“Are we still going to get the same amount of attention (from police)?”
–Tim Vertz, chair of the Riverwest Neighborhood Association’s safety committee

Milwaukee Police Department district five has expanded its borders and will now be taking an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 more calls than before the addition, estimated members of the Riverwest Neighborhood Association’s Safety Committee at their Nov.15 meeting.

This fall, the City of Milwaukee Police remapped district boundaries to better distribute officers where needed, but some residents are concerned that expanding district five, which includes the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, will affect the safety of their community. This new area covers from around 27th St. to all the way past Capitol Drive, according to Tim Vertz, chair of the Riverwest Neighborhood Association’s safety committee.

At a Riverwest Safety Committee meeting, Vertz reported the statistics for the new area are not promising.

“The numbers that we have received show that there are going to be increased homicides, increased gun violence, because the area that we took over is a bad area, just looking at stats and crime reports,” said Vertz.

The committee was also concerned about whether district five’s expanded boundaries would affect the police response time for those residents within the original boundaries. “Are we still going to get the same amount of attention?” Vertz questioned.

However, since the rising reports of crime around UWM, students around campus likely will not feel the effect of the new boundaries as much, because the area has received extra police, said Vertz.

“I know for a fact that they have been increasing patrols around UWM. Normally what happens in situations like that is that the police will actually saturate an area,” Vertz said. When they see a sharp increase in something (normally they have nine or ten patrols and a couple of extras), the extras will end up going to the spike area, you definitely get extra patrol.”

According to Henry Cannon, a member of the RNA, at any given time in district five there are nine or ten squad cars patrolling the area. With the newly transformed boundaries, district five will likely be receiving two new members of the next police academy graduating class, said Cannon.

Another topic covered at the meeting was the rising number of drive-by drug deals. According to Cannon, the best way to help police find these dealers is not only report the license plate number, model and make of the car with a description, but to also include the time. Because of the load district five has to deal with, this might not be an immediate priority. If the police can get a time, they can try to establish a pattern, and be there the next day at the same time.

> Comments