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A new guide from Johns Hopkins University recommends 10 policy changes to reduce gun violence in Wisconsin, including three identified as potentially especially helpful for communities such as Milwaukee, where gun violence has been prevalent.

“The recommendations are intended to have statewide impact,” wrote Ethan Bartlett, assistant research and policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and lead author of the guide, in an email to NNS.  

“That being said, research suggests some recommendations may have a larger impact in certain areas than others, depending on factors such as community culture, demographics, rurality and differences in implementation.”

The Wisconsin guide is the seventh state-specific policy road map published by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, following guides for Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Maryland and Maine.

Bartlett said researchers began by examining Wisconsin’s existing firearm laws to identify gaps.

“From there, we were guided by research evidence and identified evidence-based policies that would fill those gaps and ultimately work toward better outcomes for Wisconsin residents,” he said. 

Bartlett said the guide is intended to help policymakers, local governments and organizations identify legislative changes that could reduce firearm deaths and injuries.

“We view gun violence as an epidemic-level public health emergency and saw an opportunity to create a product with the potential to be part of the solution,” he said. 

Three recommendations he said may be especially significant for Milwaukee and other communities experiencing higher levels of interpersonal gun violence: establishing firearm purchaser licensing; licensing gun dealers; and providing sustainable funding for community violence intervention and prevention programs.

Current snapshot of Milwaukee gun violence

As of Oct. 8, Milwaukee had recorded 84 homicides and 325 nonfatal shootings, compared with 108 homicides and 425 nonfatal shootings during the same period in 2025, according to the Milwaukee Police Department’s crime dashboard. Both categories declined over 20% compared with the same period last year.

In 2025, the city recorded 142 homicides and 516 nonfatal shootings, compared with 132 homicides and 639 nonfatal shootings in 2024. 

Bartlett emphasized that firearm homicides represent only one aspect of gun violence.

“Firearm suicides represent the largest portion of firearm fatalities, and there are more firearm injuries annually than firearm homicides and suicides combined in Wisconsin,” he said.

In July, NNS reported firearms were involved in the majority of suicides in Milwaukee County in 2025. 

“All forms should be taken into consideration when discussing ways to mitigate gun violence,” Bartlett said. 

Here is a breakdown of the three strategies Bartlett highlighted for communities like Milwaukee.

Firearm purchaser licensing

The first recommendation calls for a requirement that prospective firearm buyers obtain a license before purchasing a gun.

Wisconsin does not require firearm purchasers to obtain a license, according to the guide.

Johns Hopkins recommends requiring prospective purchasers to complete firearm safety training, including live-fire instruction, submitting fingerprints, a comprehensive background check and an in-person application process.

The guide states that purchaser licensing laws were associated with an 11% reduction in firearm homicides in 136 large urban counties between 1984 and 2015. 

The requirements could strengthen background checks and help prevent firearms from reaching people legally prohibited from possessing them, according to the guide.

Milwaukee County Supervisor Justin Bielinski broadly supports the recommendations, but he raised concerns about purchaser licensing.

Bielinski said firearm purchaser licensing requirements could disproportionately affect lower-income residents and people of color, particularly those living in heavily policed communities.

Gun dealer licensing

Another recommendation is for Wisconsin to establish licensing requirements for firearm dealers – on top of existing federal requirements.

Wisconsin does not currently require a separate state firearm dealer license, according to the guide.  

Johns Hopkins recommends statewide licensing that includes recordkeeping, security measures and inspections to strengthen oversight of firearm sales.

The guide cites research finding that strong state firearm dealer regulations, including licensing and inspections, were associated with a 64% reduction in firearm trafficking within states.

The report highlighted federal data showing authorities recovered and traced 8,841 firearms in Wisconsin in 2023, including 3,781 in Milwaukee.

Bridget Whitaker is executive director of Safe & Sound, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit focused on community safety and violence prevention. She said the firearm purchaser licensing and gun dealer licensing speak to the accountability and responsible access to firearms.   

“I think there’s value in creating stronger safeguards to help prevent firearms from getting into the wrong hands,” Whitaker said. “This is so important when we consider how quickly a disagreement, an impulsive decision or an unresolved conflict can become a tragedy when a firearm is involved.” 

Sustainable funding of community violence intervention

Whitaker said the recommendation that resonates most with her is for sustainable investment in community violence intervention and prevention.

Milwaukee already has several local efforts, including Safe & Sound, the 414LIFE violence interruption program and other initiatives coordinated by the city’s Department of Community Wellness and Safety. 

Johns Hopkins researchers recommend sustained funding for anti-violence programs and a formal establishment of Wisconsin’s Office of Violence Prevention in state law, which could provide more stable state support for local violence prevention efforts.

“Too often – especially this year – nonprofits are charged to produce long-term outcomes with short-term funding,” Whitaker said. “We are asking organizations to build trust and maintain consistent relationships in neighborhoods while providing funding that may only last a year. Trust doesn’t operate on a grant cycle.”

Gov. Tony Evers’ actions

Bielinski said state lawmakers would need to push for most of the guide’s recommendations.

“Most of the reforms in the Hopkins report have to be initiated at the state level,” he said.

NNS reached out to Gov. Tony Evers about the three recommendations. Britt Cudaback, communications director for Evers, pointed to the governor’s previous budget proposals and calls for special legislative sessions and federal funding investments for violence prevention.

Evers created the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention – by way of an executive order in January 2025. The office was initially supported by $10 million in federal funding, and Evers proposed making the office permanent through his 2025-27 budget.

However, the proposal was not included in the final budget.

In 2022, the Evers administration directed $8.4 million in federal funding to Milwaukee’s violence prevention efforts.

He also has called for universal background checks and an extreme risk protection order law, which would allow courts to temporarily restrict access to firearms for people who pose a serious risk of harming themselves or others.

Bielinski questioned whether Milwaukee County could expand its violence prevention programs from a financial perspective.

“Funding-related measures, like hiring more violence interruptors, credible messengers, etc., are highly unrealistic given current budgetary circumstances,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Administration, which oversees the state’s Office of Violence Prevention, also emphasized the need for sustained funding.

“The greatest impact, from the (Office of Violence Prevention) perspective, is continued sustainable, reliable and flexible funding for violence prevention in Milwaukee and across the state,” the spokesperson said.

Whitaker said the guide’s recommendations “reflect something those of us working in neighborhoods have understood for a long time: Reducing violence requires a comprehensive approach.” 

More recommendations

The other recommendations in the Johns Hopkins guide are:

• Strengthening firearm storage requirements
• Strengthening protections against domestic violence involving firearms
• Establishing an extreme risk protection order law
• Expanding restrictions on firearm purchases and possession
• Prohibiting large-capacity ammunition magazines
• Strengthening requirements for carrying firearms in public
• Requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

New guide identifies policies that could reduce gun violence in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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As the Milwaukee Brewers take on the Tampa Bay Rays in their first World Series in more than 40 years, tour Milwaukee to see how artists have celebrated the home team with public art.

“Wild Bill”

“Bob Uecker”

Baseball sculptures

“Hank Aaron” 

“El Paletero” 

“Sam’s Rocks WI”

“South Side en La Hora Mágica”

The Valley Passage Mural

“The Launch”

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Here’s where you can find Brewers-inspired public art in Milwaukee is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Milwaukee faces a big challenge: replacing tens of thousands of lead water pipes that pose a potential health risk to residents — all by a 2037 deadline imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

At the end of 2025, Milwaukee Water Works still had over 55,000 residential homes or properties with lead water lines on the utility-owned side, customer-owned side or both. The utility had yet to identify the makeup of pipelines serving another 27,000 properties. 

But Milwaukee can’t replace all the pipelines at once — and some neighborhoods face greater risks from lead exposure than others.

So which areas should officials prioritize? 

Part of the answer lies in a surprising place: a tool University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers originally developed to study the connection between neighborhood disadvantage and human health.

Lead does not impact neighborhoods equally

Milwaukee’s pipeline problem dates back to 1872, when the city mandated the use of lead in service lines. Although the city abolished the mandate in 1962, older lead pipelines remained in many older residential buildings.

Downtown Milwaukee includes a scattering of homes with non-lead service lines — many due to having already been replaced by the city.

Milwaukee has replaced nearly 15,000 pipelines since beginning its broader efforts in 2017, said Milwaukee Water Works Superintendent Patrick Pauly. When federal funding became available under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the utility expanded its effort, increasing the pace from about 1,000 lines a year to 5,000. 

The expansion included a priority program launched in 2024, which focuses on equity and offers free replacements to eligible residents. 

But scaling up the effort required more than funds and construction crews. The city also needed a systematic way to decide where to work — one that recognizes disproportionate risks across the city.

“We needed to expand the lead service line replacement program, and we needed to develop a, for lack of a better word, defensible method to expand that program,” Pauly said.

What Milwaukee’s priority system looks like

The resulting system assigned each property a score based on three factors: 

• 70% comes from the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), a measure of relative socioeconomic disadvantage developed by UW-Madison researchers. 
• 25% comes from the percentage of local children who tested positive for lead poisoning. 
• 5% comes from lead service line density in the area.

Together, these measures help the utility determine where replacement will yield the highest benefits. 

The city updates each property’s score every other year as new information becomes available, Pauly said. 

The scoring weights heavily toward neighborhood disadvantage as broader challenges residents face can compound risks posed by lead exposure. 

Nationwide, communities burdened by economic disadvantages and racial inequalities can face greater risks of lead exposure, according to a Montclair State University study of New Jersey. Such neighborhoods often contain older housing and sit near former industrial sites.

The ADI relies on attempts to quantify disadvantages in Milwaukee, and its origins have little to do with water infrastructure.

A tool developed to understand health disparities

The ADI measures neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage or adverse social exposure using 17 U.S. Census American Community Survey measures. They include factors related to income, education, housing, and employment.

The index assigns scores to census block groups — small geographic areas that generally contain several hundred to a few thousand people.

Block groups receive a national percentile ranking from 1 to 100 or a statewide decile ranking from 1 to 10. Higher rankings indicate greater socioeconomic disadvantage relative to other areas.

Researchers have long recognized that people’s health depends on far more than the medical care they receive. But measuring the influence of social and economic conditions on health isn’t easy.

Dr. Amy Kind has spent much of her career trying to figure that out.

Kind, a professor of geriatrics and gerontology at UW-Madison and founding director of its Center for Health Disparities Research, grew up in Niagara, Wisconsin, before training as a physician. 

During her residency in Boston, she saw that the medicine she prescribed could do only so much when patients returned to homes without healthy food, stable housing or access to other basic resources. Those experiences helped shape her interest in finding ways to measure such disadvantages. 

