.S. police departments in the survey, only Minneapolis had a higher combined increase in those categories.

That's horrible news for Milwaukee and Wisconsin.

It's a damning report on Mayor Tom Barrett's failure to make good on his campaign promise to reduce crime in the city.

The figures reveal that Police Chief Nan Hegerty is as ineffective in her role as Barrett is in his.

In short, Milwaukee is in a crime crisis.

City officials lucked out. The day the survey was reported was the day southeastern Wisconsin was hit by a blizzard. The weather knocked everything else off the news.

While the state and local media virtually ignored the significance of the report and turned their attention to the storm, the national media were poised to put Milwaukee in the spotlight.

TIME cited the city in its overview of the rise of violence in midsize American cities.

It's as if Milwaukee, Wis., had reverted to a state of lethal chaos. A Special Olympian is killed for his wallet as he waits for a bus. An 11-year-old girl is gang-raped by as many as 19 men. A woman is strangled, her body found burning in a city-owned garbage cart. Twenty-eight people are shot, four fatally, over a holiday weekend.

These are the kinds of crimes American cities expected never to see in high numbers again.

...Few places have suffered more than Milwaukee. The homicide count for the city of 590,000 fell from 130 in 1996 to just 88 in 2004. But last year, according to FBI figures, Milwaukee saw the country's largest jump in homicides--up 40%, to 121. This year's total will probably be lower, but as the killings over that bloody holiday weekend and other crimes show, violence has returned to the city. "You'll be able to read about something even more heinous tomorrow," laments Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan. "People are scared."

Like the residents of dozens of other recently crime-afflicted midsize cities across the country, people in Milwaukee are trying to figure out why their town has suddenly become so dangerous.

When TIME points out to the nation that the city of Milwaukee is awash in violent crime, it's a little hard for Barrett and Hegerty and Gov. Jim Doyle to put on a happy face and accentuate the positive.

Today, the Journal Sentinel Editorial Board writes that it knows why Milwaukee has become such a violent hellhole.

Basically, it echoes TIME's conclusions.

The problem is unemployment and a lack of decent wages.

The Board first mentions the federal funds that have been secured for crime-fighting programs in the city.

Alas, that won't be enough.

The Editorial Board writes:

As helpful as these initiatives are, they don't address what is likely the No. 1 cause of rising violence in the inner city: poverty resulting from the loss of many thousands of jobs. Replacing those jobs must be a top priority of metro-area leaders.

Wisconsin is a tax and regulation hell.

Businesses have been driven out of the city and out of the state.

The editorial makes it sound like replacing thousands of jobs is possible.

Let me interject a dose of reality. Given the current business climate, that's not going to happen.

There's also a problem with TIME and The Journal Sentinel considering poverty to be the reason for Milwaukee's staggering increase in violent crime.

Why does poverty have that effect in Milwaukee but not in a large city like New York?

An article by Moshe Adler talks about the increase in poverty in New York City during the 1990s, citing welfare reform as the cause.

That's a different issue; but the point is poverty in New York rose while violent crime rates dropped dramatically.

If there is a causal relationship between poverty and violent crime, then New York should have experienced increased crime with its increase in poverty during the 90s.

That's not what happened.

Therefore, Milwaukee's loss of jobs and the accompanying poverty doesn't account for the violence.

It's easy to blame a lack of jobs. In effect, the JS is saying that until there are more jobs in the city, Milwaukeeans shouldn't expect to see a decrease in violence.

That takes some of the pressure off of Barrett and Doyle to get serious and take immediate concrete steps to crack down on crime. It certainly takes the burden off of Hegerty.

While there's no question that poverty plays a role in the prevalence of violent crime in the city, it's wrong to assert that the violence is rooted in economic poverty.

I think the deepest roots of Milwaukee's violence are grounded in moral poverty.

Bottom line: The city's violent crime problem won't be solved until community leaders admit that they are failing to adequately address it.

They need to adopt policies that will restore order by getting the criminals off the streets.

They need to get tough on the bad guys, the ones committing the violence, and hold them accountable. Granting them victim status won't help.
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Here's more national attention for Milwaukee.

Not good.