How Milwaukee’s “urban guardians” make us safer.
What if what really matters in fighting crime is how well you know your neighbor?
And what if that matters more than who is the next police chief ?
These are, of course, rhetorical questions. The Milwaukee police — and the chief — are indispensable. But as the melodramatic final months of Police Chief Edward Flynn’s tenure fade to black, it’s worth understanding all the components of a healthy, safe city. And emerging scholarship on nonprofits suggests that groups working to improve neighborhoods or reduce crime have a sizable impact on safety. Block clubs, after-school programs, business improvement districts — all seem to help.
Block by block, what crime expert Patrick Sharkey calls “urban guardians” help secure city streets and promote stronger neighborhoods.
“Urban guardians — I like that,” James Key said with a smile during an interview inside his mother’s home on N. Buffum St. He and his mother, Josephine, have kept an eye on the 3100 block for years. They help organize cleanups, encourage neighbors to plant flowers and cut the grass — and each August pass out hundreds of backpacks filled with school supplies. Even more important: They have taken on a chop shop down the street and pushed the cops to deal with drug dealers.
James and Josephine, Tia Richardson and Jonatan Zuniga are a few of the “urban guardians” of Milwaukee’s streets who are helping to build trusted relationships that lead to safer neighborhoods.
Before you meet them, let’s dive a little deeper into Sharkey’s findings.
The great decline in crime
“The end of the era of violence” in American cities is one of the most significant trends in decades in urban life, says Patrick Sharkey. The New York University professor has studied why the murder rate in the U.S. fell sharply from the mid-1970s when it was 8 to 10 murders per 100,000 people to half that by 2014. And his new book, “Uneasy Peace,” explores explanations for what happened, including a generous section on Milwaukee.
“Tens of thousands of lives were preserved,” he said during an interview with Mike Gousha of the Marquette University Law School last week. “Young people who are able to start a family, enter the workforce, because they were not killed.”
Researchers caution that the exact causes of dramatically lower violence are not fully known and there has been a worrisome uptick in violence the last three years including in Milwaukee. But Sharkey believes a series of actions that began in the 1990s helped throttle back violence in American cities.
More police on the streets and their use of aggressive police tactics was part of it, he argues, though that came at a significant cost both in dollars and the public’s trust. Mass incarceration was another part — also with significant costs to society. More private security was installed — everything from video cameras on buildings to metal detectors inside schools to anti-theft devices in cars.
And this happened:
“There was a mobilization of residents in neighborhoods hardest hit by crime,” he said, led by nonprofit groups.
“I think it’s a crucial piece,” Sharkey said. Sharkey’s research drew on data from 264 cities over a 20-year period; it found that in a city of 100,000 residents, each 10 additional groups “focusing on crime and community life” led to a reduction of 9% in the murder rate, 6% in violent crime overall and 4% for property crime.
Safe & Sound, the Milwaukee nonprofit that works to build stronger community bonds between neighbors and law enforcement, found something similar in its own research.
Katie Sanders, the group’s executive director, points to a Medical College of Wisconsin study last year of the group’s effectiveness. It found Safe & Sound had been able to boost “collective efficacy” — a sense of shared trust and commitment to the community — in six of eight neighborhoods and that its efforts appeared to have reduced crime.
The sheer number of block club meetings might have been the one thing that mattered most, she said. The organization has created and helped maintain hundreds of block clubs over the years.
“Which makes sense,” Sanders said. “If you have people who are meeting regularly on issues that are important to them, you are going to see improvement.” Twice a year, Safe & Sound goes door to door to survey residents, collecting hundreds of responses, to test whether its strategies are working.
In “Uneasy Peace,” Sharkey makes the case for “urban guardians,” people on every block who take responsibility for that piece of ground. He’s not fussy about who that is.
When Sharkey was last in Milwaukee two years ago, he got a tour with historian John Gurda and Susan Lloyd, executive director of the Zilber Family Foundation, which for nearly a decade has put $50 million from the late philanthropist Joe Zilber to work in five city neighborhoods. During the tour, which covered many areas of the city, Sharkey was struck by the differences in neighborhoods — you could actually see where groups had been at work and where they hadn’t.
The sight of a vacant, boarded-up home in the Amani neighborhood stuck with him.
Somebody had taken the time to paint the plywood so that it looked nice — so that it resembled windowpanes and shutters. Turns out, Sister Patricia Rogers, who runs the Dominican Center in Amani, was responsible for that.
“To me, that’s crucial,” Sharkey told Gousha. “That’s a sign that this block is taken care of. You’re not on your own if you live on this block. ... That’s an example of urban guardians.”
Amanda Seligman, who literally wrote the book on block clubs (“Chicago’s Block Clubs: How Neighbors Shape the City,” University of Chicago Press, 2016), is a bit less sure than Sharkey that we know why crime has declined. Seligman, chair of the history department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has studied the rise of block clubs in Chicago for years, a city where residents “perfected the mission,” she says.