Researchers have used indexes like ADI since the 1980s. In 2014, Kind led a group of University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health researchers in updating ADI using modern census data, refined it to the census block level and validated its usefulness across several scientific studies. 

“(Like any marker), it may not be the thing that ultimately drives the risk,” Kind said. “But it has been an extremely strong marker that something going on in that area is increasing risk, whatever it might be.”

An unexpected use for health research

“When we first developed the metric, we thought that perhaps it would be used primarily by health systems, primarily in the research community,” Kind said. 

Instead, Kind and her colleagues heard from many community groups and local governments that were interested in using index data to guide their public health work.

Since 2014, the University of Wisconsin has tracked over 3,500 academic papers citing the index and more than 400 examples of its use across different fields. That includes a recent Kind study linking environmental factors to the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, the index helped officials in Puerto Rico decide where to send nurses to combat dengue fever and the mosquitoes that carry it.

That wide interest prompted Kind to develop the Neighborhood Atlas in 2018, making the data more accessible. 

Kind said she enjoys seeing the index be used in sometimes unexpected ways to address local challenges. That includes Milwaukee’s effort to protect children from lead exposure, where officials are using it as one component of their model. 

Thousands of pipelines replaced, thousands more to go 

Milwaukee Water Works has replaced lead pipes at more than 6,000 properties under its priority program, which launched less than three years ago.

The work has been largely concentrated on the city’s North Side but has also expanded into near South Side neighborhoods. 

Pauly expects the utility to reach a milestone next year of 20,000 lead lines replaced.

But officials will soon face a difficult question: how to pay for replacements after  Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding runs out in 2028.  

One possibility is returning to a funding system that required homeowners to pay part of the cost of replacing the privately owned portion of their service lines. 

“I don’t believe the city has the financial capacity to take on fully funding the private side replacement costs,” Pauly said.

That could present another challenge for a program designed to prioritize neighborhoods where residents already face financial disadvantages.

For now, residents living in homes with lead service lines that are not yet scheduled for replacement can take steps to better understand their own risk. 

Julie LaRose, lead and nutrition program coordinator at the MacCanon Brown Homeless Sanctuary, runs one of the many programs in the city where residents can submit samples of their tap water for free lead testing.

LaRose recognizes residents’ concerns about their tap water. But she also emphasizes that Milwaukee water is highly regulated, and she has not seen any samples tested through her program exceed one part per billion (ppb) of lead. 

That’s far below the FDA limit for lead in bottled water (5 ppb) and the EPA’s threshold for utility action (15 ppb). 

“If you’re nervous about this, let’s test it,” LaRose said.

How a UW tool helps Milwaukee decide which lead pipes to replace first is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Two board members resigned Tuesday and United Way and the Milwaukee Area Labor Council pulled future support from the Social Development Commission, dealing another blow to the anti-poverty agency as it faces a $3.5 million estimated net deficit and considers filing for bankruptcy.

SDC leadership attempted to address the deepening crisis during a Tuesday press conference, revealing the agency currently has just $2,770 in cash left as it tries to chart a path to restart services after a two-year shutdown.

Despite the organization’s current challenges, SDC leadership sketched a path to restart services and highlighted an opportunity to apply for an IRS program at the NAACP Milwaukee Branch, 2745 N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, on Tuesday.

SDC leaders plan to work to reestablish the Social Development Foundation, a separate 501(c)(3) fundraising nonprofit, which could accept unrestricted private funding while the organization works to rebuild trust with the community and government funders, according to Jorge Franco, chair of the SDC Board of Commissioners and interim CEO.  

“It’s really a complicated situation, but the good news is we are now in a position to begin the process to restore,” Franco said.  

Franco was reelected as board chair at a hectic Sept. 23 meeting, with Commissioner Spencer Coggs elected as vice chair and treasurer and Commissioner Peter Fetzer elected as secretary.

Plans to address debt 

Before the press conference, SDC shared documents that revisit its founding in 1963 as an intergovernmental commission on poverty and decades serving as an anti-poverty and community action agency that offered social services ranging from career and educational programs to food, housing, senior and youth services. 

The documents also mentioned the weakening of internal financial controls that contributed to the agency not being able to pay employees and eventually shutting down in April 2024. 

“We had some unfortunate circumstances happen, but that is never enough to stop fighting for the people that we serve,” said Diane Robinson, executive director and chief operating officer for SDC.

SDC tried to reopen in a limited capacity in December 2024, but wasn’t able to restart services. Now, the agency is facing a preliminary 2026 net deficit of just under $3.5 million and has about $2,770 in cash, according to SDC documents. 

“I believe SDC must repay every dollar it owes to whoever it owes it to,” Franco said.  

The board is considering filing for bankruptcy or taking other actions to address its debt. 

“Yes, we’re looking at bankruptcy alternatives, but all of that can run in parallel as we navigate and receive, assuming we have proper management and those things, and we’re working on those things now and bringing that to the table,” said Franco. 

Board resignations 

 Ahead of the press conference on Tuesday, Commissioners Pam Fendt and Richard Diaz submitted resignations to the board. 

According to a letter that Amy Lindner, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County, sent to Franco and others Tuesday, Fendt resigned immediately and the organization will not be nominating any new member due to “serious and ongoing concerns with the management and governance of SDC.” 

“Equally importantly, we also have seen no meaningful progress in the past two years to secure funding that would allow SDC to provide services of value to the community,” the letter stated. 

Fendt, president of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, was initially appointed to serve its seat on the board in 2025. She switched appointments to serve on behalf of the United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County later that year to allow Diaz to join the board as the labor council’s representative. 

Diaz sent his resignation to members of the board via email on Tuesday afternoon. Fendt confirmed his resignation in an emailed press statement sent on behalf of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council. 

Concerns cited by Diaz included the decision-making ability granted to Franco as both the board chair and CEO, the board not responding to community concerns and a lack of strategic vision or plan. 

Diaz said his reason for joining the board was to see SDC restore services.

“I will continue to believe that it is possible to restore SDC services but based on the facts and the tendencies of existing leadership, I find it inextricably unfathomable to consider that to be more than a belief,” he wrote. 

In response to a reporter’s question on the resignations, Franco said he continues to serve at the request of SDC commissioners who believe in him and his ability to turn things around for SDC.  

He said he is not concerned about appointing agencies not filling seats and predicted that United Way would appoint a representative and fund SDC again some time in the future.  

“I’m happy to navigate that and work through that and it ain’t my first rodeo in this kind of situation,” he said.  

Restoring tax services

SDC leadership met with IRS officials and was invited to reapply for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, or VITA, program, according to Franco. SDC used to run Milwaukee’s largest VITA program, which helps underserved and low-to-moderate-income individuals file income tax returns for free and eligible households to access the Earned Income Tax Credit, Franco said. 

Any application would be subject to IRS review, and SDC would not accept funding until an “appropriate structure” to manage the program would be in place, according to a memo circulated before the press conference. 

The IRS did not respond to a request for comment on SDC. 

Also discussed was the possibility of revisiting a proposal for a revolving credit facility of up to $15 million from Wings Credit Union, which could help SDC address the funding gap when waiting on reimbursement-based grants, according to Franco. 

Franco said that this option could work with government grant or private sector funding and that the lender is still interested after board members voted in December not to advance it at the time. 

“I think we have a commission now with board members who are on the commission who are prepared to march and to move forward with that,” Franco said. 

Board to meet Thursday 

The board will meet virtually at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 15. Included on the agenda is a presentation from law firm Foley & Lardner about bankruptcy restructuring alternatives, including pathways under Chapters 7, 9 and 11.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Milwaukee anti-poverty agency has just $2,770 in cash left as financial crisis deepens is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Gov. Tony Evers toured a new Milwaukee juvenile facility on Wednesday along with Department of Corrections leaders, closing another chapter in the troubled history of the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons. The sleek, colorful new facility looked like  a well-resourced though highly secure school. The Southeast Regional Care Center for Youth, or SERC, will house 32 boys who are in the DOC’s custody. 

While serving their sentences the boys will have access to educational programs, a gym, a greenhouse and other opportunities to help prepare them to return to their communities. Since many of the boys will be from the Milwaukee area, the new $65.6 million facility will make it easier for their families to visit compared to Lincoln Hills, hours away in Irma, Wisconsin. 

“This new facility marks a historic milestone for our state and is the beginning of what I hope is a real, meaningful transformation of not only juvenile corrections in our state but of corrections in Wisconsin,” Evers said. “Not only will this new facility allow us to safely move our kids closer to their homes, their families, and their support systems, but it will give kids and families hope for a brighter future. With evidence-based strategies, this new facility will provide young people the role models, educational opportunities, and support needed so they can grow, be better, and do better, all while helping to reduce crime, prevent violence, and keep our kids, families and communities safe.”

SERC is located on Milwaukee’s North Side, tucked away a few blocks  from a busy roadway just north of Good Hope Road. At first glance the tan brick building resembles a small school, but a closer look reveals  large tinted windows and a few State Patrol vehicles parked outside. Walking through the front door, visitors come to  a metal detector station in a  front lobby with light colored walls, tiled floor and chairs. 

Wednesday’s official  tour of the new facility began with a visit to the SERC’s chapel. Next, Evers was guided by DOC Sec. Jared Hoy and DOC juvenile corrections administrator Lance Horozewski to an outside area surrounded by a high brick wall and security gate, where Evers viewed a basketball court and a large greenhouse next to  raised garden beds — one for each boy which the facility will house.

Heading back inside, Hoy and Horozewski showcased medical facilities with individual exam rooms and areas where youth can access needed dental care. There was also a large kitchen, and spaces where youth could learn welding and woodworking. Evers also looked over visiting areas complete with games and kiosks for video visits, a large indoor gym and basketball court and classrooms. Evers also checked out a creative room where the boys will be able to make and record music, and even make videos using a large green screen.

The area where the boys will be housed was  behind a door, which will be controlled by staff monitoring from an adjacent room. A common space contained couches, tables, a couple of phones and games. Down the hall were dorm rooms with wood floors and gray metal furniture, with one bed per room, a toilet, desk, and a window with a view of the outdoors, with a blind the boys can open or close. 

The design of SERC is intended to forge a new direction for juvenile incarceration in Wisconsin. For years, the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools were  notorious for reports of abuse and suffering for both youth housed there and the staff responsible for their care. Earlier this year, a federal judge ended mandatory oversight of Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake after the DOC had been found to be in “substantial compliance” with reforms mandated after a 2018 class action settlement.

Lincoln Hills’ troubled history led the Legislature to spend years planning to close the 500-bed facility, convert it to an adult prison, and open up smaller and safer juvenile facilities which would also be closer to home for the youth housed there. 

