Part Two of a Continuing Series

Eliminating tyranny and terrorism: Kicking the ne’er-do-wells off our blocks

by Kevin J. Walker
The changes in the legal and enforcement leadership of Milwaukee allows a rare chance for positive change.

Police Chief Nanette Hagerty is retiring within a year, and we have seen the accension of the first new District Attorney in over 30 years with John Chisholm, who succeeded E. Michael McCann, in office since the late 1960s of the Mayor Henry Maier and Police Chief Harold Breier years, and all that implies.

This shaking up of the system might allow a window of opportunity to get some things done that might not otherwise happen, especially in a moribund place like Milwaukee where change is considered anathema. Taking back our neighborhoods the way they were lost--block by block--calls for bold leadership, and a changing of the guard might be just the impetus needed.

Solutions stated:

o "Police and Other Law Enforcement authorities such as the DEA, FBI, ICE/INS, MPD and US Marshall Service will excise the criminals from the target area"

o "Legal Professionals will help the inhabitants navigate through problems with the courts systems"

Under the Walker Grid+4 Solutions Plan, a four-block area would be selected for intensive treatment. It could be in an area such as Metcalfe Park, Southside in the Mitchell-Walker-National Avenue area, or near Northcott in Harambee to take advantage of community groups with established block club networks, an involved citizenry with Middle Class Values, or a higher degree of homeownership and nearby business development.

The Walker Grid+4 Plan chooses its targets for maximum effect, building upon already successful but struggling neighborhoods with involved residents under assault by those in the Culture of Poverty.

Then, its therapeutic effects are spread to an adjacent 4 block area, and another, and then another with the Thugs being kept on the run until they have no new places to relocate and set down their dysfunctional roots and destroy other neighborhoods.

Which neighborhoods are candidates?

There is a measure of triage in this operation; as some areas are too far gone and they have to be cut loose and cut out like a cancer.

Starting out with them would be a lost cause that may demoralize and thus imperil the entire enterprise, because as we know this city doesn’t take a lot to become dispirited.

It has some semblance to the East Coast "Weed and Seed" operations in federal project housing that was used from New York state to Baltimore, but is more concentrated and tailored. I suggest that a four-block section be selected that has such promise, because nothing succeeds like success.

Such a neighborhood would have a higher than average degree of homeownership, as these are people who have proven in the past that they will fight for their properties, such as the people along Walnut from 20th to 24th streets. It should also have a network of block clubs and/or block captains who keep track of things going on and alert other members.

The McKinley and Juneau Avenue enclaves between Vliet to Highland Boulevard and 27th to 35th streets also shows promise, since we are talking about the West side.

There are also institutions in place there such as the WAAW and Hmong Friendship and Asian Women’s Association, and a large number of college educated and politically active people who have a stake in the betterment of their neighborhoods. They have already been actively building up their communities without city support, now it is long past time to throw them a lifeline.

Implementing the Walker Grid+4 Plan

Once the initial 4 block Seed area has been selected:

o "Police and Other Law Enforcement authorities such as the DEA, FBI, ICE/INS, MPD and US Marshall Service will excise the criminals from the target area so they can no longer terrorize it, or use it for refuge.

"They will not be allowed to get a pass by snitching or turning in each other, thereby eliminating their criminal competition. There will be no immunity for them just to bag a few higher ups while the street soldiers continue their illegal trade. However, simple warrants of a non-criminal, nonviolent nature will not be under this drive."

o "Legal Professionals Will Help the Inhabitants navigate through problems with the courts systems such as legal residency, alimony and child support enforcement; and help lessen outstanding fines and warrants of a non-criminal, nonviolent nature."

Legal problems they have would be ameliorated as a way of rewarding them for participating in the program, and rules would be bent or broken for them if need be. Remember this is battle, and foul times call for foul measures. Nit-picking and onerous red tape by the bureaucracies will have to be tossed aside.

Police Community Relations

One of the very first things that should be done is the elimination of all "Known Drug Houses" that alone can pull down an entire neighborhood. The second is the enforcement of laws already on the books such as the Noise Ordinances that allow the police to confiscate the equipment inside the "Boom Cars" whose bone-jarring clamor rattle the windows of houses as they cruise by, with car windows darkened and mufflers almost flattened as they are packed six males to a Hooptie and up to no good.

Another no-expense measure that can be employed is changing the police procedures when responding to citizen call-ins of crime. Officers have privately said that if a citizen calls in about a crime such as about one of the hundreds of "Known Drug Houses" but doesn’t give her name--it isn’t logged in.

Another is halting the practice (which I can personally attest to after calling them to halt a woman being beaten loudly on the floor above my apartment) of the police standing on the porch of a helpful citizen who has foolishly given a name or called from their house.

With their radios crackling and your anonymity thoroughly dashed the officers loudly inquire if they were the one who called about the illegal activities of So and So across the street--while So and So looks on past the curtains with a hard look on his face, and thoughts of vengeance for the neighborhood meddler in his "bid’ness."

Arresting people for outstanding warrants after they’ve signed in to attend a community meeting, or papering cars outside with parking tickets or citations is not the way to institute Community Policing, nor win the confidence of residents who expect the police to "protect and to serve."

