Unless things change soon, it appears unlikely that the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee Public Schools will meet the Feb. 17 deadline to place at least 25 student resource officers in schools.
Wisconsin Act 12, a law enacted in summer 2023, mandated that police officers be placed in MPS and stipulated that they must first complete 40 hours of training through the National Association of School Resource Officers.
This has yet to happen.
A school resource officer is a law enforcement officer who works full time in collaboration with a school district, according to Act 12.
School resource officers typically carry firearms, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers.
No trainings scheduled
Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, said no Milwaukee Police Department officers have completed or are scheduled to take the weeklong training before Feb. 17.
“We are never going to recommend that an officer start working in a school without first being put through this training,” Canady said. “We’re talking about the most unique assignment in law enforcement: putting men and women in schools and trusting them to do good work with adolescents in the school environment.”
MPD did not confirm its timeline for training or whether it has enough officers who have completed the training in the past.
Even if there were officers with past training, though, that wouldn’t necessarily be the best or safest option, Canady said.
“We don’t have a timeline on when you should retake the training,” but “there have been massive changes” in the past five years, Canady said.
Subjects that have been updated or added include training on how adolescent brains develop, forms of bias and how to understand trauma, he said.
A spokesperson for MPD deferred all questions to the City Attorney’s Office, stating the department is “unaware of the status of the agreement.”
Several attempts to speak with the City Attorney’s Office were unsuccessful as were attempts to speak with every member of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors except one.
Training is the most important concern when it comes to officers in schools for Henry Leonard, Milwaukee Public Schools board director of District 7.
Without this training, Leonard said he fears “a haphazard approach to this and it turns into a disaster.”
Next steps
There are no consequences for having not met the 2024 deadline stipulated by Act 12, according to an analyst with the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan agency that provides research and legal services to lawmakers.
An additional hearing has been scheduled if the Feb. 17 deadline is not met.
Jeff Fleming, a spokesman for Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, said there have been some productive meetings between the city and MPS.
“The Mayor is optimistic the outstanding issues can be resolved,” he wrote in an email to NNS.
How we got here
In 2016, MPS pulled officers from inside its schools and, four years later, ended a contract with MPD for patrols outside its buildings.
Act 12 required the city to beef up its police force by 2034 and ordered officers back into MPS by Jan. 1, 2024. That deadline came and passed as the school district and city jostled over who would pay the estimated $2 million cost to fund the officers.
Pressure to bring officers back into schools picked up after a mother of an MPS student who was bullied sued the city and school district for not meeting Act 12 requirements.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge David Borowski decided in favor of the mother, ruling that the city of Milwaukee and MPS are responsible for getting officers in schools by Feb. 17.
Impact on current officer shortage
NNS reported in December about hiring challenges within MPD as the number of new recruits wasn’t enough to offset the retirement and departure of other officers or potentially the new requirements of Act 12.
Leon Todd, executive director of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, said officers placed at MPS would come from the current ranks of the MPD, which could stretch the department’s already thin ranks.
“One of our top priorities is to grow the size of MPD, and we obviously want to limit the strain,” Todd said. “While these officers would be placed in MPS and wouldn’t be available to take other calls for service, the number of calls are going to be reduced as they won’t need to respond because they will already have officers in schools.”
According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, there were 40,643 calls to police from MPS-associated addresses from 2013 to 2024, although 7% of those calls were during nighttime hours.
The Fire and Police Commission is typically in charge of hiring all new officers. But because the school resource officers are going to be current officers, Todd said, the police chief or the department’s executive command staff will decide who is sent into schools.
Canady emphasized the importance of carefully selecting those officers.
“There should be input from the school community,” Canady said. “These should be officers who are veterans, who have been with the department at least three years, so we know something about their character. They should be officers who have shown sincere interest in working with youth.”
Leaders Igniting Transformation, a youth-led nonprofit in Milwaukee, doesn’t want officers back in schools at all.