The Urban League played a major role in organizing block clubs in the Windy City, initially to help African-Americans fit in as they migrated for jobs many years ago, she notes. During World War II, Mayor Edward J. Kelly leaned on block clubs to mobilize for the war effort. Later, as community policing took off, Mayor Richard J. Daley pushed block clubs as a crime-fighting tool. Over the years, some of the clubs organized for a less savory reason: to keep people of color out of their neighborhoods.
Do block clubs make a neighborhood safer? Seligman answers it this way:
“We don’t know if block clubs lower crime absolutely, or if they just move it elsewhere. … Nobody knows why crime has fallen.”
Across the city, though, dozens of groups and individuals think building community is a part of the answer. Tia Richardson saw that firsthand last summer.
Art rising from ashes
Safe & Sound had approached Richardson, a community artist, in mid-2016 about beautifying a boarded-up building at N. 47th and W. Center streets. And then one terrifying night of violence shook nearby Sherman Park, and the project was no longer just about aesthetics.
“What changed was just the weight of it, the gravity,” Richardson remembers. “As a community artist, I knew it could become more than just a pretty picture.”
Richardson, 38, grew up in Milwaukee, attended Milwaukee High School of the Arts, then spent a year at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design before getting a degree in graphic design from the Milwaukee Area Technical College. About 10 years ago, after losing a job in graphic arts, she turned to community art and since has completed more than 30 murals. Her next commission will be unveiled in June at N. 4th and W. Garfield streets.
Her work is striking for its detail; its vivid colors leap off the brick and cement block of her “canvases.”
The memory of “Sherman Park Rising,” art created from the ashes of riot, is hard to shake.
Richardson and filmmaker Andrew Gralton co-directed a short documentary about the project that was unveiled recently at the Beloit International Film Festival. Watching it with Richardson one day last week in her sun-drenched studio on the near south side, the emotions of its creation bubbled back to the surface.
“It was a feeling of joy,” Richardson said. “There was a type of bonding that happened that I can’t fully describe. It was communal. We had people not only from Sherman Park but from all over the city. I even had a busload of missionaries drop in because their sister church was in the neighborhood.”
Richardson held two workshops where neighbors talked through the project, sketching their own ideas. Taking their visions back to her studio, she worked out a design, and then, working through the night, projected it against the newly painted east wall of the building (the project had by this time been moved across the street). She completed a rough outline, similar to a coloring book. Then, she organized painting days for the public to pick up a brush and let fly.
And at that moment, what had begun as a simple attempt to beautify a boarded-up property became something far more significant. It was art, yes, but also therapeutic, and an expression of hope for what a neighborhood could be. More than 150 residents helped paint.
At the center of the painting, rising from a clump of peace lilies, is a man holding up a well-lit home where people sit on the porch at night — safe and sound. A builder and a police officer help him support the home.
Sanders, of Safe & Sound, believes projects such as “Sherman Park Rising” help create “effective efficacy” even if there is no way to measure the exact impact.
“Do I have numbers and data to show for it, no,” Sanders said. “But we know that mural made a very big difference for the people in that neighborhood.”
Flags, plaques and neighborliness
Layton Boulevard West Neighbors serves three near south side neighborhoods — Silver City, Burham Park and Layton Park — an area anchored by the venerable School Sisters of St. Francis international headquarters on the east and Miller Park Way on the west. Like so much of Milwaukee, this sturdy old neighborhood has great bones but was hard hit by the foreclosure crisis and the last recession. More than 21,000 people live here, a third under the age of 18, many whom speak mainly Spanish.
This is a neighborhood chock full of reminders of the past, from tiny Madison Garden to the Mitchell Park Domes to the Burham Park pavilion. Working to build community are people such as Jonatan Zuniga, an energetic 24-year-old community outreach manager with Layton Boulevard West Neighbors, an organization started 20 years ago by the School Sisters. He focuses on Burnham Park and Layton Park; colleague Gisela Ortega works in Silver City.
Zuniga grew up not far from here, attending Carmen High School of Science and Technology before graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a degree in urban studies and business administration. On a brisk February afternoon, he and I take a walk, starting at S. 31st and W. Becher streets.
The first thing you notice are the flags. Nearly every stoop up and down 31st St. is flying colorful neighborhood banners, sold at a deep discount by the neighborhood group. A new speed hump and a four-way stop slow down the traffic — projects the neighbors had to petition city government to do. They are paying for the speed hump through a special tax assessment.
A few blocks away, on 34th St., most of the homes have stylish new house number plaques — another project of the neighborhood organization.
These are small touches, to be sure, but ones that help to build pride and community cohesion.
“It’s awesome that the flags visually show the unity, but it’s more about the process,” Zuniga said. “The leaders had to go knock on doors, they did a block party — that’s how the speed hump was done.”
Some years ago now, there was a shift in strategy from “crime watch” to building “assets.” And that may well be more effective in an area of the city where not everyone is documented. Like Safe & Sound, Layton Neighbors regularly surveys its neighbors to test whether its programs work. If not, gears get shifted.
“We went from distributing these posters that say ‘I’m watching you’ or ‘crime watch’ to the address plaques — and they have the same effect,” Zuniga said. “Aside from saying we’re united, we have pride, it also brings together the residents in a more positive way, in a more welcoming way.”