Evers appeared to approve of SERC as he walked through its halls. “But our work is not over — far from it, ” he said in a statement. “Our state is decades behind in how we think about corrections, and this new facility is the first step, but it is only a step. We must continue our work to modernize our corrections system into the 21st century and close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools for good.”

Hoy said that looking around SERC “you see a school, not a prison.” He went on to say in a statement that “that’s because it is a school and even more. It’s a place to learn and to heal. There’s no barbed wire. No towers. There are big windows, color, space. And it’s all secure both for the youth and for the neighborhood. The design supports what we now know about adolescent development, and the programming offered here will follow suit with staff using evidence-based techniques to help youth make better choices and support rehabilitation.”

Hoy said at the beginning of November the first group of youth will be moved into SERC, with more to come over the following months into the holidays. “We’ve been recruiting for staff starting back in the summer,” said Hoy. “And so we’ve had two graduating classes already. We’ll have more than adequate staff. Not just safety staff — so your youth counselors that are here  — but education, treatment, all of those different functions are already on board…And then we will continue to staff up. We have another class graduating, I think at the beginning of November.”

Staffing shortages had long plagued Lincoln Hills and other DOC facilities. Hoy told the Wisconsin Examiner that the DOC has paid particular attention to staff-to-youth ratios for the SERC to help prevent burnout among staff, and has established staff wellness spaces. Hoy also said that “the space itself lends to a sort of feeling of wellness and calmness.”

Another Type 1 facility is being constructed in Dane County which is designed to hold 32 boys and eight girls. The DOC is also pushing for a third facility to be opened in northern Wisconsin in order to serve youth from that region of the state. Hoy told the Examiner that having multiple facilities would allow the DOC to cross-train and pull staff from one facility to another in order to help fill any gaps and prevent burnout.

Many of the staff who will work at the new facility are from the Milwaukee area, and theoretically might have an advantage in  relating with the youth there. Kashunda Brown, 37, one of SERC’s youth counselors, explained that she grew up on the North Side of Milwaukee where she learned what it’s like to experience poverty and living in a single parent home. Brown also has two boys of her own which “resonates with the youth that we encounter here,” she told the Examiner. 

Keana Berkhalter, 32, a licensed counselor who will be working with the facility’s Psychological Services Unit, is also from Milwaukee. “I’ve seen the complex issues and challenges that we have here, as well as the strengths that Milwaukee has,” Berkhalter told the Examiner. Berkhalter said that it’s important that youth know that the staff understand them because it helps them feel safe. “As human beings, it’s easier to connect to people that look like us, or at least that we have some sort of similar commonality.” 

The experiences the counselors share with the youth help them to connect. “I think that gives me leverage to connect to the youth, as well as help them feel safe and to talk to me and to want to trust and confide in me, to talk about things that maybe they don’t want to talk to anybody about.”

Brown said the greenhouse, raised beds, and creative spaces are especially important for the boys SERC will house. To anyone who questions whether the facility should feel more punitive, Brown says, “I think the punitive is them being away from their family.” 

She continued, “this should be, and is, a space where they can have different things that they don’t experience on the outside. A lot of people don’t have access to a basketball court at home. A lot of people don’t have access to gardening.” These translate into coping skills the boys can take home with them to avoid getting in trouble. 

Youth who learn that they enjoy woodworking, cooking, growing food in the garden or other activities available at SERC could take that with them and become more productive members of society, Brown said. “I think all the skills that they will get here, they can use on the outside. The punitive is them being in here.” 

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Lake sturgeon have been around for more than 130 million years, long before the Great Lakes formed. Commercial fishing in the 19th century, followed by damming rivers, nearly wiped out the species in the Milwaukee River basin.

A breeding and release program led by Riveredge Nature Center, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Wisconsin’s tribal communities aims to reverse the damage. This year marks the project’s 20th anniversary.

Staff collect sturgeon eggs, then hatch and raise them in a trailer at Riveredge Nature Center using water from the Milwaukee River. Over the past 20 years, the program has released more than 23,000 sturgeon.

Each fall, that work culminates in Sturgeon Fest, where people release young lake sturgeon into Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Milwaukee River. Wisconsin Watch attended the festival on Sept. 27 in Milwaukee’s Harbor District. Watch the video for the sights and sounds of the event — and to see us release a sturgeon of our own.

Males mature slightly faster than females and have been spotted in the Milwaukee River. The Wisconsin DNR hopes females will soon reach the age — about 20 years — when they typically begin spawning.

If they do, Milwaukee could see sturgeon spawn in the basin for the first time in more than a century.

Watch: How Wisconsin’s lake sturgeon are making a comeback in the Milwaukee River basin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 7 minutes

WARNING: This story contains disturbing details about residential and boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in the U.S. In Canada, the National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.

A 2022 federal report on federal involvement in Indian boarding schools sent shockwaves through Native communities across the country, including Milwaukee where the history was all but lost.

“There was a collective and audible reaction,” said Mark Denning, who is Oneida, Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee. “I had never ever heard of a boarding school … in this community.” 

Just three miles northwest of downtown Milwaukee, a Catholic-run reformatory school called Good Shepherd Industrial School had served as a federally funded Indian boarding school. 

Denning and other Indigenous leaders and allies began work with Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to find out about Good Shepherd. The federal government funded the school from 1884 to 1890 as part of its larger project to assimilate Indigenous children into non-Native culture. 

The researchers made a disturbing finding: The school owned a plot in the historic Calvary Cemetery in Milwaukee, the city’s oldest Catholic cemetery. The plot is dedicated to the “Indian girls” of Good Shepherd, but a majority of graves are unmarked or possess non-descriptive markers, making it difficult to give the girls their names back. 

Now, an ICT investigation has revealed the graves of 14 students who died while attending Good Shepherd from 1884 to 1891. Those students — all girls — are buried in Calvary Cemetery. The ICT research further reveals that at least 11 of the 14 deceased students came from the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, and, through cemetery records, Milwaukee County death certificates and boarding school correspondence, ICT has been able to identify the names of the 14 students. 

Good Shepherd Industrial School deaths 1884-1891

Students buried in Milwaukee’s Calvary Cemetery ‘Indians of Good Shepherd’ plot

1. Angeline/Angela Lafornoise, “French-Indian,” age 16, died July, 24, 1884.
2. Alphonsine LeDoux (Alphouse Ledeux), “Indian,” age 14, died March 16, 1885.
3. Rosalie Gladu, “Half-Breed,” age 9, died May 3, 1885.
4. Ellen Laventure, “Indian,” age 13, died April 15, 1886.
5. Marie Jane Morris, “Indian,” age 13, died April 28, 1886.
6. Rosa Zuis, “White,” age 7, died June 4, 1886.
7. Mary Clementine Gladu, “White/Indian,” age 20, died Sept. 18, 1886.
8. Madleine Wilkey, “Indian,” age 16, died Sept. 27, 1886.
9. Justine Gladu, “Indian,” age 20, died May 3, 1887.
10. Ernestine (Erstine) Gladu, “Indian,” age 20, died May 3, 1887.
11. Matilda Smith, “Indian,” age 16, died June 8, 1887.
12. Virginia Plante, “Indian,” age 14, died July 18, 1888.
13. Maggie Nolan, “White,” age 14, died Aug. 1, 1888.
14. Mary A. Spearry (Sperry), “race unknown,” age 20, died July 1891.

Letters written between school officials and the Bureau of Indian Affairs mention the deaths of only nine girls, three of whom were unnamed; however, cemetery records show 14 burials from Good Shepherd during this time period. The exact burial locations of several girls are unknown but are noted as being in the cemetery. 

“Maybe one day someone will come here, (and) there will be a historic marker,” Denning said. 

The Interior Department’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report released in 2022 painted a picture of a troubled era in U.S. history. The report detailed a federal Indian boarding school system that initially consisted of 408 schools across 37 states or then territories. The report determined that the “schools accounted for over 500 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian child deaths” and that “the Department expects the number of recorded deaths to increase.”

“Calling them schools is not accurate, they’re like concentration camps,” said Averie Anderson, Oneida and Menominee and a participant in the Milwaukee effort to uncover the city’s boarding school history.

Students at Good Shepherd were made to work an average of 4.5 hours per day, according to a 1917 investigation into the school. Girls were subjected to an “industrial education,” which included working for the greater community doing such tasks as laundering families’ clothing and bedding. 

Handling contaminated linens could have exposed the girls to diseases like influenza, diphtheria or smallpox, Denning said. 

“Is there anyone interested in making these things right?” Denning asked. “Because in making these things right we can help make our own life right and we become aware of what’s happening to us.”

Good Shepherd was funded by the federal government for six years but remained open as a “reform” school for local youth until roughly 1968. Often, those admitted were girls whose parents could not care for them. The school was also a correctional center. Girls who had committed a crime would be admitted to the school, usually released at age 21. 

Occasionally, European immigrant children also were sent to the school to learn to speak English. After the federal government ended its contract with the school in 1890, the school continued to operate as a correctional center. In addition to its payment from the federal government, Milwaukee County funded the school — specifically for its adjudication and orphanage programs. 

“The House of the Good Shepherd isn’t just the story of Native people,” Denning said. “There were Polish immigrants, there were Ukrainian, Russian, Greek kids being sent to this school. … They’re buried here too.”

The first death

All Indigenous students in attendance from 1884 to 1890 came from the Turtle Mountain Reservation roughly 900 miles northwest of Milwaukee, situated on the border of North Dakota and Canada. The girls, many of whom are referred to as “half-breeds” in school documents, were Anishinaabe and Métis. 

Despite initial correspondence letters claiming students were in good health upon arrival, the first death occurred on July 23, 1884, shortly after girls arrived at the school. Correspondence records from nuns to the Bureau of Indian Affairs describe the girl’s sister was ill as well and expected to die not long after. After the initial death, students continued to die of diseases like consumption, brain fever and “lung paralysis.”

“They arrived in Milwaukee in January (1884), I think the high of 14 degrees Fahrenheit,” said historian Benjamin Newman. “They arrived, I think, at 3:40 in the morning. No one had made arrangements for them to come. They weren’t expected for whatever reason, according to the newspaper reports.” 

The youngest identified student death during this period is of a 7-year-old. Students, on average, ranged from ages 12 to 20. Letters sent between nuns, other school officials and the Bureau of Indian Affairs document at least one instance of an infant being removed from a single mother on the Turtle Mountain reservation and brought to Good Shepherd in Milwaukee to be placed in an orphanage. 

One nun attributed student deaths to the transition to “civilized life,” remarking in a letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs: “Perhaps the change from the free life of the forest to civilization was too much for them. Sleeping in beds, sitting on chairs, wearing clothes, eating like white people — schoolbooks and study soon told on their health.”