“We are angry and terrified at the thought of placing armed police officers back in Milwaukee classrooms, who have shown time and time again that they are unfit to work with students and have no place in our schools,” a recent statement from the group said.
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Milwaukee County is among dozens of U.S. counties where drugs are disproportionately killing Black men born between 1951 and 1970.
Black men of the generation accounted for 12.5% of all drug deaths between 2018 and 2022. That’s despite making up just 2.3% of the total population. The trend has only accelerated in more recent years.
Most of the men who died used cocaine that was cut with stronger fentanyl — the faster-acting drug has fueled the national opioid epidemic. Most had a history of incarceration.
Limited options and lingering stigma prevent a generation of Black men from accessing drug treatment.
In many ways, Hamid Abd-Al-Jabbar’s life story involved redemption. A victim of abuse who was exposed to alcohol and drugs while growing up on Milwaukee’s North Side, he made dangerous choices as a teenager. By age 19, he landed in prison after shooting and killing a man during a 1988 drug house robbery.
But he worked on himself while incarcerated, his wife Desilynn Smith recalled. After he walked out of prison for good, he found a calling as a peace activist. He became a violence interrupter for Milwaukee’s 414 Life program, aiming to prevent gun violence through de-escalation and intervention.
Abd-Al-Jabbar may have looked healed on the outside, but he never moved past the trauma that shaped much of his life, Smith said. He wouldn’t ask for help.
That’s why Smith still grieves. Her husband died in February 2021 after ingesting a drug mixture that included fentanyl and cocaine. He was 51.
Smith now wears his fingerprint on a charm bracelet as a physical reminder of the man she knew and loved for most of her life.
“He never learned how to cope with things in a healthy way,” said Smith, executive director of Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., an organization that provides mental health and substance use services on Milwaukee’s North Side. “In our communities addiction is frowned upon, so people don’t get the help they need.”
Desilynn Smith is still grieving the loss of her husband Hamid Abd-Al-Jabbar, who died in 2021 after ingesting a mixture of cocaine and fentanyl. She is shown Jan. 23, 2025, in her office at Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Abd-Al-Jabbar is part of a generation of Milwaukee’s older Black men who are disproportionately dying from drug poisonings and overdoses, even as the opioid epidemic slows for others.
Times and Banner reporters initially identified the pattern in Baltimore. They later found the same effect in dozens of counties nationwide.
In Milwaukee, Black men of the generation accounted for 12.5% of all drug deaths between 2018 and 2022. That’s despite making up just 2.3% of the total population.
The county’s older Black men were lost to drugs at rates 14.2 times higher than all people nationally and 5.5 times higher than all other Milwaukee County residents.
Six other Wisconsin counties — Brown, Dane, Kenosha, Racine, Rock and Waukesha — ranked among the top 408 nationally in drug deaths during the years analyzed. But Milwaukee was the only one in Wisconsin where this generation of Black men died at such staggering rates.
Hamid Abd-Al-Jabbar, right, helps distribute masks in Milwaukee during the pandemic-impacted April 2020 elections. After spending years in prison, Abd-Al-Jabbar found a calling as a peace activist. (Courtesy of City of Milwaukee Office of Violence Prevention)
Milwaukee trend accelerates
The trend in Milwaukee County has only accelerated since 2022, the last year of the Times and Banner analysis, even as the county’s total drug deaths decline, Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch found.
Drugs killed 74 of the county’s older Black men in 2024. The group made up 17.3% of all drug deaths — up from 16.2% in 2023 and 14.1% the previous year, medical examiner data shows.
Abd-Al-Jabbar’s story shares similarities with many of those men. Most used cocaine that was cut with stronger fentanyl — the faster-acting drug has fueled the national opioid epidemic. Most had a history of incarceration.
