Two women incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Institution have died following hospital stays that began Feb. 22. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections has shared limited information about their deaths, frustrating family members and those locked up at the maximum- and medium-security women’s prison. 

Shawnee Reed, 36, died Feb. 23, a day after arriving at an area hospital. Brittany Doescher, 33, died Thursday after spending nearly two weeks on life support, according to an online corrections database and family members. 

Both women were mothers, family members said. 

Two prisoners at Taycheedah told Wisconsin Watch and WPR that a third incarcerated woman was hospitalized around the same time as Reed and Doescher. The online corrections  database shows the woman they identified was “out to facility” on Feb. 23. She returned to Taycheedah in the same week.

Reed and Doescher’s official causes of death are pending, said Dr. Adam Covach, Fond du Lac County’s chief medical examiner. Family members of both women say hospital staff linked the deaths to pneumonia. Reed and Doescher’s relatives asked not to be identified to avoid drawing more attention to their families. 

Doescher’s relative said she learned of Doescher’s hospitalization two days after it began. She arrived to find Doescher chained to a bed with blisters around her ankles. 

Following discussions with doctors, Doescher’s family member believes earlier treatment could have prevented the death, particularly because she was so young. 

Asked about the deaths, department spokesperson Beth Hardtke wrote in an email to WPR and Wisconsin Watch: “The federal Centers for Disease Control is seeing ‘high’ numbers of respiratory illness cases in Wisconsin, and the Department of Corrections (DOC) is taking a number of steps to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses to staff and persons in our care.”

People incarcerated at Wisconsin prisons, including Taycheedah, were recently tested and treated for Influenza A, Hardtke added.

Relatives said both women started mentioning health issues over the phone around a month ago.

Questions about the illnesses are swirling within the prison. Three incarcerated women told WPR and Wisconsin Watch they learned Reed had died but heard different versions of the cause. 

Corrections officials locked down part of Taycheedah — limiting prisoner movement — on Feb. 28. That was due to an increase in respiratory illnesses, according to an internal memo from Warden Michael Gierach. The department lifted the lockdown Thursday. 

Wisconsin typically charges prisoners a $7.50 copay for each face-to-face medical visit, among the highest in the country. Citing the surge of respiratory visits, the department lifted copays for visits beginning Feb. 28, five days after Reed died.

“DOC health care staff recently reminded employees and those in our care of ways to protect themselves as influenza, COVID-19, pneumonia and RSV continue to circulate,” Hardtke wrote.  

The prisons are providing vaccines, masks and soap for regular hand washing, Hardtke added. Anyone who tests positive for a respiratory illness is quarantined for at least seven days.

While women at Taycheedah did receive information about respiratory illness precautions, the department shared no details about the hospitalizations and deaths, said Kady Mehaffey, who is incarcerated.

“Which is kind of maddening because of the amount of people that are filling in the blanks about what happened,” Mehaffey said.

The department did not publicly announce the women’s deaths, which WPR and Wisconsin Watch learned about from women incarcerated at the facility.  

Online records showed the women had died but little other information. The department has since provided basic information, including the women’s names, ages, death dates, and that they died in an “area hospital.”

States including Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska publicly announce prisoner deaths, sharing the person’s name, prison, where they died, and in some cases, details related to their cause of death. 

Wisconsin is not the only state to limit the release of such details, but doing so is problematic, said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

“There’s no greater responsibility that prisons have than keeping the people inside safe and alive and when there’s a failure to do that the public has a right to know,” Deitch said.

Hardtke wrote that her department follows best practices to protect the privacy of people who are incarcerated and their families. What’s more, it’s up to county coroners or medical examiners to investigate causes of deaths.

The Department of Corrections does confirm deaths and release names after family is notified, but the department can’t release other details, including cause of death, because of privacy laws, Hardtke said.

Deitch said prison systems often interpret privacy laws broadly and then point to such protections to justify withholding information. 

While the department updates its online database to note prisoner deaths, someone seeking information about a death would first need to know the prisoner’s name. That database was used to confirm the March 4 death of a prisoner at Waupun Correctional Institution — Damien Evans, the seventh Waupun prisoner to die in custody since June 2023. 