Another nun noted in a letter that the school struggled to account for the rapid spread of disease among students: “A physician is almost in constant attendance and exerts all his skill to save them but their symptoms are peculiar and the complex prostration occurs almost instantly,” she wrote.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs first granted the school a contract in 1884 to educate 80 Indian girls. Along with fruitless efforts to recruit from the Menominee Nation in Wisconsin and the White Earth Nation in Minnesota, the church asked Father John F. Malo, a Catholic priest in Turtle Mountain, to send girls from North Dakota. The first group of 27 girls arrived in the early months of 1884. 

According to correspondence records from the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, from 1884 to 1889 the school’s student body was exclusively composed of girls from the Turtle Mountain Reservation. Following the end of the contract, girls were relocated to boarding schools in Minnesota. 

The Bureau of Indian Affairs initially promised Good Shepherd payments of $41.75 per student per semester, an equivalent of roughly $1,375.41 today, but later increased the amount per student to $167 per student per semester in 1885 — approximately $5,767.18 in today’s money. 

The offer of high amounts of money in exchange for housing and educating Indian students may have been what drew Good Shepherd to working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the first place, Newman said. 

“(Prior to the contract), there was one year where their expenses basically were a complete wash against their income and so they needed money,” Newman said. “And so they thought, ‘OK, let’s see if we can get some Native girls and get the U.S. government to give us some more money for having them here.’” 

Following the killing of Métis rights activist Louis Riel in 1885, an influx of Métis people fled Canada to the United States. Many arrived at Turtle Mountain. Not long after, more girls poured into the Good Shepherd school.

Attempts to recruit students from Wisconsin tribes

Toward the end of the 1880s, school leaders repeatedly tried to recruit students from northern Wisconsin tribes to no avail and reportedly spent a significant amount of money on empty recruitment trips, Newman said. The school attempted twice to be reimbursed by the United States Congress, but the bills stalled out. 

“That was a continuing thread throughout: the school putting effort in trying to get that money recovered,” Newman said.

Throughout its six years as an Indian boarding school, dozens of parents wrote to the Bureau of Indian Affairs asking their girls be sent home. In one instance, ICT identified a parent repeatedly requesting the return of his daughter. The girl is buried in an unmarked grave in Calvary Cemetery, according to cemetery records. It’s unclear if the family was informed. 

ICT was unable to reach Turtle Mountain leaders for comment. 

“There’s lots of unknowns,” Newman said. “There’s so much more, even about this six-year time period” that needs to be explained.

Newman said in his research he’s been unable to find an answer as to why the government severed its contract with the school in 1890. 

According to newspaper reports from the Milwaukee Journal, girls regularly ran away from the school but were often caught and recommitted. These reports don’t specifically note any instances of Indigenous children running away. 

One report from Aug. 22, 1884, advertises a picnic to be held by the school: “One of the attractions will be the presence of the fifty Indian girls, lately placed by the government at the school.” 

“This is a history of Milwaukee, not just a history of Natives in Milwaukee or Turtle Mountain,” Newman said. “(This school) was in existence for 80 years. This is a story of Milwaukee, and Native stories are also stories of Milwaukee.”

This story was originally published by ICT.

ICT is an independent, nonprofit multimedia news organization covering Indigenous issues and communities. ICT is supported by foundations, donor contributions and corporate sponsorships.

At least a dozen graves of Milwaukee Indian boarding school students uncovered is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A federal immigration judge ruled Wednesday that Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, can be deported. Judge Jayme Salinardi rejected accusations made by the Department of Homeland Security that Sarsour lied on his green card application over 30 years ago, and that he registered to vote despite not being a citizen. Salindari did, however, give what Sarsour’s attorneys called “extreme deference” to a 2025 memo by Secretary of State Marco Rubio stating that Sarsour — a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights  — is deportable “because his actions undermine” U.S. foreign policy.

The same morning Salindari ruled on Sarsour’s case, he announced his retirement. A different immigration judge will preside over further proceedings in Sarsour’s case. During a press conference Wednesday, attorneys representing Sarsour called the decision “unjust,” and said the timing of  Salindari’s retirement announcement was “odd.” 

Immigration attorney Patrick Taurel said that Sarsour — who is not taking interviews at this time — was “disappointed but not shocked” by the judge’s ruling, and that he understands that immigration judges are under pressure from the Trump administration. Last year, nearly 100 immigration judges were fired by the Trump administration, shrinking the number of judges by about a quarter, NPR reported. 

“It does feel odd,” said attorney Luna Droubi, who is representing Sarsour in a separate federal case arguing First Amendment retaliation by the government. 

Taurel said he plans to appeal Salindari’s ruling down the road. Now that Sarsour has been found deportable, the next question is whether he is eligible for any kind of relief, such as asylum. Taurel said that Sarsour will eventually be able to appeal his case to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which he described as more neutral than the immigration courts. Proceedings are expected to continue into next year and under a different judge, Taurel said. 

Sarsour was in Milwaukee when immigration agents arrested him in late March. They then transported him out of Wisconsin and to a detention center in Indiana. DHS accused Sarsour of lying on his green card application in the 1990s, and claimed that he had been convicted as a teenager in Israeli military courts of throwing Molotov cocktails in 1988, during the First Intifada uprising. Sarsour grew up in the West Bank under Israeli military occupation. DHS also said that Sarsour had been charged in Israel with illegally attempting to possess weapons and ammunition in 1995. Prosecutors also accused Sarsour of registering to vote in 2004 despite not having full citizenship.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, reached for comment on the ruling, reiterated the department’s assertion that Sarsour “is a terrorist who was convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes of Israeli armed forces.” The spokesperson wrote in an email to the Examiner that “due to a previous court order, this public safety threat was loose on our streets,” and said that the judge in Sarsour’s case sustained the government’s case that there were grounds to deport Sarsour. “All illegal aliens receive due process,” the spokesperson wrote. “If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period. Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”

Sarsour is a legal permanent resident and has lived in the United States for over 30 years, during which time he has not been arrested or convicted of any crime prior to his immigration arrest. 

Sarsour’s attorneys dispute the accusations, saying that their client was  convicted of throwing stones, not explosives. They also introduced evidence that Israeli authorities tortured Sarsour to get his confessions which were signed in Hebrew, a language Sarsour can neither speak nor read. Experts and witnesses called to the stand by Taruel testified to the use of torture by Israeli authorities, a lack of due process rights afforded to Palestinians like Sarsour, and that Sarsour continues to suffer from PTSD due to his time in Israeli detention. Another expert said that Sarsour passed a polygraph test in which he denied having registered to vote. Prosecutors did not call any witnesses or experts for their side during the proceedings. 

Although Salindari rejected the accusations that Sarsour lied on his green card application and that he registered to vote, Taurel said that the judge did give “extreme deference” to Israeli documents concerning Sarsour’s convictions. Despite the testimony involving the nature of the Israeli military court system, Salindari found the convictions against Sarsour to be valid. 

Droubi said that Sarsour’s immigration case has no bearing on his federal First Amendment retaliation case, which she and Taurel believe is the reason the Trump administration targeted Sarsour for deportation and is supported by Salinardi’s ruling that he could be deported on foreign policy grounds. After Rubio said Sarsour’s “actions undermine U.S. foreign policy,” the Justice Department announced it would begin targeting the group American Muslims for Palestine, for which Sarsour is a board member.

Sarsour’s First Amendment claims, his lack of any criminal record in the U.S. and  his deteriorating health, contributed to a federal judge’s ruling that he should be released due to having a “substantial” claim of First Amendment retaliation.

“You have to ask yourself,” Droubi told  the Examiner, “if you are an immigrant, ‘Do I have the right to speak out about issues that matter to me? What if I draw a political cartoon? Am I going to be arrested and detained because of that? Is the government going to bring charges against me and potentially remove me from this country?’” Droubi added, “That is significant, and I think it does chill the speech of immigrants and non-citizens in this country, and it should really terrify all of us.”

Taurel said that the cases of Sarsour, Mahmoud Khalil, and other Palestinian activists targeted for deportation underscore “the need for Congress to repeal the foreign policy ground of deportability.” Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont); Senator Alex Padilla (D-California) introduced a bill titled  the Land of the Free Act to repeal the rarely-used Cold War provision of immigration law last year, saying the Trump administration had “weaponized” it to punish political speech.

Like many Palestinians born before or around the Six Day War between Israel and a group of Arab nations, Sarsour has travel documentation issued by Jordan but is not a citizen of that country. If he were deported, he would likely ultimately end up back in Israeli territory.

“We feared this outcome,” Taurel said of the judge’s decision. “But Salah is determined to keep speaking out.”

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The Milwaukee Police Department told NNS it is looking to the future with its policy on generative artificial intelligence, or AI. The department is not currently using the technology, but that could change.

One potential law enforcement use of generative AI is helping officers write police reports. 

For example, Axon, the company that provides MPD’s body cameras, offers a product called Draft One, which uses body-camera audio to generate draft police reports. 

Some civil rights advocates and defense attorneys say using this type of emerging technology could create problems for Milwaukeeans accused of crimes.

“You have this risk of errors and hallucinations and bias that we see a lot of large language models have, whether it’s a transcription error or if it’s a bias that’s baked into the training data sets,” said Amanda Merkwae, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin.

MPD and generative AI

MPD released its policy governing generative AI in January.

Among other requirements are that AI-generated material should be considered a draft and reviewed for accuracy. 

Department members should also indicate in the final work product that AI was used.

An MPD spokesperson said its Generative Artificial Intelligence Committee has met to consider a variety of AI products but is still evaluating the utility, cost, accountability and effect that those products may have on the department’s work product.

“Any onboarding of an AI product is only in the consideration phase, so have we given it thought? Yes. Are we anywhere close to implementing that (technology)? No,” the spokesperson said.

What happens at the DA’s office?

Prosecutors in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office have considered what the use of AI technology could mean for criminal cases.

Jeffrey Altenburg, chief deputy district attorney for Milwaukee County, acknowledged risks associated with generative AI but said it could be useful with sufficient human oversight.

“It can be a helpful tool as long as it’s overseen and regulated by actual humans making actual observations and making sure that what is generated is consistent with what was intended to be,” he said.

Deputy District Attorney Matthew Torbenson said prosecutors are not expecting AI-generated reports to capture everything an officer observes. 

He gave the example of a child neglect investigation, during which observations — including what a home looks and smells like, whether there is a bug infestation, whether food is available — would have to come from police officers.

“All of that has to come from the impressions of the officers that are on scene,” Torbenson said.

The what ifs

Merkwae said there are concerns about the use of generative AI that should not be ignored. 

What happens, for example, if an officer’s testimony later conflicts with an AI-assisted police report? 

The error could stem from AI, she said, but it could also raise questions about an officer’s credibility. 