Boxes of Narcan are stored in the Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., office, Jan. 23, 2025, in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Marc Levine, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researcher, concluded in 2020 that “Black Milwaukee is generally worse off today than it was 40 or 50 years ago” when considering dozens of quality of life indicators.
Meanwhile, limited options and lingering stigma prevent a generation of Black men from accessing drug treatment, local experts told Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch.
“Black men experience higher rates of community violence, are often untreated for mental health issues and experience greater levels of systemic racism than other groups,” said Lia Knox, a Milwaukee mental wellness consultant. “These all elevate their risk of incarceration, addiction and also death.”
A network of organizations providing comprehensive treatment offers hope, but these resources fall far short of meeting community needs.
A silent struggle
Smith and Abd-Al-Jabbar first started dating at 14, and they had a child together at 16. But as their relationship blossomed, Smith said, Abd-Al-Jabbar silently struggled with what she suspects was an undiagnosed mental health illness linked to childhood trauma.
“A lot of the bad behaviors he had were learned behaviors,” Smith said.
Desilynn Smith, executive director of Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., wears a bracelet bearing the fingerprint of her late husband Hamid Abd-Al-Jabbar at Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., in Milwaukee. “I keep that with me at all times,” Smith says. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Abd-Al-Jabbar became suicidal as a teen and began robbing drug dealers.
When he entered prison, Abd-Al-Jabbar read and wrote at a fifth grade level and coped like a 10-year-old, Smith said. By age 21, she said, he’d already spent two years in solitary confinement. But he had the resolve to change. He began to read voraciously and converted to Islam.
He was released from prison after 11 years, but returned multiple times before leaving for good in 2018. Smith and Abd-Al-Jabbar married, and he started earning praise for preventing bloodshed as a violence interrupter.
Still, he struggled under the pressures of his new calling. The work added weight to the trauma he carried into and out of prison. His mental health only worsened, Smith said, and he turned back to drugs as a coping mechanism.
“The main thing he learned in prison was how to survive,” she said.
Most men lost were formerly incarcerated
At least half of Milwaukee’s older Black men lost to drugs in 2024 served time in state prison, Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch found by cross-referencing Department of Corrections and medical examiner records. More than a dozen other men on that list interacted with the criminal justice system in some way. Some served time in jail. For others, full records weren’t available.
Most of the men left prison decades or years before they died. But three died within about a year of their release. A 55-year-old North Side man died just 22 days after release.
In Wisconsin, DOC officials and prisoners say drugs are routinely entering prisons, putting prisoners and staff at risk and increasing challenges for people facing addiction.
Thousands wait for treatment in prison
The DOC as of last December enrolled 815 people in substance abuse treatment programs, but its waitlist for such services was far higher: more than 11,700.
“You don’t really get the treatment you need in prison,” said Randy Mack, a 66-year-old Black man who served time in Wisconsin’s Columbia, Fox Lake, Green Bay and Kettle Moraine correctional institutions.
Randy Mack, a resident of Serenity Inns, talks with Ken Ginlack, executive director, in the facility’s library on Dec. 19, 2024. Expanding on its original outpatient treatment center on Milwaukee’s North Side, Serenity Inns also runs a residential treatment facility and a transitional living program and opened a drop-in clinic in January. (Andy Manis for Wisconsin Watch)
Leaving prison can be a particularly vulnerable time for relapse, Mack said. Some men manage to stop using drugs while incarcerated. They think they are safe, only to struggle when they leave.
“You get back out on the streets and you see the same people and fall into the same traps,” Mack said.
Knox, the wellness consultant, agrees. After being disconnected from their communities, many men, especially older ones, leave prison feeling isolated and unable to ask for help. They turn to drugs.
“Now with the opioids, they’re overdosing and dying more often,” she said.
Access to the program is uneven across the state. Corrections officials have sought to expand it using settlement money from national opioids litigation. In its latest two-year budget request the department set a goal for hiring more vendors to administer the program.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers plans to release his full budget proposal next month. His past proposals have sought millions of dollars for treatment and other rehabilitation programs. The Republican-controlled Legislature has rejected or reduced funding in most cases.
