It’s no secret that crime has been an issue in the city of Milwaukee so far this year. I don’t have to go into the particulars because if you listen to the news, it’s on the tv almost every night. Sometimes I think what I would do if I was the Chief of Police. I believe most of my readers know I retired at the rank of Deputy Inspector of Police. That is one step over a Captain just for reference. I held this rank for seven years and I supervised the second and third shift over the entire department. I filed a report so the Chief and his command staff would know what occurred overnight. During any night I would respond to shootings, homicides, sexual assaults, armed robberies, missing children, bad car accidents, squad pursuits, house fires, etc. Sometimes I would hold a news conference if the press had responded to the scene.
Let’s imagine I could be Chief for a short time frame, what would I do? First, I would cancel all the off days for police officers for one month. That means the only people off would be those on vacation. This would put numerous extra police officers on the street for those 30 days. We normally use our large bread truck type wagons to convey prisoners downtown. A large wagon would go out on the northside of town and one on the southside. Three to four squads would be assigned to each wagon. The squads would be assigned to pick up all underage juveniles out on the street. The juveniles would be conveyed to a Boys and Girls Club until their parents came to pick them up. Citations would be issued to the juvenile and the parents also. If parents could not pick up the child a squad would eventually take them home.
In addition, I would ask Sheriff Ball if we could use some of her squads to help us out. The State Patrol would be notified to see if they could send some squads down to help patrol the expressway while Sheriff squads helped us out. We could pretty much blanket the hot spots where most of the crime is going on. For one summer we had lots of calls in the area of Hopkins and Hampton. So, we put a squad to stay in that area for the entire shift. The only way they would leave that area is if an officer was calling for help. During these high crime periods we need high visibility of squads throughout the city. People that want to commit crimes need to know it will not be that easy. We must make it hard for them and make them think about it for a minute. A lot of folks thinking about committing crime are lazy and will not go out of their way, if things appear too hard.
So those are my plans. Some people will be mad and say we are over policing the city. People I believe will look on the positive side and realize we are just trying to get a handle and take back our city. We can’t let the bad guys win because then we all lose.