“If it was a human-written report and there’s that type of contradiction that can rise to the level of a potential dishonest statement — that could land a prosecutor putting a police officer on the Brady list,” Merkwae said. 

The Brady list refers to prosecutors’ records that identify law enforcement officers whose credibility issues may have to be disclosed to defendants.

Connor Romenesko, a forensic science practice coordinator with the Wisconsin State Public Defenders Office, said AI-generated reports could create serious problems without any malice or ill intent on the part of police or prosecutors.

There could be a situation, he said, where an officer is rushed at the end of a shift and fails to adequately review an AI-generated report, and a prosecutor uses that information to charge someone.

Milwaukee Police Department considers use of generative AI is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Members of Milwaukee’s Community Collaborative Commission are looking to Baltimore as they work to give residents a greater voice in how policing is carried out in Milwaukee.

Community policing, a core focus of the commission’s work, calls for police and residents to work together to identify and respond to neighborhood problems.

Baltimore’s “Community Policing Plan” spells out who is responsible for that work, what it involves and how it can be put into practice.

“What works in Baltimore may or may not work in similar ways here,” said Tim Baack, president and CEO of Pathfinders, an organization that supports homeless and runaway children, and a member of the commission. “But there’s enough of the framework that it’s not like we have to start from scratch.”

In recent years, the commission has worked on police policy reform, community-oriented policing and oversight of other reforms. Its members include community activists and leaders of local nonprofits.

Earlier this summer, the group said it was in the late stages of completing a community policing plan for Milwaukee.

Community policing already happening, Milwaukee Police Department says

The Milwaukee Police Department says it has already implemented the framework for community policing in the city. 

The department has a community-oriented policing policy and has worked with the Community Collaborative Commission to gather community input and develop a plan.

“MPD has always been a part of the conversation with the (Community Collaborative Commission)” in developing the plan, a spokesperson for the department said.

MPD worked with the Community Collaborative Commission and Fire and Police Commission beginning in 2022 on community engagement sessions across the city, according to MPD’s 2025 Community and Problem Oriented Policing Review.

Here are four lessons from Baltimore and how they compare with what MPD is already doing.

1. Every officer is responsible for community policing

Baltimore’s plan states that “every officer is a community policing officer.”

In other words, community policing is not supposed to be limited to officers with specialized community-related duties.

“Community policing should shape everyday interactions/enforcement encounters/training and decision-making across the department,” said Bridget Whitaker, executive director of Safe & Sound and a member of the commission.

Safe & Sound is an organization that works to unite residents, youths and law enforcement.

MPD has an official policy that requires all department members to engage in community and problem-oriented policing daily.

The department is “committed to the principle that community policing is the responsibility of every officer,” a spokesperson for MPD said.

However, the Fire and Police Commission has questioned how fully that principle has been put into practice.

In a January memo to the Milwaukee Board of Fire and Police Commissioners and MPD command staff, the Fire and Police Commission argued that MPD relies too heavily on command staff and specialized community liaison officers for community engagement.

2. There’s a difference between engagement and being present

Baltimore’s plan distinguishes police simply being visible in a neighborhood from engaging with the people who live there. Officers are expected to have informal conversations with residents to help build relationships.

“Presence matters, but meaningful engagement requires interaction, listening, relationship building and collaboration,” Whitaker said.

MPD’s 2025 review similarly says community events alone do not amount to community-oriented policing.

However, the review says such events can still contribute to community policing by allowing residents and police to exchange information and develop solutions together.

The Fire and Police Commission memo makes a distinction between community involvement and collaboration.

With involvement, police largely identify problems and decide what to do. With collaboration, residents help identify problems, shape responses and determine whether they worked.

MPD says residents already participate in that process through district crime and safety meetings, community partnership units, community organizations and various other forums.

Ralikh Hayes, deputy director and co-founder of Baltimore-based Organizing Black, a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group, said his city’s residents still lack a formal way to ensure their input influences what the city actually does.

“There’s no formal mechanism of ‘we want this specifically,’ and then accountability if they see it or don’t,” Hayes said.

3. Focus on root causes

Problem-oriented policing focuses on the root causes of crime, rather than only enforcing laws or responding to individual incidents.

Baltimore uses a four-step process: identify the problem; analyze its causes; develop a response; and assess whether it worked.

MPD said it already uses the same approach, known as the SARA model.

Baack said Milwaukee will still have to adapt ideas from other cities to Milwaukee’s own circumstances.

“One thing we realized in looking at what works and sometimes what didn’t work in other communities — it’s never really an apples to apples,” he said.

Hayes said even different neighborhoods within Baltimore require different approaches.

“Baltimore is not a one-size-fits-all place,” he said. “Every neighborhood is different and has different issues.”

4. Reward officers for community policing work

Baltimore makes community policing part of how officers are evaluated, including annual performance reviews and promotions.

That stood out to Whitaker.

“Organizations ultimately demonstrate their priorities through what they measure, reward and hold people accountable for,” she said.

The Fire and Police Commission memo recommends problem-solving work should factor into performance evaluations, promotions and transfers.

Baack said the ultimate measure should be what residents think.

“The plan will be successful when the community says it’s successful,” he said.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

What Milwaukee can learn from Baltimore’s community policing plan is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Since David Crowley became Milwaukee County executive, the number of juvenile homicide victims in the county has ranged between 19 and 27 annually, with no clear trend upward or downward.

Crowley, who was sworn in in May 2020, is the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin governor in the Nov. 3 election.

Here are the number of Milwaukee County homicide victims ages 6-17:

2025: 19 

2024: 27

2023: 22

2022: 25

2021: 21

2020: 19

An Americans for Prosperity ad claimed that “under Crowley, Milwaukee juvenile homicides surged 57%.”

The figure refers to juvenile homicide suspects, not homicide deaths, in the city of Milwaukee and not countywide.

In January, Milwaukee police said 22 juvenile homicide suspects in the city in 2025 were a 57% increase from 2024.

Most law enforcement in the county is done by city and village police departments. They are not under the control of the county executive.

This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Milwaukee County Medical Examiner: Annual Report 2025
• Milwaukee County Medical Examiner: Annual Report 2024
• Milwaukee County Medical Examiner: Annual Report 2023
• Milwaukee County Medical Examiner: Annual Report 2022
• Milwaukee County Medical Examiner: Annual Report 2021
• Milwaukee County Medical Examiner: Annual Report 2020
• Email: Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin
• 620 WTMJ: Homicides in Milwaukee went up last year; overall crime was down
• CBS 58: 2025 Milwaukee crime report: Homicides on the rise, other violent crimes down

Did Milwaukee juvenile homicides increase 57% under David Crowley? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The Milwaukee Public Schools district still expels Black students in higher numbers than any other group. 

The findings come after the U.S. Department of Education announced last month it will investigate whether Milwaukee Public Schools uses race as a factor in expulsions.

MPS expelled 38 students in 2025-26, according to newly released district expulsion data. Of those students, 30 were Black. Black students made up 48% of the district and 79% of expulsions last school year.

No white students, who represent 8.5% of the district’s student population, were expelled. Five Hispanic and three Asian students were expelled last school year.

In 2018, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights detailed findings from an earlier investigation into whether the district was disproportionately disciplining Black students. 

Using data from the 2011-12 school year, the office found Black students made up 56% of MPS enrollment but 84.7% of its expulsions, including more than 100 incidents over two years where Black students were expelled while white students were only suspended for similar infractions. 

MPS entered an agreement with the department to address the disparity in 2018.

MPS has received little information about what prompted the current investigation, according to the district. In a statement, the Department of Education said education leaders in Milwaukee “derided facially neutral school policies as reflecting systemic ‘whiteness,’ seemingly encouraging school officials to consider race in disciplinary practices.”  

Kevin O’Connor, media relations manager for MPS, said the Department of Education has since requested MPS submit the district’s student enrollment and discipline data, student code of conduct, policies that “address discrimination based on race,” and staff training relating to race, discrimination and Title VI for the last two years, among other materials.

The Department of Education has declined to comment further on the issue, citing the open investigation.

Despite disparities, expulsions have declined

During the 2010-11 school year, 415 MPS students were expelled. That number dropped to 116 in the 2016-17 school year before spiking again in 2018-19 to nearly 200. The number declined to a record low 23 in 2024-25 before increasing to 38 last school year.

O’Connor said the district has managed to significantly reduce its expulsions in the last 10 years as a result of initiatives including Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, Social Academic Instructional Group curriculum, peer mediations and other restorative practices.

“Our principals and school administrators build relationships with students and work closely with them,” O’Connor wrote in an email to NNS. “They are intentional about putting plans in place to proactively mitigate behavior that may impede a student’s ability to have a quality educational experience.”

O’Connor said the district provides alternative educational services for expelled students. Some options include online learning, moving to another school or, for students with disabilities, being placed based on their Individualized Education Plan, known as an IEP.

Why students were expelled

Thirteen students were expelled for bringing weapons including firearms, BB guns and pepper spray, but over half the expulsions are grouped together in a general “other” category. Matthew Boswell, senior director of the district’s Department of Student Services, said in the board meeting that this mostly covers things like “substantial battery to staff.”

Monthly reports from the independent hearing officers who handle the district’s expulsions paint a more detailed picture behind the “other” category. 

A third of all expulsions represented an “endangerment of physical safety and mental well-being,” but other offenses in the general category included theft, inappropriate use of electronic communication devices and arson.

Race can’t be a factor in discipline, Department of Education says

The Department of Education has stated it is not interested in what disparities are revealed in the numbers. Rather, it wants to see policies that are “facially neutral” or do not explicitly reference race.

The department’s new guidance argues that”facially neutral” discipline policies do not violate federal law even if they produce racial disparities, as long as they’re applied evenhandedly. 

“Mere statistical disparities generally cannot show discriminatory intent or disparate treatment,” the guidance stated.

Angela Harris, an MPS teacher and chair of the Black Educators Caucus MKE, said it would be ridiculous for a child’s race to determine a consequence, but “if we’re seeing that there is a disparity that exists between how consequences are administered, that is absolutely something that we should be looking at.”

Harris said the district’s practice of examining trends of racial disparities and looking for potential biases in discipline decision-making is completely different from using race to decide how a child is disciplined.

“If the concern is that MPS is using race to determine an individual child’s punishment, then the Department of Education should be able to provide us what policy or practice is being referenced or that they found that is explicit in doing that,” she said.

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Meredith Melland contributed to this report.

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Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.

Amid federal probe, Black students remain disproportionately expelled at Milwaukee Public Schools is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Although the Milwaukee Police Department halted its use of facial recognition technology in February, there are still cases being prosecuted in Milwaukee County in which the technology was used at some point in the investigation. 

This means concerns about the technology – and the potential errors it can introduce – still remain, community members told NNS.