Mack said he received some help while in prison, but it wasn’t intense enough to make a breakthrough. Now he’s getting more holistic treatment from Serenity Inns, a North Side recovery program for men.
Executive Director Kenneth Ginlack said the organization helps men through up to 20 hours of mental health and substance use treatment each week.
What’s key, Ginlack said, is that most of his staff, including himself, are in recovery.
“We understand them not just from a recovery standpoint, but we were able to go back to our own experiences and talk to them about that,” he said. “That’s how we build trust in the community.”
Fentanyl catches cocaine users unaware
Many of the older men dying were longtime users of stimulants, like crack cocaine, Ginlack said, adding they had “no idea that the stimulants are cut with fentanyl.”
They don’t feel the need to use test strips to check for fentanyl or carry Narcan to reverse the effects of opioid poisoning, he said.
A group discussion is shown at Serenity Inns in Milwaukee on Dec. 19, 2024. (Andy Manis for Wisconsin Watch)
Last year, 84% of older Black men killed by drugs had cocaine in their system, and 61% had fentanyl, Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch found. More than half ingested both drugs.
Months after relapsing, Alfred Carter, 61, decided he was ready to kick his cocaine habit.
When he showed up to a Milwaukee detox center in October, he was shocked to learn he had fentanyl in his system.
“What made it so bad is that I hear all the stories about people putting fentanyl in cocaine, but I said not my people,” Carter said. “It puts a healthy fear in my life, because at any time I can overdose — not even knowing that I’m taking it.”
Awareness is slowly increasing, Ginlack said, as more men in his program share stories about losing loved ones.
Milwaukee’s need outpaces resources
Expanding on its original outpatient treatment center on West Brown Street, Serenity Inns now also runs a residential treatment facility and a transitional living program and opened a drop-in clinic in January.
Still, those don’t come close to meeting demands for its services.
“We’re the only treatment center in Milwaukee County that takes people without insurance, so a lot of other centers send people our way,” said Ginlack, who said the county typically runs about 200 beds short of meeting demand.
“My biggest fear is someone calls for that bed and the next day they have a fatal overdose because one wasn’t available.”
‘I don’t want to lose hope’
Carter and Mack each intend to complete their programs soon. It’s Mack’s fourth time in treatment and his second stint at Serenity Inns. This time, he expects to succeed. He wants to move into Serenity Inns’ apartment building — continuing his recovery and working toward becoming a drug counselor.
“My thinking pattern has changed,” Mack said. “I’m going to use the tools we learned in treatment and avoid high-risk situations.”
Butterfly stickers adorn the windows of Desilynn Smith’s office at Milwaukee’s Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., on Jan. 23, 2025. They remind her of her late mother. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Carter wants to restore his life to what it was before. He spent years as a carpenter before his life unraveled and he ended up in prison. He knows he can’t take that life back if he returns to drugs.
“I have to be able to say no and not get high. It doesn’t do me any good, and it could kill me,” he said. “I have to associate myself with being clean. I don’t want to lose hope.”
As Smith reflects on her partner’s life and death, she recognizes his journey taught her plenty, too. “I was hit hard with the reality that I was too embarrassed to ask for help for my husband and best friend,” she said. “I shouldn’t have had that fear.”
Attempts to implement a red flag gun control measure in Wisconsin have been rebuffed several times in recent years, but some legislators hope the results of November’s election can change that.
“When the political dynamic shifts in the Legislature, we have a better shot at not only introducing the (red flag) legislation but giving it a fair public hearing,” said Dora Drake, current state representative and senator-elect. “The people of Wisconsin overwhelmingly support red flag laws.”
Red flag laws, also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders, allow judges to issue court orders to temporarily restrict access to guns by individuals who could pose a threat to themselves or others.
