Hold agencies accountable
In August of 2016, the Milwaukee Common Council’s Public Safety Committee released a Public Safety Action Plan to address Milwaukee’s crime concerns. The plan resulted from months of meetings with local and state criminal justice officials.
As a retired Milwaukee police officer with many loved ones residing in Milwaukee, I listened intently to these meetings. What I learned was that the silo mentality was highly prevalent. Not once in the recent past had any of these criminal justice entities — the Milwaukee Police Department, the district attorney’s office, the Department of Justice, the county adult and juvenile courts and juvenile detention — come together to collectively develop a crime reduction and social restoration plan.
These meetings further revealed that there are numerous known violent adult and juvenile offenders either on release pending court appearances, on probation or parole or wearing a monitoring bracelet who are currently walking the streets of Milwaukee and re-offending multiple times. Why?
The combined workforce of these local and state agencies consists of thousands of public employees and existing programs. Of these thousands of employees, surely a fraction of them could be dedicated to monitoring, mentoring and changing the behavior of the 100 or so most violent and dangerous wayward souls wandering our streets that they know will re-offend without proper monitoring.
Today, now, urgently, these agencies need to be held accountable. As an example, they need to be asked, how and why a 10-year-old can commit an armed robbery and continue for years to commit felony violent crimes. This accountability is the only way to determine where the systematic breakdowns exist. Did each of these agencies work together, talk to one another and make every attempt using all resources to help this youth and his or her family to become positive citizens within their community?
Unfortunately, and sadly, the only crime plan we get is finger-pointing.
Oscar O. Perez
Franklin