Facial recognition technology uses artificial intelligence to identify someone by comparing a photo of an unknown face to a database of images of known faces.

“The reliability of these systems is certainly in question, and particularly the disproportionate risk of inaccuracy when identifying non-white faces,” said Amanda Merkwae, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin.

Questions also remain about whether defendants and their lawyers have always been told when facial recognition technology played a role in an investigation.

MPD and facial recognition

In April 2025, the Milwaukee Police Department acknowledged it had, for two to three years, used other agencies’ licenses to obtain facial recognition search results without having a written department policy governing the practice.

At the same time, MPD was considering expanding its access to facial recognition technology through an agreement with the company Biometrica.

The proposal provoked substantial opposition from residents and civil rights groups who raised concerns about misidentification, racial bias, surveillance and public trust.

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman announced in February that MPD would prohibit its members from using facial recognition technology and would not consider acquiring the technology until after the department develops a policy with the Fire and Police Commission.

However, the moratorium did not eliminate the technology from criminal cases in which it had already been used.

MPD did not respond to questions about its policies and practices relating to disclosing the use of facial recognition to the DA’s office. 

What happens at the DA’s office?

Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern said his office treats facial recognition technology as an investigative lead.

“It is not, in and of itself, probable cause,” Lovern said. “It’s not, in and of itself, the sole basis for gaining a search warrant.”

Lovern said information his office receives about the use of facial recognition in an investigation gets turned over to the defense as part of the case file. 

Deputy District Attorney Matthew Torbenson described a 2021 home invasion and sexual assault case prosecuted by the DA’s office in which another law enforcement agency used facial recognition technology to develop about five potential suspects from surveillance footage.

Investigators pursued these leads and focused on one person based on additional evidence, including an identification by his former spouse.

The five individuals who it came back with as a potential match were all turned over to the defense, Torbenson said.

Torbenson said the potential errors would be more concerning if just facial recognition were being used to directly identify a suspect.

“That is not at all how we’re using it,” he said.

Technology creates challenges

Connor Romenesko, a forensic science practice coordinator with the Wisconsin State Public Defenders Office, said defense attorneys can obtain the image submitted for a facial recognition search and some information about the software used but may not have the information needed to evaluate the system as a whole.

“The biggest concern I have with these services is that they’re provided by private companies who don’t necessarily provide information about how these systems are trained,” Romenesko said.

This can make challenging a facial recognition result “extremely difficult,” he said.

Federal research has found that facial recognition systems can have higher false-positive rates for some racial and ethnic groups, including Black, Asian and American Indian people. 

‘Still a big unknown’

Another question is whether prosecutors and defendants have always been told when MPD used facial recognition technology.

The ACLU of Wisconsin reviewed police reports from more than a dozen cases MPD had identified as examples of facial recognition use.

“In many of those cases, there was just no mention of (facial recognition technology) use at all,” Merkwae said. 

She said it still isn’t known how many total cases in recent years – or ever – MPD used facial recognition technology in any step of an investigation. 

“And of that total – was that information turned over to the defendant in discovery if that person was charged?” Merkwae asked. “I think that’s still a big unknown.”

Romenesko said facial recognition information is sometimes included in initial discovery but sometimes must be requested from law enforcement or prosecutors.

Public defenders are trained to spot vague language such as “investigative lead” that can indicate facial recognition technology was used, Romenesko said.

“Our lawyers are all trained, so that if they see that language, they’re going to go up to kind of alert to the fact that maybe this hasn’t been disclosed up front, which we also see in some cases,” he said. 

Jeffrey Altenburg, Milwaukee County’s chief deputy district attorney, said there are instances in which leads or suspects developed early in an investigation are not initially shared with prosecutors.

“However, once those leads are corroborated using standard investigative techniques, those details are included in the reports that are provided to our office and turned over to the defendant if they are criminally charged,” Altenburg said. 

Despite police department ban, facial recognition technology lingers in Milwaukee’s criminal justice system is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

It took mere minutes for conspiracy theorists to seize on a Milwaukee election error after the August primary, when officials initially forgot to extract election results from five of the city’s nine absentee ballot tabulators. They lobbed baseless accusations that election officials had switched votes or otherwise tampered with the results.

But audit logs from those five tabulators show no evidence of tampering between the time officials initially left the facility and returned again to correctly extract results, experts told Votebeat.

“I don’t see a ‘there’ there,” said Duncan Buell, a chair emeritus of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina who has been analyzing election data and voting systems since 2010.

Ryan Macias, an election consultant who previously worked for the arm of the Election Assistance Commission that certifies voting machines, agreed there were “no signs or evidence that anything was done outside the norm” between the initial error and the successful extraction of the results.

More than three weeks after the primary election, city officials released audit logs from all nine tabulators to the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the public on Sept. 4. The files detail every action on the nine Milwaukee tabulators used to count absentee ballots for the Aug. 11 election.

On each of the five affected tabulators, the logs tell the same story: Officials mistakenly selected “export audit log” instead of “export files” during the initial extraction, which happened between 10:15 p.m. and about 10:40 p.m. Then, officials locked the machines.

Officials began turning the machines back on at around 11:30 p.m., after they realized they had made a mistake. They extracted the correct files shortly after midnight. The audit logs show no ballots being scanned, votes being deleted, or that the data contained on the tabulators was manipulated in any way.

The error didn’t change the vote count at all. It just delayed election results by a couple hours.

When Macias first learned of the issue, he assumed that the problem was human error and would be resolved.

“Now, looking at the audit log, I can tell you with a 100% fact that what I assumed happened (is what) happened,” he said.

Other experts agreed.

Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group, said she reviewed the audit logs with her team of experienced election experts.

“From what I see, those logs match the public account exactly,” she said.

“In the roughly two hours between those two exports, there’s no scanning or counting activity recorded in the logs on any of those five machines,” she said. “And just as importantly, the ballot counts on every machine match the officially reported.”

Conspiracy theories percolated well before Milwaukee released audit logs

Conspiracy theories about what may have transpired in Milwaukee on Election Day began circulating almost immediately after Milwaukee officials announced the mistake. Popular social media accounts questioned the credibility of election officials, and others suggested that officials were directly involved in fraud.

Three days after the election, Votebeat requested the audit logs — the records that could show exactly what happened on the tabulators during the period conspiracy theorists were questioning. Milwaukee did not release them until Sept. 4, more than three weeks later, and after the Wisconsin Elections Commission also asked the city to make them public.

Experts said that delay was not unusual.

“Releasing audit logs — these machine logs — that’s not a typical part of the documentation that election offices normally produce,” Morrell said, adding that it’s likely that Milwaukee would have needed legal approval before releasing the logs. “The fact that they did make them public, I think that’s a responsible process — not a cover-up.”

More important, she said, is that the officials retained the records in the first place.

“The fact that the log is there, the fact that these things are recorded should be seen as a positive even though it was slow for them,” she said. “I think the more concerning thing would be if the log just didn’t exist at all.”

Milwaukee plans better documentation for the future

In response to the error, Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutiérrez outlined several changes meant to prevent similar problems.

Written instructions for extracting results will now include images showing election officials which options to select on screen, Gutiérrez said in a letter to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Those instructions will also be made available to observers at the city’s absentee ballot facility.

Before the results are downloaded, she said, the extraction teams will be briefed on the process. As workers move through the steps, they will verbally identify each selection they make so other members of the team can confirm they have followed the correct procedure.

“In this instance, an error occurred during the results-download process,” she told the commission. “At the same time, the safeguards surrounding the election worked as intended: The discrepancy was identified, the underlying election results remained intact, the correct files were retrieved, and Milwaukee’s accurate election results were ultimately reported.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Milwaukee audit logs show no evidence of election fraud, experts say is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Update: This story was updated with a response from DHS on Thursday, Sept. 10 at 10:30 a.m.

Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) traveled to Leavenworth, Kansas, on Wednesday to visit an immigration detention facility where two Milwaukee women are being held, interview them and check on their welfare. Reyna Elizabeth Garcia and Estenderly Marte Polanco were both arrested during a surge of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in early July. 

Their arrests were described as excessive and violent by advocates from Voces de la Frontera, who monitored the surge and who joined Moore on the Kansas visit. Moore said that the Leavenworth ICE facility currently holds 450 people but  is designed to hold more than 1,000. She said she saw signs of rapid expansion. Moore fears that the facility will quickly fill up with more people. “They are building so they can fill this thing up with twice as many detainees,” she said. 

Garcia and Polanco told Moore that they are being treated as human beings, Moore said. Detainees are allowed to leave their cells and be in a common area during the day, and the facility has plans for an area where detainees will be able to exercise and get access to sunlight. Moore observed various meals being prepared including kosher and vegetarian options, indicating that the facility is making an attempt to meet dietary needs, although  the food appeared to be  of  low quality. 

Most of the people held at Leavenworth are not criminals, Moore said. Still, she said, “it is a very depressive setting, it is definitely a prison, and they are aggressively building.”

Officials at the facility denied any medical neglect, Moore said, and the detention center has  doctors on call, but no full-time medical staff within the facility itself. 

“We had some hard questions for the ICE officials,” Moore said. “We were very curious to see where the murders and rapists were, and they were unable to show us that.” 

Garcia was arrested in late May along with her brother and fiance after ICE agents in unmarked vehicles followed them as they were leaving  a local grocery store in Milwaukee. Her fiance, Galo Suárez, was later released and told by ICE agents to walk away and to not look back or else he’d face consequences, he said during a Voces press conference after the arrest. Polanco was arrested the same weekend while driving with her 11-year-old son, who was in the back seat when ICE agents pulled her out of her car. During the arrest, agents split Polanco’s lip, threw her to the ground, and at one point placed her in a position where she couldn’t breathe, she said. In both arrests, agents were described by witnesses as mocking and insulting the people they were arresting. 

After her visit, Moore described Garcia as extremely depressed. Polanco checks on her, Moore said, adding that Polanco has a strong faith in the power of prayer and uses this to help lift Garcia’s spirits.

While Garcia’s fiance was released the same day he was arrested, Moore said that the family later learned that her brother had been deported. Polanco said that she told the agents that she was scared about what  would happen to her child, who was born prematurely. He remains  traumatized after witnessing her arrest, Moore said, and blames himself for his mother’s detention. 

Garcia told Moore that she left Nicaragua because “the politics put me in danger,” only to find herself in a similar situation in the U.S. 

Moore criticized the historic level of funding for ICE in recent budgets — more than $120 billion — and said her Democratic colleagues worked together to stop further allocations in the most recent budget reconciliation bill.  At Leavenworth, she said, she wondered where all the money was going. “I was looking for the sauna,” she joked. The privately run facility is operated by CoreCivic, which sold the facility to the federal government for $238.4 million — about $300,000 per bed. Moore said it is comparable to other prisons that don’t bring in  nearly as much money. 