A red flag resolution was last introduced in Wisconsin in July 2023 but was shelved along with other resolutions in April.
In an interview before the election, Drake said she was hopeful that Democrats, who overwhelmingly support red flag laws, would assume a majority control in the Wisconsin Assembly.
That didn’t happen.
Instead, when the Wisconsin Legislature returns, Republicans will be in charge but have the narrowest majority since 2011, when they took control.
A push for stronger gun control laws
Drake said Wisconsin Republican lawmakers have not done enough when it comes to gun control measures. As a result, she said, people are at risk.
“As Democrats, we just want common sense laws on gun control, and that doesn’t mean we’re trying to take away someone’s Second Amendment rights,” she said. “People are tired of life being unnecessarily taken away.”
Jacob Taylor, communications director for Sen. LaTonya Johnson, said he thinks Gov. Tony Evers will once again include Extreme Risk Protection Orders policy in his biennial budget proposal. If Republicans remove it, he said, it will be reintroduced by Johnson and other legislators.
Red flag “legislation will remain a priority for Senator Johnson and other Democrats committed to reducing gun violence in our state,” Taylor said.
Twenty-one other states, including neighboring states Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota, have already enacted red flag measures.
In March, the U.S. Department of Justice launched the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center, which provides training and technical assistance to law enforcement, judges, social service providers and others on how to implement red flag laws.
Gun laws don’t address core issues, opponents say
Nik Clark, founder and chairman of Wisconsin Carry Inc., a group that advocates for Second Amendment protections, said his organization is against red flag laws for a number of reasons.
Specifically, he doesn’t believe the laws will reduce crime.
“Ninety-five percent of crime is committed by people who are already felons and not even allowed to have a gun,” Clark said.
He said red flag laws and other gun control measures such as universal background checks are attempts by the government to weaken due processes for gun owners, making it easier for their weapons to be unlawfully seized.
He said taking away people’s rights to legally bear arms won’t make communities safer.
“If someone is willing to harm someone else, they don’t care about any laws,” Clark said. “We spend so much time on trying to prevent things, and we need to spend more time on preparedness to address them.”
What do Extreme Risk Protection Order laws do?
Nick Matuszewski is the director of policy and program at WAVE Educational Fund, Wisconsin’s oldest anti-violence advocacy group.
He said Extreme Risk Protection Order laws add a layer of protection for communities by improving the system in which a gun can be removed from people in crisis or are looking to harm themselves or others.
These laws “can be applied in cases where family members and other folks in the community are able to notice that there are dangers,” Matuszewski said.
He said red flag laws are known to reduce firearm suicides and can help prevent mass shootings.
“Unfortunately, there are too many folks in the state legislature . . . beholden to the gun lobby and are unwilling to enact a gun policy that infringes upon that relationship,” Matuszewski said.
What happens next?
Now that the dust has mostly settled from Election Day and Republicans still control the Assembly and Senate, will anything change?
Drake said lawmakers need to work together to move the needle in the right direction when it comes to preventing gun violence.
“We’ve already experienced so much trauma in our own communities, but there are things we can do to be preventative and intervene before more lives are lost, like implementing red flag laws,” she said.
Gun violence homicides dropped by nearly 17% in Wisconsin over the first eight months of 2024 compared to the same time period in 2023, according to a report by the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute.
The report, released in September, also found that gun violence victimizations, defined as all firearm-related injuries and deaths, dropped in Milwaukee nearly 20% over that same time period.
“I think this decrease is happening for a number of reasons, but one is due to community violence intervention measures that are working,” said Nicholas Matuszewski, executive director of Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort, a statewide grassroots organization.
Local violence intervention efforts include 414 Life, a violence interruption program; and Project Ujima, which provides services to families and children who’ve been impacted by violence.
In addition, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley announced in late October the launch of the national gun violence program “Advance Peace.”