The lack of respect and concern that has been widely seen on the part of the MPD for the anonymity that is desired by those who report negative behavior is another reason for the non-cooperation between residents and the police.

This working at cross-purposes must be halted, or we undo all the good that has been accomplished.

It also shouldn’t have to be mentioned that it would be better overall for citizen-police relations if the members of the MPD wouldn’t be so quick to shoot and beat down their sons, nephews, and fathers; nor stop them just because they’re driving a nice automobile.

The four-block area will be "secured," again in the military parlance that is being employed deliberately.

The main cleansing criteria will be applied such as flushing the area of the ne’er-do-wells, probation and parole violators, and the eradication of all so called "Known Drug Houses" which never should be allowed to exist in the first place.

Once the go-ahead is given, we will be good to go to the adjacent four-block area, where the process will be continued. By the time the process reaches 16 square city blocks the effects will be readily apparent, and by then even the Naysayers, Doubters and assorted "player-haters" will be clamoring to join the bandwagon, grinning whilst they pose for pictures and use giant scissors to cut ribbons and hold their own media interviews to claim credit for "their" bold plan.

We shall let them, because positive results in our neighborhoods are what is really important. As billionaire planner and developer, Trammel Crow once said, "You can accomplish a lot in this world if you don’t care who gets the credit."

There are always three real phases to any contentious plan:

1) "It’ll never work;

2) "It might work, but its too hard/expensive; and

3) "See? I always told you it would work!"

Think of the Walker Grid+4 Block by Block Plan as a "reverse virus" if you will. A virus will grow and grow out of control by taking command of its environment, which is always a living host.

But unlike a parasite where there may be sometimes a symbiotic relationship that may be beneficial to a body, pathogenic viruses harm the very host in which they reside, eventually leading to their mutual destruction.

The anti-community elements can be envisioned as such a virus, or worse yet a cancer of the community as they rob, rape and murder.

An involved and empowered community is therefore the cure for this malady that is tearing at our community, and causing an exodus of those who can escape to other communities or even states where the quality of life still exists that our city used to have, and their absence causes the continued unraveling of sections of cities.

o "Stop Defending, Apologizing for, and Excusing the Criminals in Our Midst, whether they are popular politicians, preachers or what-have-you.

"We have to wean ourselves off the idea that because Society may not always be fair, and that there has been a history of racism and discrimination against groups, that those lawbreakers duly apprehended by the authorities are somehow not really guilty or to blame for the life of criminality they freely chose."

Such a misplaced concept of racial/group solidarity is killing our communities. The Thug Lifers must know that they can no longer be shielded under our community umbrella because they are unworthy of our love, and have no part in our community building efforts.

There is much that we can do as citizens to halt the takeover of neighborhoods by the thugs and gang bangers.

The culture of criminality must be addressed in which many of us are complicit, from allowing our children to have electronics we haven’t bought for them and sport expensive apparel, shoes and jewelry without inquiring into their circle of friends and how and where they are getting such sums of money.

Not purchasing stolen goods that used to belong to our neighbors is another small way to combat the culture of criminality, because it diminishes the market for burglaries, break-ins and Home Invasions that slowly but surely creep towards the homes of the buyers themselves.

In Some Communities, Crime Does Pay

Vicious turf battles by well-armed youth gangs (some with deadly military grade ordnance and tactics from gang members formerly in the military of the US or Central American nations) over the control of lucrative markets for their drug trade, the nation’s cities became battle Zones of Death that chased out economic opportunity for the very people who needed it.

Educational shortfalls and discrimination kept a young generation from aspiring to the American Dream, but they forged their own based on a now flourishing underground economy, largely illegal drug fueled but with healthy dollops of prostitution, pharmaceuticals; identity and car theft.

Their communities largely missed out on an expanding booming economy and actually regressed while others were socking away cash during what some observers called the Era of Greed.

But how can businesses flourish in an environment where rampant crime against people and property makes any enterprise risky, and where profits are eaten up by security and onerous taxation and insurance rates?

This enlarges the areas under control of the Culture of Poverty because decent, hard working people who are trying to raise their kids right aren’t going to live around circumstances like this, no way whatsoever.

So the Middle Class "glue" that knits neighborhoods together leaves, and whole sections of the city start to unravel and begin to go downhill as we have seen in communities all across the nation, from Compton, Oakland and Long Beach in California; St. Louis, Houston, New Orleans and Detroit; and Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia; and Miami.

It takes a while but things both good and bad eventually wind their way to the Heartland and the slow to change Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The police and other authorities are absolutely right when they underscore that it is the citizens themselves who have to make a stand against the rampant criminality in their neighborhoods.

The police are essentially powerless to effect any real change without their vigilance. Instead, there are areas where the criminal element finds safe haven from the authorities.

Police have reported with dismay where they have responded to a shooting or gun battle between competing drug enterprises on city streets like it was the Wild West; to find not only don’t they receive any cooperation from the neighbors, but find the locals had collected the gun shells ejected from the automatic weapons so as to make identification more difficult by the Police Forensics team.

As the police squads drove away in futility, the children with the approval of their parent(s) watching from the porches of their duplexes, taunted them with the names of the local gangs who are heroes in some neighborhoods.

Part 2 continued in the March 3-4 edition of the "Community Journal WKND."