In response to questions from the Examiner about Moore’s visit, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security called Moore’s criticisms of the facility “baseless and false.” 

“If she doesn’t like our country’s immigration laws, she should focus on changing them–not political theater,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

“Individuals in ICE detention continue to have access to on-site medical care, community emergency transport services, emergency room care, hospital admissions, and off-site specialty care,” the spokesperson added. 

“The men and women of ICE are entrusted with upholding the rule of law and are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct,” the spokesperson wrote. “They are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers. Officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use of force training.”

Stevens Point, Winnebago County, Fond du Lac County and Sheboygan are among the Wisconsin communities that have recently moved away from Flock license plate reader cameras. On Tuesday, city staff in Stevens Point began covering the cameras while local elected leaders determine whether they can cancel their Flock contract altogether. 

Meanwhile Sheboygan broke ties with Flock after the company reportedly attempted to sell the city back traffic data it was unaware the multi-billion dollar surveillance company was even collecting. Flock cameras capture images of vehicles and their license plates on the roadways. Law enforcement officers can search the data to see where a vehicle has traveled. 

Investigative reporting has shown that the cameras can also recognize human features. Over 5,000 agencies had Flock contracts in late 2025, creating a network of tens of thousands of cameras that can be queried simultaneously. Police often say that the technology has been invaluable in solving crimes including carjackings, kidnappings, homicide, drug trafficking and gun violence. The cameras are also used for less serious reasons such as for traffic enforcement and in policing evictions. 

“Reports are surfacing all over the country about the system being misused by municipal and state employees who have access to the data,” said Stevens Point Mayor Mike Wiza in a press release late last week. 

A few of those cases have played out in Wisconsin courts, police departments and sheriff’s offices. Four officers across Wisconsin have been charged with misconduct in public office and other offenses for misusing Flock cameras. 

Josue Ayala of the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) was given a year of probation and avoided jail time earlier this year after misusing Flock. Cristian Morales of the Menasha Police Department was sentenced to six months in jail and three years probation for a similar infraction. In Kenosha County, former sheriff’s deputy Frank McGrath was charged with misconduct in public office last month for misuse of the surveillance technology. In July, Milwaukee police detective Tehrangi Chapman — who worked the internal affairs investigation into Ayala’s Flock misuse — was charged with misusing the system to track someone he had been monitoring since 2019, years before Flock came to Milwaukee. Chapman and McGrath are still going through court proceedings. 

Ayala, Morales and McGrath all used Flock to monitor their current or former romantic partners. The exact relationship Chapman has to the people he allegedly monitored is not mentioned in available court records. McGrath used Flock and a squad car tracking system called Polaris to monitor his girlfriend, who was also a Kenosha County Sheriff’s deputy. Chapman allegedly employed both Flock cameras and car-mounted GPS trackers. McGrath was caught after a supervisor noticed some suspicious Flock searches in an audit, while Ayala and Chapman were both reported to police by the victims themselves. 

Numerous other officers have been investigated or charged with misusing Flock around the country. In Racine County, the district attorney admitted that a few unnamed officers have been investigated for their use of Flock cameras. 

The rash of misuse is not the only thing motivating local communities to drop Flock. When the city of Verona decided to cover its cameras in February, Mayor Diaz said that while the community trusted its police department, it no longer trusted Flock Safety. At that time the first cases of misconduct were beginning to emerge in Wisconsin, and many people had expressed fears about how the federal government — especially immigration enforcement — could leverage local Flock networks for its own priorities. Trust was also broken in Oshkosh months later, after the police chief learned that the cameras could create heatmaps of vehicle movements, contrary to what a company representative had said. 

The sheriffs and police departments in Fond du Lac County recently announced they will cancel their contracts because out of state agencies had used open records requests to obtain audit data the sheriff said was confidential and in some cases linked with ongoing investigations. Journalists and other citizens nationwide had begun requesting Flock audit data from local police departments to learn how the cameras were being used. 

In 2025, a Wisconsin Examiner analysis showed that at least 221 law enforcement agencies were using Flock in Wisconsin. Many of the searches used vague search terms such as “investigation,” “suspicious,” or non-law-enforcement terms such as “cooch,” or single characters such as “.” or “s”. Some of these vague search terms have appeared in confirmed misconduct cases. Officers in other parts of the country have also  used Flock for controversial reasons, such as tracking women suspected of traveling out of state to get an abortion. 

Flock Safety has struggled to adapt to canceled contracts and misconduct investigations. Although the company has released new features including requiring case numbers when searching the database, fixed options for search terms, and the ability to flag suspicious searches, it has also worked to hide information in the audit data such as officers’ names. Flock Safety has claimed that people have used the audit data to identify undercover officers. However, the information which Flock is making harder to view is also the very information that allowed citizens and journalists to detect instances of misconduct.

Winnebago County, Neenah, Menasha, and Chetek have each canceled a Flock contract, are considering it or have covered up their cameras. In Chetek, the police chief responded to public criticism of Flock cameras by threatening to run background checks on citizens who disagreed with his use of the cameras. Other Wisconsin communities including Kaukauna, Sturgeon Bay, Appleton, Dane County, Stoughton and Manitowoc which have also canceled their Flock contracts. 

Other communities have chosen to heighten oversight of their Flock cameras In Milwaukee, County Executive David Crowley asked that all Flock operations on county property be paused until new transparency and oversight measures could be developed.

Milwaukee County Sup. Justin Bielinski, who is also chairman of the Committee on Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and General Services, has also called on the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to disable its Flock network. “Residents should not have to wait for another disclosure before we act,” said Bielinksi. “Even if you have confidence in the Sheriff’s Department’s use of Flock, the question remains: do we trust Flock itself with this information?”

The Milwaukee Police Department has restricted its Flock network from other local agencies, limited access to the system to supervisors only, and launched a new Flock transparency portal. The portal notes that data captured by Flock cameras in Milwaukee is only retained for seven days, and that there were 983 “search sessions” over the last 30 days. It also keeps track of the number of “hot list hits” over the last 30 days. Hot lists are lists of vehicles which law enforcement have flagged in the system. When a camera sees the flagged vehicle, a notification goes out to police in the area. The Milwaukee police transparency portal  does not track the number of vehicles detected, unlike a transparency portal released by the Green Bay Police Department.

“This effort underscores the commitments MPD has made in partnership with the Mayor to establish appropriate guardrails for the use of this technology while providing greater public understanding of how Flock [Automatic License Plate Reader] technology is used to support public safety,” the Milwaukee department said in a press release. “MPD remains committed to transparency, accountability, and the responsible use of technology. Through this new resource, MPD is continuing its efforts to provide the public with meaningful information about the tools we use to support the safety of the Milwaukee community.”

People in the community continue to push back against the cameras. Last Thursday, dozens of residents filled a Fire and Police Commission meeting to capacity in Milwaukee. An overflow room was opened to accommodate all the people who showed up to testify, unanimously rejecting Flock and calling for the city to cancel its contract. Speakers argued that Flock is a form of indiscriminate mass surveillance which can and has been used in abusive ways by police. Many of the speakers expressed deep frustration with the commission, city government and police, saying that they’d called for an end to Flock for months only to see some of their fears realized. 

Napoleon Jones, 32, was one of those people. Although Jones is from Sussex, he came to the Milwaukee FPC meeting to describe his  experience of Flock surveillance. Jones, a Navy veteran, was stopped by a Waukesha County Sheriff’s deputy after filming a traffic stop. Jones was arrested and taken to jail, only to be released without charges. When he filed a complaint about the deputy’s conduct, according to a federal lawsuit, Jones became the target of a  Flock search by that deputy, who was  directed by his supervisor to conduct the searches. 

“When I first found out I was just super surprised,” Jones told the Examiner. “I never thought it would happen to me. And when I found out and I got the records and seen how many different searches there were, I was at a loss of words because it’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of searches and the network is so big on these Flock cameras.” Jones added that “I drive all around. If this guy really wanted to put together a timeline of where I’m at, or who I know, or whose house I’m at, he could have done it.”

He added, “I drive past these things all the time. Everyone does.”

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McKenna and Celia Olson expanded their family by adopting four children, completing their South Side Milwaukee home. The adoption closed a chapter in their journey as foster parents with the Wellpoint Care Network. 

McKenna and Celia, closed their foster care license in May after spending the past eight years fostering 10 children. 

In June, the couple celebrated their 6, 5, 2 and 9-month-old children with an adoption party at Milwaukee’s Humboldt Park.

“We have four kids now and they’ve been with us since birth,” McKenna said. “This is our family unit now and we’re grateful to be alongside the kids as they grow.”

Adjusting to a new parenting lifestyle

As the Olson family has grown, McKenna and Celia have adapted to new parenting routines such as staying home when a child is sick, making multiple drop-offs to daycare or extracurricular activities and more.

“As the older kids are growing up, they’re getting more involved in things,” McKenna said. “We’re being aware of what works and understanding what’s best for each kid.”

McKenna said she’s also adjusting to no longer having to follow certain policies and procedures.

Last month, McKenna and Celia took the kids on vacation without going through an approval process.

“One part of being a foster parent is you have to get approval if you want to go out of state, and sometimes you might have to share your itinerary or birth parents have to get involved,” she said. 

As they navigate new parenting routines, McKenna and Celia are excited to create memories as a family such as celebrating birthdays and capturing moments from the first and last days of school. 

“In my dream ideal world, I would love to have so many people around the table during Thanksgiving and birthdays and that would include the birth families of my kids,” McKenna said. “I really just look forward to being a family, spending quality time and having our extended family come together.”

Feeling mixed emotions

No longer foster parents, McKenna and Celia still reflect on the bittersweet moments they’ve shared with other foster children.

“The kids that have left us, we still think about them and miss them,” McKenna said. “You’re in people’s lives for a reason during certain stages of their life.”

McKenna and Celia said they were grateful to care for all 10 children over the years. 

“Every kid that came into our home, we open our hearts,” McKenna said.

Using resources to help with trauma

McKenna and Celia chose to become foster parents through Wellpoint Care Network because of its Trauma Informed Care Program, which teaches principles for responding to people who have experienced trauma.

“Children who experience trauma, their brains formulate differently than children who may have not gone through trauma,” said Emily Davis, Wellpoint foster care recruitment and retention supervisor. 

In addition to supporting foster parents, the training has helped social workers, librarians, educators, police officers and others. 

According to Julie Scott, Wellpoint director of trauma-informed strategy and practice, the organization developed the training after discovering its former residential boys group wasn’t receiving enough mental health support. 

“We found that traditional mental health services and therapies weren’t enough,” Scott said. “Because of adversity and trauma there are particular needs that aren’t always met.”