“Advance Peace is an investment in solutions to decreasing gun violence that will help ensure Milwaukee County is a safe and healthy community where families and children can thrive,” Crowley said in a news release announcing the program.
The Wisconsin Community Safety Fund grants provided 10 organizations, including the Alma Center in Milwaukee, with $10.4 million in funding to reduce violence stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“After the pandemic, we had a huge increase in gun ownership and gun purchases which naturally led to more gun violence,” Matuszewski said. “Those numbers are dropping now.”
While many cities cited in the report have seen gun violence return or drop to pre-pandemic levels, Milwaukee is still on pace to experience more shootings this year than in 2019, the year before the pandemic.
According to data from the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission dashboard, there were 442 nonfatal shootings in 2019. Those numbers rose to more than 750 each year from 2020 to 2023. So far this year, the city has experienced 471 shootings, according to information on the dashboard.
‘Too many shootings’
Travis Hope, a community activist who conducts street outreach on Milwaukee’s South Side, said gun violence still occurs at an alarming rate in the city.
“Too many shootings are still happening and impacting families, communities and especially young people,” Hope said.
According to data from the Milwaukee Police Department, there have been 119 homicides in the city so far this year, compared to 153 during the same time period in 2023 and 192 in 2022.
The number of nonfatal shootings in Milwaukee also is down significantly, with 471 so far this year, compared to 769 at this time in 2023 and 788 in 2022.
Officials address drop in gun violence in Milwaukee
During a news conference discussing the reduction in shootings, among other crimes in the city, Mayor Cavalier Johnson cited the work of the Milwaukee Police Department as one reason for the drop in shootings and other crime this year.
“The work that they do is a big factor, a huge factor, in making Milwaukee safer,” he said.
Johnson said that in addition to law enforcement, intervention efforts have also been key in reducing crime.
“When we prevent a crime through intervention, that makes each and every one of us safer,” he said.
Ashanti Hamilton, director of the Office of Community Safety and Wellness, said that while the decrease in homicides and nonfatal shootings is promising, more work needs to be done.
“Reducing violence is an ongoing process,” he said. “Sustainable change requires addressing the root causes of crime, and this means looking beyond the immediate crime reduction strategies and focusing on broader social, economic and systemic changes that contribute to violence.”
The Milwaukee Police Department has a hiring problem.
It can’t find enough recruits to offset retirements and the departure of others.
Ald. Lamont Westmoreland, who represents the 5th District on the city’s Northwest Side, said residents are feeling the impact.
“Lack of police presence, long wait times on calls, all tied back to the lack of sworn officers that MPD has,” Westmoreland said.
Leon Todd, executive director of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, which has primary responsibility in the city for recruiting, testing and hiring new officers, agrees.
“Having more officers and growing the size of MPD will do a host of things to improve public safety,” he said. “Shorter response times, higher clearance rates, more proactive time for officers to do follow-up or investigative work and have greater visibility and engagement opportunities in the community all drive down crime in various ways.”
In 2023, the Milwaukee Fire and Police Academy graduated 101 new police officers, while the Milwaukee Police Department lost 112 officers to retirement, resignation or termination, Westmoreland said.
The pace of recruitment is slow again this year, with departures of officers once again outpacing new police cadets.
The city also risks missing mandates that require beefing up the number of police officers in the city as part of the Act 12 Wisconsin funding law or face millions in fines. Act 12 created avenues to implement local sales taxes as a way to pump more money into the budget and offset spiraling costs.
“I have no issue with the mandate because I do think that we need more officers on the streets,” Westmoreland said. “At the same time, you can’t force people to apply for the job.”
Recruitment challenges and efforts
Westmoreland said Milwaukee is among a number of urban cities that are facing similar hiring challenges, including competition from better-paying suburban police departments with less dangerous work environments.
“We can’t use that as a crutch,” Westmoreland said. “We’ve got to be creative with the approach of recruitment.”