Coming this spring: Major improvements for Burnham Park. No surprise, the neighbors had a big say in what will happen. At the same time, residents are taking on another project: creating a new futsal field in place of underused tennis courts (futsal is similar to soccer but played on a hard court). That particular project hits home for Zuniga. When he was a kid, he and his friends used to scale the tennis court fences to play futsal.
Pretty soon, kids in this neighborhood won’t have to do that.
Backpacks for kids, and smiles in return
Josephine Key moved to Milwaukee in 1970 from her hometown of Columbus, Miss. She came to Milwaukee to study at the Milwaukee Area Technical College but met her husband to be, had children and never quite made it to MATC.
The family settled in the Harambee Neighborhood on Milwaukee’s north side. Josephine went to work for Navistar, but over the years found a different vocation: For decades now, she has kept an eye on the 3100 block of N. Buffum St. A few years ago, her work was formalized when Safe & Sound helped her and her son, James, organize a block club.
The Keys have promoted block cleanup efforts for years, and since 2009 organized the backpack giveaway every August. In May, they are organizing a mental health awareness day to link people with agencies that can help them.
Adrian Spencer, a community organizer with Safe & Sound, says the two have done important work. For one thing, they persisted, with other neighbors, in closing down a chop shop on the block, which was unsightly and dangerous. And they insisted that police do something about an open-air drug market on the same empty lot.
“They worked really hard with their neighbors to reclaim that space,” Spencer said.
“My son, I give him almost all the credit because he gets out there and tries to inspire people,” says Josephine, who is 65. “I want this block to get better every year, to where we can be 100% proud of what we have done.”
The neighborhood remains dangerous. Shakira Hicks lost her life on June 3 just a few blocks away on N. Palmer St. A few days later, Demetrius A. Eason was shot to death just one block to the north. Balloons and other remembrances of “Meat” — Eason’s nickname — flutter in the cool, late winter breeze even now. Three young teenage boys play with a basketball across the street on a sunny Saturday afternoon. When I ask them about the memorial, Clifford, Elbert and Cornell know the story of Eason’s death chapter and verse.
James and Josephine are certain their work makes a difference. “I credit the block club with a lot,” James says. “But my mother has always been the one to call the alderman — even before there was a block club she was calling the city to get something done.” It is, he says, “just protecting each other — we have to just care about each other. That’s what being in the block club does.”
“I think we have a responsibility,” says James, who is 45. “I come from a great family. My father is a great man. My mother is a great woman. … I just appreciate what they did for us.” His mother’s home is filled with dozens of family photographs, going back several generations, a visual reminder of that legacy.
Josephine gets annoyed when people move away from Harambee. “To me, it’s just like, don’t leave. You want things to get better, why did you leave? I want to fight for my neighborhood. I want it to look like Elm Grove or Brookfield or Whitefish Bay. And it can be done. We need all of us to come together.”
A highlight of their year is the block party each August, where they hand out those backpacks full of the basic supplies that any kid has to have to do schoolwork.
“Last year, we gave over 300 backpacks away,” she says. “If you could just come and see the kids’ eyes on that day. If you see their little eyes and their smiles that they give you when you give it to them.” And then, she smiles, too.
David D. Haynes is the solutions editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Email: david.haynes@jrn.com. Twitter: @DavidDHaynes
How I reported this story
Interviewed:
Jonatan Zuniga and Gisela Ortega, community outreach managers for Layton Boulevard West Neighbors, a near south side community development organization.
Amanda Seligman, chair, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee history department and an expert on block clubs.
Susan Lloyd, executive director, Zilber Family Foundation.
Josephine and James Key, block club captains, Buffum St., Milwaukee.
Katie Sanders, executive director, Safe & Sound.
Adrian Spencer, community organizer, Safe & Sound.
Tia Richardson, community artist. Elizabeth Hammer, community development/safety specialist, Havenwoods Economic Development Corp. Attended:
“Community Organizations and the Decline of Crime in America’s Cities (March 7, 2018, conference at Marquette University). Patrick Sharkey, professor, New York University was interviewed by Mike Gousha, distinguished fellow in law and public policy. Katie Sanders of Safe & Sound was part of a panel discussion. Reviewed:
“Community and the Crime Decline: The Causal Effect of Local Nonprofits on Violent Crime,” by Patrick Sharkey, Gerard Torrats-Espinosa and Delaram Takyar (American Sociological Review, 2017)
“Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, The Renewal of City Life, and The Next War on Violence” (2018, W.W. Norton and Co.)
“Does Neighborhood Watch Reduce Crime,” 2008 meta-analysis by Katy Holloway, Trevor Bennett and David P. Farrington on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice.
“An Independent Evaluation of Safe & Sound’s Community Building Strategies,” 2017, Medical College of Wisconsin.
“Eyes on the Street,” Robert Kanigel (Alfred A. Knopf, 2016), a biography of urbanist Jane Jacobs
“Neighborhood Inequality and Public Policy: What Can Milwaukee Learn from Chicago and Boston?” a summer 2016 edition of Marquette Lawyer featuring an article by Harvard professor Robert J. Sampson, who is known for his work on crime and neighborhoods.