On February 20, 2006, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett delivered his State of the City Address.
When discussing crime, Barrett focused on gun laws as being the key to thwarting crime.
He blamed the state legislature for not doing enough to get guns off the streets.
Barrett said:
In the last five years, police have confiscated over 11,000 guns. Despite a record number of guns taken off the streets, 95 people were killed by someone shooting a gun in Milwaukee last year. We need to do better.
Our state legislature needs to end its preoccupation with an NRA agenda that puts more guns on our streets and instead, enact laws to stem the flow of illegal guns into our neighborhoods.
Let's expand criminal background checks on all firearm transactions and stop the sales of handguns to anyone under the age of twenty-one. There is absolutely no need for a teenager to have a handgun in the city of Milwaukee. We should require ballistic fingerprinting for all handguns sold in Wisconsin. And, the state must direct more resources to its Crime Lab for DNA Analysis.
I understand that enacting these laws will not stop thugs with guns overnight. But these laws will help stem the tide and assist police in catching criminals who use guns to destroy lives. We can not, and I WILL NOT, accept the status quo.
Did you get that?
Barrett said:
"We can not, and I WILL NOT, accept the status quo."
This from the mayor that claims Milwaukee is not a city in crisis.
The Police Executive Research Forum released a survey that has some bad news for Barrett and the citizens of Milwaukee.
Of course, it really doesn't reveal anything that residents don't already know.
Contrary to what Barret says, the city of Milwaukee is in crisis.
From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
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.
Out of 55 cities, Milwaukee ranks number 2 in its increase in violent crime.
That's horrible.
Barrett can't blame the "NRA agenda." That's no excuse.
Wisconsin is the only state in the country besides Illinois that doesn't have some sort of concealed carry law.
That hasn't done anything to prevent the massive spike in violent crime in Milwaukee.
Certain cities, especially the largest, have not had a similar rise in violence, prompting some experts to caution that more data is needed before concluding that the nation as a whole is seeing a new wave of crime.
Others, however, are convinced that crime is on an upward trend.
"I think there is something important going on out there," David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which hosted the conference, said Thursday. "My bones tell me that something is changing."
Several police chiefs have concluded that the jump in violent crime is not a blip but the start of a troubling trend that must be tackled, said Dean Esserman, chief in Providence, R.I.
Violent crime nationally in 2005 showed the largest single-year increase in 14 years, and many cities report that the trend is continuing this year.
Esserman noted that chiefs and mayors from 50 cities attended a conference in August, and most reported violent crime is on the rise. At the time, Los Angeles Chief William Bratton called it a "gathering storm," though it has not hit his city yet.
"The reality is overwhelming," said Esserman, of the Police Executive Research Forum, which hosted that August conference. "Everyone told the same story with desperation and anger."
Mayors can hold conferences. They can talk about the "gathering storm."
Whatever. It's nothing but a gathering of hot air.
The fact is Barrett campaigned for mayor on the promise that he would lower crime in the city.
He hasn't made good on that promise.
He likes to tout the decreased homicide rate, but as the report states, that rate is not an adequate measure of violent crime.
Pledging to lower crime is typical campaign rhetoric, and certainly Barrett can't tackle the city's violence problem alone.
BUT--
The buck stops with him.
He's sticking with ineffective policies and an ineffective police chief. Nan Hegerty is not getting the job done.
Unfortunately, Barrett is an ineffective mayor, on many different levels.
He's no Rudy Giuliani.
...So far, homicides in Milwaukee are down - almost 16% compared with this time last year, with 97 killings to date and 115 at this time in 2005. But officials say non-fatal shootings are rising. Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa expects to treat 34% more gunshot victims this year than last, and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin is up 38%.
Experts say that the total number of shootings - not just the fatal ones - is a better measurement of gun violence.
The Journal Sentinel reported last month that about 600 people a year are struck by gunfire in Milwaukee and survive. Shootings cost taxpayers, hospitals and people with insurance tens of millions of dollars a year, the newspaper found. They also consume police officers' time, leading to slow response for less urgent calls. For months, residents have complained about response times not only for low-level calls but also for more serious crimes.
Police Chief Nannette Hegerty has formed a group in her department to study police responses and consider changes, as it struggles with the surge in violence. One option being considered is whether to continue sending officers to certain lower-priority calls, perhaps handling the calls over the phone or by computer.
Good grief.
Hegerty's group to "study police responses and consider changes" is not enough. It's certainly no consolation to the victims of violence and the survivors of the murdered.
Some people are sitting around gabbing. So what?
Why study the problem? We know how to approach the problem -- follow Giuliani's example and utilize the "Broken Windows" theory.
Giuliani describes it:
I very much subscribe to the "Broken Windows" theory, a theory that was developed by Professors Wilson and Kelling, 25 years ago maybe. The idea of it is that you had to pay attention to small things, otherwise they would get out of control and become much worse. And that, in fact, in a lot of our approach to crime, quality of life, social programs, we were allowing small things to get worse rather than dealing with them at the earliest possible stage. That approach had been tried in other cities, but all small cities, and there was a big debate about whether it could work in a city as large as New York. One of the ways that New York used to resist any kind of change was to say, "It can't work here," because they wanted to keep the status quo. There is such a desire for people to do that, to keep the status quo. And I thought, "Well, there's no reason why it can't work in New York City. We have bigger resources. We may have bigger problems, we have bigger resources, the same theory should work." So we started paying attention to the things that were being ignored. Aggressive panhandling, the squeegee operators that would come up to your car and wash the window of your car whether you wanted it or not -- and sometimes smashed people's cars or tires or windows -- the street-level drug-dealing; the prostitution; the graffiti, all these things that were deteriorating the city. So we said, "We're going to pay attention to that," and it worked. It worked because we not only got a big reduction in that, and an improvement in the quality of life, but massive reductions in homicide, and New York City turned from the crime capital of America to the safest large city in the country for five, six years in a row.
Giuliani did not accept the status quo.
See the difference between him and Barrett?
Barrett said, "We can not, and I WILL NOT, accept the status quo."
Giuliani actually DID NOT accept it. His actions backed up his words, unlike Barrett.
...Experts suggest that possible factors behind the recent increase [in violent crime] include easier access to guns, a slow economy, parole of prisoners and less federal money for social services and officers as resources go to homeland defense.
Esserman and other chiefs fault the U.S. Justice Department for forgetting crime as it focuses on terrorism. After the meeting in August, federal officials promised to study the issue, which Esserman called absurd. He said action is needed.
Esserman says studying the issue is "absurd."
THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HEGERTY IS DOING.
Action is needed, but it's not happening.
Esserman said another ingredient is getting everyone to care about the violence. He said that too often, the public gives a collective shrug over rampant violence because it affects poor people, usually in the African-American community.
"It has become tolerated. It has become acceptable," he said of the roughly 16,000 homicides every year. "Where is the moral outrage?"
No. Violent crime hasn't become tolerated.
Giuliani and New York refused to tolerate it.
It's true that some mayors and chiefs are tolerating violence, by passing the buck or doing a study when they should be taking concrete steps to deal with the problem NOW.
When Barrett delivers his State of the City Address this year, I think it's a safe bet to assume that he will pound his fist and firmly say, "I will not accept the status quo."
Empty words.
Meanwhile, the violence will continue because the city's approach to fighting crime isn't changing significantly.
That's accepting the status quo.
That's not confronting the crisis.
Barrett has failed the city.
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