Todd said the Fire and Police Commission has made several adjustments over the past few years to find new police, including hiring two staff members dedicated to recruitment, participating in more community events and job fairs and ramping up marketing efforts to city residents.
“One of the things we’ve tried to do is highlight the stories of officers to let residents know that they are people that care about the community and want to help make it safer,” Todd said.
The commission also now accepts applications year-round instead of shorter windows of a few months. It also changed the testing process to allow for online entrance exams, eliminating additional barriers for applicants.
Changes since pandemic and civil unrest
Kristine Rodriguez, a deputy for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office who also supports recruitment efforts, said her organization faces similar challenges as MPD, especially since COVID and the George Floyd protests.
“Some of the things that happened during that time still resonate with people,” she said.
She said pay is also an issue, with suburban departments offering hiring bonuses and higher starting pays. They also work fewer hours sometimes, she said, as staffing shortages can result in mandatory overtime and fewer days off.
The current starting salary for recruits at MPD is $47,673.69 and increases to $63,564.75 upon graduation from the academy. Police officers can earn up to $84,743.87 while supervisors and other specialists can earn more.
‘Under a microscope’
Another possible deterrent, Rodriguez said, is the scrutiny officers face nowadays.
“You’re under a microscope 24/7 and that might scare some candidates away,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said that her department places a heavy emphasis on community engagement, cultural competency and mental health training and that its relationship with the community has improved. She said the job itself is extremely fulfilling.
“We know that our heart is in the right place, and that’s what makes the job the most rewarding is doing good for the community,” she said.
Others weigh in
Gregory Barachy, who’s worked for the Milwaukee Fire Department for 29 years, said he thinks that being a police officer is probably less desirable now because of the danger and the lack of accountability for those who commit crimes.
“Crime is insane here, car theft is an epidemic along with the driving that goes with it,” Barachy said. “And then if you happen to arrest someone, they are released without penalty to do it again. Why would someone want to risk their lives for that?”
Barachy, who recently began a position with the Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative, said the fire department has also experienced a huge reduction in applicants.
“We only had a list of 250 this time, while 20 years ago the list was 10,000,” he said.
Carla Jones, whose partner was mistaken as a suspect and arrested by Brookfield police in November 2023, said she believes fewer people want to become police officers because of a lack of support they receive.
“Some of the main reasons people are joining law enforcement less and less is the lack of morale or real support officers are given,” Jones said. “They’re not doing that because they’re working on a reactive mentality.”
A call to disinvest
Devin Anderson is membership and campaign director for the African American Roundtable, which launched the Liberate MKE campaign in 2019 to push for divestment in law enforcement and more investment in community programming.
“In order to build a more just Milwaukee, we have to be moving money away from police and policing,” Anderson said. “We’d rather see fully funded libraries.”
Anderson said that residents want more safety and that some view policing as the only way to achieve that. But, he said, creating a safer city requires addressing root causes of crime, which the police department doesn’t do.
“They respond after something happens,” Anderson said. “What people actually want is more investments in their neighborhood.”
Testing a challenge
Two years ago, Eddie Juarez-Perez saw an ad seeking new cadets for the Milwaukee Police Department.
“I decided to answer the call for service,” he said.
Juarez-Perez applied and passed the background check and written and physical exam. But he failed a psychological exam taken by all potential recruits.
“They said I was deemed not suitable for the position,” Juarez-Perez said.
He isn’t giving up.
“I look at being a police officer as being a public servant,” Juarez-Perez said. “I love my city and want to help people have a good quality of life here.”
Rodriguez said she’s been working to recruit more women involved in law enforcement. But some she said are unable to meet the physical requirements needed to join.
“I think that definitely is a barrier for a lot of women who don’t have upper body strength or have time to train,” she said.
MPD hosts fit camps and other support to help potential cadets meet physical and testing requirements to become an officer.
“We’re trying to give people the best opportunity to prepare and succeed,” Todd said.
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