Milwaukee creates special unit to fight reckless driving
Mayor Tom Barrett doesn’t like to swear.
But the reckless driving that has been plaguing Milwaukee city streets has tested his limits.
“There have been instances where I’ve been in a car either with someone I’m working with or by myself and I’ve been swearing,” the mayor said. “I’ve been swearing because I’ve seen someone cut me off, veer to the right and go too close and sometimes even on the sidewalk, run a red light, drive with total disregard for human life. It makes me angry.”
Many Milwaukeeans share the same frustration after 2020 became the deadliest year for traffic fatalities in Milwaukee County in nearly 20 years. Last year, 107 people died in traffic crashes compared with 37 in 2002.
“We know that this is a serious quality of life issue in the city of Milwaukee,” Barrett said.
The mayor has teamed up with the city’s Police Department to stamp out reckless driving with a new law enforcement unit called the Traffic Safety Unit or TSU. The mayor, several city aldermen and interim Police Chief Jeffrey Norman announced the new unit at a Wednesday afternoon news conference at the Midtown
Center, 5700 W. Capitol Drive.
“The TSU is not about tickets. It’s not about going out and having zero tolerance. It’s about being a part of the combined strategy with our city leaders (and) our community stakeholders ...,” Norman said.
The new unit will employ a concept called high visibility enforcement, or HVE, which uses a combination of approaches to address reckless driving, including saturation patrols in targeted areas.
The goal is to ensure voluntary compliance and act as a deterrent to traffic violence, accidents and reckless driving. It will also use publicity and message boards to increase awareness of road safety and traffic laws.
A key component of the strategy is community involvement. Milwaukee police created a website where residents can document and identify reckless driving incidents in their neighborhood.
“It’s important to understand that the traffic safety unit is about fair and impartial policing, and constitutional policing,” Norman said. “We’re going after behaviors. Not individuals.”
Enforcement works, Barrett said. The city saw a decrease in the number of crashes last year, but the severity of those accidents resulted in a 51% increase in fatalities.
“The crashes have gone down, in part because of the community involvement and in part because of the work done by the Milwaukee Police Department. But we have to do better,” Barrett said. “Our commitment to you … is to put the resources that are necessary to do an even better job.”
Announcing the new police unit on Capitol Drive was intentional by city officials. The street has seen a fair number of fatal crashes, including that of Officer Kou Her, who was killed near North 60th Street and West Capitol Drive in 2019.
Common Council President Cavalier Johnson compared driving on Capitol Drive to playing a game of Russian Roulette just to go to the grocery store, gym or pick up your kids from school.
“There have been so many other incidents where people’s lives have been snuffed out where there have been injuries that have happened because people are driving recklessly on Capitol Drive,” he said.
Residents, Johnson said, want to traverse this city safely, “but there are too many people who decide to get behind the wheel and treat their vehicle as a 2,000pound missile that can maim, damage and kill people in our city.
“We’ve had enough of it,” he said.