By Hannah Schwarz
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MILWAUKEE — Faced with growing complaints about his department’s handling of a spike in carjackings and his own comments about how to avoid getting shot, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn defended himself at a contentious Common Council committee meeting Monday.
“I tried to convey facts in a less dry way to a group of people who should not be afraid of their public spaces,” Flynn said about the “four simple rules for not getting shot in Milwaukee” that he laid out at the annual Ceasefire Sabbath breakfast in mid-May.
The comments were met with an immediate backlash, and aldermen at Monday’s Public Safety Committee meeting were not about to let the issue go.
“The level of professionalism and empathy expected to be exhibited by those in public service we do not feel were exhibited” here, Ald. Milele Coggs said.
The “four simple rules” — don’t deal drugs, don’t be part of a gang, don’t illegally carry a gun, and don’t get into a fight with someone who has more arrests than you — were delivered, flippantly in the view of some council members, in the midst of a rise in carjackings in Milwaukee, an issue that the Public Safety Committee addressed at Monday’s meeting.
Since the first five months of 2014, when there were a total of 90 carjackings in the city, the number has increased 120 percent to 198 carjackings in the first five months of 2016. A large percentage of those carjackings have been committed by juveniles, Flynn said, adding that the first five months of 2016 have seen a 767 percent increase in juvenile arrests for carjacking compared with 2014.
Just this past weekend, six juvenile carjacking suspects were arrested. Four were on county supervision. The youngest suspect was 12.
In a news conference Thursday, Flynn said the large number of carjacking suspects who have already been put on supervision for past crimes shows that other agencies have to step up to the problem.
“Everybody we arrest, sometimes it feels like, is already out ‘on supervision,’” he said last week. “It’s a running joke. Being on county supervision is not being on supervision at all, and the kids know it.”
Part of the problem, Assistant Chief William Jessup said Monday, is that the Police Department does not receive real-time GPS tracking on the whereabouts of juveniles under county supervision. If a juvenile moves outside his allowed range, police officials do not know until they are contacted by the outside contractor in charge of tracking suspects.
Ankle bracelets also are not tracked at night, Flynn said.
Adding to all of this, he said, is that other government agencies lack adequate funding to achieve their missions.
But some members of the committee were not buying it.
The budget, said Alderman and Committee Vice Chair Mark Borkowski, “is what it is. Let’s be creative with the money we have.”
Borkowski pointed to the judges who have chosen more lenient sentences for juvenile carjackers as part of the problem.
“We’ve got way too many marshmallow judges and marshmallow people,” he said. “We’re held accountable. Why aren’t these damn kids being held accountable?”
The meeting was part of a series that the Public Safety Committee is holding to discuss the rise in juvenile crime in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee County district attorney for the city will testify at the next meeting, which will be held Friday.
Copyright 2016 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel