Milwaukee Sets New Homicide Record

For the third straight year, Milwaukee broke a record it doesn’t want to break. It has a new record for total homicides.

The city recorded its 194th homicide Saturday, eclipsing the prior high with more than a month to go in the year.

“Looking at where we’re at right now is not where we want to be, but I like to put this in the context that we didn’t start out on a good foot in 2022,” said Police Chief Jeffrey Norman in a press briefing Monday. “When we started off this year we had a number of mass shootings that unfortunately had rocked our communities.” A quintuple homicide occurred in January.

He said homicides were once up 118% year-over-year but now had fallen to a 12% or 13% increase. “Even though we’re not where we need to be at, we’re trending in the right direction,” said the chief. Norman was given a four-year term as chief in November 2021, having served as acting chief since late December 2020.

Mayor Cavalier Johnson highlighted that crime overall was down 14%. “We have got a lot of work to do and we are both committed to doing it,” said the mayor. He said it would take multiple factors to reduce crime and homicides, including more family-supporting jobs, an effective Office of Violence Prevention and the police department. “We’re applying a number of tools to address the situation.”

Both Norman and Johnson emphasized their sympathy for the victims and those close to them.

“We all know that when somebody kills somebody, hurts somebody, it’s not just the individual who they may have had a problem with, there’s a ripple effect,” said the mayor, citing parents, friends and relatives.

Norman credited the city’s community partnerships with the recent slowdown. He singled out an anonymous CrimeStoppers tip that resulted in the October arrest of a shooter from a February homicide at Brownstone Social Lounge. He also praised the city’s partnership with Sojourner Family Peace Center, the Homicide Review Commission and the Office of Violence Prevention.

“We are trending in the right direction and feel good about that,” said the chief. “No one entity, no one person, whether it’s the mayor, or myself or the team we represent, can do it alone.”

Norman said the city was clearing (solving) approximately half of the homicide cases, down considerably from past years. “Yes, we’ve cleared half this year. Still proud of what the men and women of the Milwaukee Police Department are doing.”

As of Nov. 20, 2021, the city had recorded only 173 homicides according to an MPD dashboard. The city ended 2021 with 193 and 2020 with 190 homicides,

There was a nationwide 30% spike in homicides connected to the pandemic, but Milwaukee continues to outpace virtually all other major cities in the rise in homicides.

The city’s prior homicide high was 165 in 1991. The annual total had trended downward to approximately 100 before spiking to 147 in 2018 and again receding, to 97 in 2019.

The number of nonfatal shootings stands at 794, in line with the 791 through the same time last year, but above the 764 total recorded in 2020. The prior high was 631 in 2015.