Davis said there are five levels of foster parents, all of whom are required to take the free Trauma-Informed Care training to become licensed through Wellpoint Care Network. 

“We don’t want children to be moved from home to home, and our biggest goal is to only have a child in one placement the entire time they’re in foster care,” Davis said. “Providing foster parents with the training allows them to have the knowledge and ability to be that one foster parent the child needs rather than multiple.”

The training helped McKenna and Celia understand that no parent is perfect and that they shouldn’t take a child’s response to trauma personally. 

“It’s about being aware that everyone comes with their own story and situations,” McKenna said. “It’s all a work in progress because the kids are changing and you’re changing right with them.”

Scott and the Olson family encourage foster parents to meet children where they are instead of expecting them to reach a certain development stage.

“Be compassionate, understanding and stick around a little longer,” Scott said. “A child may behave a certain way because they don’t understand their trauma.”

McKenna wants aspiring foster parents to know that the process requires them to embrace change. 

“If you’re entering a new world, you shouldn’t be going in the same person you were,” she said.

Information for new or aspiring foster parents

To become an eligible foster parent in Wisconsin applicants must meet the following requirements:

• Be at least 21 years of age.
• Pass a background check. 
• Show proof of income.
• Meet all home safety requirements.
• Have car insurance with valid license. 
• Have no past history with child welfare agency involving child neglect or abuse. 
• Be willing to work alongside the child’s biological family. 
• Demonstrate positive qualities such as patience and humor.

McKenna said she and Celia could always reopen their license if they wanted to. They are grateful for the support Wellpoint Care Network provided them as foster parents. 

“Wellpoint Care Network has been a part of our life, and because of this nonprofit, our family is the way that it is,” she said.

Milwaukee couple adopts four children after eight years as foster parents is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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All three of the Milwaukee Police Department’s automatic license plate reader systems will be subject to new security safeguards, department officials confirmed Wednesday.

The department’s confirmation follows Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s announcement regarding new restrictions aimed at preventing officer misuse and protecting privacy.

An MPD spokesperson said the changes will be incorporated into the department’s official policy. 

The mayor’s initial announcement focused on Flock Safety, one of three automated license plate reader systems used by MPD. NNS previously reported that the department also uses Genetec and Axon systems. 

All three systems automatically capture license plate information that can be searched later.

As of June, MPD had access to: 35 Flock cameras; 39 Genetec cameras; and Axon license plate readers installed in 80 patrol vehicles.

New limits

Only MPD supervisors will be allowed to access automatic license plate reader systems, Johnson said in his announcement.

Some MPD personnel have been accused of misusing Flock. MPD officer Josue Ayala was convicted in June of attempted misconduct in public office in connection with his use of Flock cameras.

Access to Milwaukee’s license plate reader systems will also be limited to MPD, excluding other law enforcement agencies. 

Supervisors may use the systems only to investigate Part I crimes, which include homicide, rape and aggravated assault, among others. They may also use the technology to investigate critical missing persons, drug trafficking organization and abductions.

A department said automatic license plate reader cameras will continue to passively capture data, but supervisors may access it only for appropriate investigations.

Transparency efforts

The mayor announced transparency measures as well. 

MPD will create a public dashboard detailing its use of license plate reader systems, and the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission will conduct semi-annual independent audits of use.

Johnson said the commission has already initiated an audit of Flock systems.

The announcement does not specify what information will appear on the dashboard or what metrics the audits will examine.

NNS asked the mayor’s office whether MPD will write the changes into its policies and for additional details about the dashboard and audits.

The mayor’s office referred the questions to MPD, confirming that the police chief has authority over department policy.

Risks and concerns

After Johnson’s announcement, Amanda Merkwae, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, said in a written statement the changes are “a step in the right direction” but that “Flock is still an incredibly invasive technology that has the power to indiscriminately surveil our communities on a mass scale.” 

Merkwae argued that using Flock should require a warrant based on probable cause. She also called for independent oversight and written policies for all MPD surveillance technologies use.

“We cannot only accept a solution where police are responsible for policing themselves,” Merkwae said.

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Milwaukee police: Flock restrictions will apply to other license plate reader systems is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Editor’s note: This story has been updated with new information from the Milwaukee Police Department. 

Although Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson has announced new safeguards for the Milwaukee Police Department’s use of Flock Safety cameras, it remains unclear whether the rules will apply to all three of the city’s license plate reader systems or only to Flock.

Flock is one of three automated license plate reader systems used by MPD. NNS previously reported that the department also uses Genetec and Axon systems. 

All three systems automatically capture license plate information that can be searched later.

As of June, MPD had access to: 35 Flock cameras, 39 Genetec cameras and Axon license plate readers installed in 80 patrol vehicles.

New limits

According to Johnson’s announcement, only MPD supervisors will be allowed to access Flock. Officers and detectives will no longer have access.

Some MPD personnel have been accused of misusing Flock. Former MPD officer Josue Ayala, was convicted in June of attempted misconduct in public office in connection with his use of Flock cameras.

Access to Milwaukee’s Flock cameras will also be limited to MPD, excluding other law enforcement agencies. 

Supervisors will be allowed to use Flock cameras only for investigating Part I crimes, which include homicide, rape and aggravated assault, among others. They can also use the cameras in cases involving critical missing persons, drug trafficking organization investigations and abductions.

The mayor also announced transparency measures. 

MPD will create a public dashboard with information about its use of Flock, and the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission will conduct twice-annual independent audits of the department’s Flock use. 

Johnson said the commission has already begun an audit. 

The announcement does not specify what information will appear on the dashboard or what metrics the audits will examine.

NNS asked the mayor’s office whether the safeguards would extend to Genetec and Axon, whether the changes would be written into MPD policies and what the dashboard and audits would include. 

The mayor’s office referred the questions to MPD, saying that the police chief has authority over department policy.

MPD did not respond to questions from NNS.

Risks and concerns

After Johnson’s announcement, Amanda Merkwae, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, said in a written statement the changes are “a step in the right direction” but that “Flock is still an incredibly invasive technology that has the power to indiscriminately surveil our communities on a mass scale.” 

The use of Flock, Merkwae argued, should require a warrant based on probable cause. MPD should also face independent oversight and adopt written policies for all of the surveillance technologies it uses, she added.

“We cannot only accept a solution where police are responsible for policing themselves,” Merkwae said.

---

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Milwaukee limits Flock cameras, leaving other license plate reader rules unclear is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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A man who was being held at the Milwaukee County Jail is disputing the account from the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office about the events leading up to the in-custody death last week of Kourtney Edwards, a 45-year-old Milwaukee man.

Alex Williams, 33, said officials at the jail ignored initial pleas to help Edwards. 

He said he heard people in a nearby holding cell banging on the door and yelling through a slot that someone was vomiting, wasn’t doing well and needed help.

“Those calls went ignored for a while,” Williams said, estimating that they lasted several minutes.

Williams said officers eventually removed the man from the holding cell and began walking him toward the nurses’ station. He said Edwards made it about halfway there before appearing to have a seizure and collapsing. Williams said he was foaming at the mouth.

“He was not assessed by nurses until he was passed out on the ground,” Williams said. “I wouldn’t even call that an assessment. That was them trying to save his life.”

Williams said he arrived at the jail around 2 p.m. Monday, Aug. 17, and remained in the booking area until early Wednesday morning. He said he was still going through the booking process when Edwards became ill Tuesday morning.

Timeline from sheriff’s office

The account from the sheriff’s office previously reported by NNS stated that Edwards was brought to the jail the morning of Tuesday, Aug. 18, had been initially medically cleared and was awaiting a secondary screening when he reported vomiting and feeling ill shortly before 8:30 a.m.

Nurses then assessed him and determined he needed to be taken to a hospital. While an ambulance crew and two deputies prepared to transport the man to the hospital, he experienced a medical emergency. 

He lost his pulse and stopped breathing.

Emergency personnel attempted life-saving measures, but he was pronounced dead at 9:30 a.m.

A representative from the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office told NNS Tuesday that it would “be a while” before the cause and manner of Edwards’ death was determined.

Concerns about in-jail deaths

Alan Chavoya, treasurer and organizer for the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said Williams’ account reaffirms concerns he already had about Edwards’ death.

“It’s deeply upsetting and infuriating if he was able to be assisted sooner – if that would have saved his life,” Chavoya said. “Could this have been prevented? It seems like yes.”

The sheriff’s office told NNS Friday that it had no comment beyond saying that it is an active, ongoing investigation and that questions should be directed to the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office, which is conducting the investigation.

The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office has not responded to a request for comment.

Edwards’ death is at least the 10th of a person in Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office custody since June 2022, including six deaths during a 14-month period in 2022 and 2023 and three in 2025.

Other allegations

Williams also said the man’s death took place amid overcrowding, booking delays and repeated instances in which staff failed to promptly respond to requests for assistance.

He described the cells as hot, with little or no airflow, and said people repeatedly yelled through slots in the cell doors that they needed water or to use the bathroom.

“It was often ignored,” Williams said.

He said the jail was overcrowded. 

His holding cell was marked for 12 people but held between 13 and 20 people at different points, he said. Williams said the overcrowding made the toilet difficult to access because people were sleeping or standing around it.

Williams also described significant booking delays, made worse because there was no third-shift booking staff Monday night.

He said his bail was posted at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, but that he was not booked into the system until about 2:30 p.m. that day and was not released until around 1 a.m. Wednesday.

Nothing changed after death

Williams said he noticed no real changes after Edwards died during the time he spent in custody until he was released. He said officers still sometimes ignored pleas for assistance.

Williams believes the conditions at the jail contributed to the man’s death.

“They should take every call for help seriously,” he said.

Chavoya said the allegations from Williams fit what he sees as a broader pattern at the jail, including neglect and perhaps abuse “of the people who are supposed to be, as we’re reminded, under their care.”

Chavoya said he wants investigators to determine what happened and for the sheriff’s office to release video of the incident.

Last Friday, a spokesperson for the Office of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley told NNS in a written statement that the incident doesn’t raise concerns about medical care at the jail.

“The jail’s medical staff and Milwaukee Fire Department EMS performed lifesaving measures, but, despite best efforts, the individual died,” the spokesperson for Crowley’s office said. 

When NNS reached out with Williams’ account, a spokesperson for Crowley’s office said that the initial report from the sheriff’s office of the incident did not indicate cause for immediate concern.

“The matter is now under review by the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office,” the spokesperson said. 

Williams said he is worried about potential retaliation for speaking publicly about what he witnessed but believes coming forward is important.

He said he wants “to model morals, bravery and humanitarianism” for his family.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Eyewitness says Milwaukee jail officials initially ignored pleas to help man who died in custody is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.