Photo credit: Tom Jenz
MPD responds to a car accident at the corner of 35th St. and Townsend
“Defunding the Police” has become rallying cry from many Black Lives Matter activists. Should Milwaukee defund the police? City Council President Cavalier Johnson told me the budget commission is studying a defunding plan that might mean a 10% cut to the Milwaukee Police Department in the next couple years.
Johnson said, “A possible approach would be as officers retire or resign, they would not be replaced. Instead, savings would be re-allocated to education, public health, housing and societal problems like poverty and mental illness.” I asked if this would mean a significant reduction of officers, that I’d heard it might be as many as 375. He replied, “I think that’s high, but we’ll see what happens with the budget study. I’d like there to be options.”
What about the Milwaukee central city residents who live in neighborhoods with the highest crime rates? What do they think? I tried to find out. I went to the Sherman Phoenix Coffee Shop on 36th Street and Fond du Lac Avenue in the heart of zip code 53206. The residents are mostly African Americans.
I talked to a number of residents, but diverging opinions focused on two women: Briana, a young African American child welfare worker; and Kelly, a white middle-aged private security guard.
For Defunding
Briana told me, “Defunding the police makes sense because we need increased budgets for social issues. I’d like to see more training for police officers in how to respond to a mental health crisis, how to deescalate a tense situation in a safe manner. A lot of crime problems can be traced to the mentally ill.
“Among the Black community, there is fear and mistrust over mental health issues, a stigma that mental health is not a problem for them,” she continued. “Many residents with psychological problems think that something bad will happen if they agree to outside treatment. I see this attitude with some of my clients, suspicion that those who are trying help are out to get them. We in welfare are trying to unfocus that stigma. I don’t think the police should have to get involved in that.”
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Briana is only 23, but she is measured in her opinions, calm and articulate. The youngest of five children, she grew up on 8th and Locust. She told me her neighborhood was safe though her childhood years. She could walk anywhere and not worry about crime or violence. Briana graduated from Milwaukee Messmer High School and then from Alverno College.
She reminded me of the core issue. “It’s difficult living in a world where your skin color is seen as a weapon. Worse, the mainstream media feed into that narrative. They don’t depict a lot of good in our Black community. They seem to highlight the crime, the killings, all the bad. I seldom hear stories of what ordinary Black people are doing positive with their lives.”
In Briana, I could sense an innocence that comes with young idealism in her effort to help solve the human problems of her community.
Against Defunding
Later on, I met Kelly, 38, at the door of the coffee shop. She’s been working as a private security guard for two years at the Sherman Phoenix. She was raised in Waukegan, and her family moved to Milwaukee when Kelly was 15. She graduated from Oak Creek High School, went to school for criminal justice and later went through the Sheriff’s Academy. She worked for the Milwaukee Sheriff’s Office from 2009 to 2017. She is the mother of three children, one by a Black father, two by a Puerto Rican father.
I asked her about defunding the police. “If it means reducing the number of police officers, I am against it,” she said. “I was a corrections officer for ten years, five at the downtown jail keeping an eye on murderers, felons and rapists and then five years at the House of Correction. I dealt with a lot of people who had mental illness. We were trained in how to handle them. Unfortunately, too often a mentally ill person is arrested instead of getting treatment.”
Kelly is lively and charming with a unique ability to disarm people. In her job as a security guard, she never confronted the coffee shop patrons, she engaged them. As we talked, she took time out to banter with the locals through an air of familiar repartee. “I like this part of my job,” she said, “getting to know people.”
She told me, “I was a 911 dispatcher for part of my career. Often the people who need the help don’t get it fast enough. The 911 dispatcher has to call the police jurisdiction where there might not be enough officers to handle the incident. If you eliminate say 40 police officers, that’s 40 less responses to 911 calls which would really hurt people in the inner city. I’ve been hearing from people around here that it takes too long for a response from police.”
She added, “If there is a 911 episode, it can be dangerous. If you turned this kind of confrontation over to social workers, it would be a mistake. I don’t think a social worker could handle a situation that could turn to violence.”
Kelly had some unpleasant experiences in her previous police work. “I also worked in special needs. People have thrown poop balls at me. I’ve seen people eat their own shit with a fork. When a suspect is taken in front of a judge and shows mental instability, the judge should order a psychiatric evaluation. It’s called Chapter 51. Too often, the people in jail are mentally ill and don’t need to be there, but the ones who’d been let out of jail like rapists and felons do need to be incarcerated.” She paused for reflection. “I’ve seen a lot of horrible things. But you know what? I still like who I am.”
Finally, she added, “Another problem for policemen is they are not allowed to speak to the media. You are even trained to avoid giving any info to the media, your opinion, what you see, how you feel.”
Is There an Answer?
So should we defund the police? What about the polls? Most mainstream journalists and politicians look to the polls for answers. A 2019 Vox poll found that Black people had a generally unfavorable view of the police, yet they still supported hiring more police officers. A 2019 Gallup survey asked Black residents of low-income neighborhoods about policing and found that the residents are quite concerned about crime and are not averse to law enforcement. A June 2020 Yahoo News/YouGov survey taken after the killing of George Floyd found 50 percent of Black respondents still said that “we need more cops on the street.”
These polls reflect the contradictions of being Black in Milwaukee, the demands that low income African Americans decide between government benefits and minimum wage, between peer violence and police injustice, and between disillusion and hope.
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