Fourteen prisoners residing at Wisconsin’s adult institutions have died this year, Hardtke wrote. The prisons saw 61 deaths in all of 2024 and 54 deaths in 2023.  

Reed and Doescher both participated in a program to help with substance abuse and facilitate an early release, according to relatives and court documents. Doescher expected her release within months, her relative said.

“She was hoping to come home and start her own business,” the relative said. “She wanted to counsel other girls in situations like her.”

Both Reed and Doescher enjoyed jewelry making while at Taycheedah.

“I don’t know how (Reed) did it, but she would get like thread and threaded around like a plastic piece or something like that and she could make these really cool designs,” Mehaffey said. “She was good with the small intricate things.”

Both women have children.

“We’re going to miss her and I certainly hope the prison system can be reformed because there’s no call for this,” Doescher’s family member said. “I feel for any other parent that has to go through this.”

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Families seek answers after deaths of two women incarcerated at Taycheedah prison 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 seventh inmate has died at Wisconsin’s oldest prison, less than a year after the then-warden and multiple members of his staff were charged with misconduct and felony inmate abuse.

The state Department of Corrections offender website notes that 23-year-old Damien Evans died Tuesday at the Waupun Correctional Institution. The site does not offer any details. A Corrections spokesperson didn’t immediately return a message Wednesday. Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt said in an email to The Associated Press that his agency is investigating Evans’ death but he had no information to share.

Online court records indicate Evans was sentenced in 2019 to seven years in prison for armed robbery and an additional two years to be served concurrently for bail jumping. Both cases were filed in Racine County.

Evans is the seventh Waupun inmate to have died in custody since June 2023. One killed himself, one died of a fentanyl overdose, one died of a stroke, and one died of dehydration and malnutrition. Another inmate, 66-year-old Jay Adkins, died in May. A sixth prisoner, 57-year-old Christopher McDonald, died in August.

The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office has said McDonald’s death appears to have been a suicide. He was sentenced to 999 years after pleading no contest to being a party to first-degree intentional homicide in 1992. Schmidt didn’t immediately respond to follow-up emails Wednesday afternoon seeking updates on the investigations into Adkins’ and McDonald’s deaths.

Prosecutors last year charged warden Randall Hepp with misconduct and eight members of his staff with felony inmate abuse in connection with the deaths of two of the prisoners, Cameron Williams and Donald Maier. Three of the eight staff members also were charged with misconduct. Hepp subsequently retired.

According to criminal complaints, Williams died of a stroke in October 2023. His body went undiscovered for at least 12 hours.

Maier died of dehydration and malnutrition. He had severe mental health problems but either refused or wasn’t given his medication in the eight days leading up to his February 2024 death.

Federal investigators also have been looking into an alleged smuggling ring involving Waupun prison employees. Gov. Tony Evers office has said the probe has resulted in the suspension of nearly a dozen employees. A former prison worker pleaded guilty in September to smuggling cellphones, tobacco and drugs into the facility in exchange for money.

Waupun inmates have filed a class-action lawsuit alleging mistreatment and a lack of health care.

The maximum-security prison was built in the 1850s. Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike have been calling for years to close it. Concerns about local job losses and the cost of building a replacement prison have stymied progress.

Evers, a Democrat, last month proposed a multitiered, $500 million plan for the state’s prisons that includes converting Waupun to a medium-security center focused on job training for inmates.

This story has been updated to correct that Evans is the seventh inmate to die at Waupun Correctional Institution since June 2023, instead of the sixth inmate, and to correct that one inmate killed himself, not two.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Seventh inmate dies at Wisconsin’s Waupun Correctional Institution 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 deputy falsifying jail logs. Officers stealing during a search warrant. An off-duty officer hitting a parked car after leaving a bar, then lying about it.

Imagine one of them arrested you. 

Would you want to know about their past?

Under the law, you have a right to that information. How and when you get access to it depends on prosecutors, who file criminal charges and bring a case in court.

The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has a system for tracking officers with credibility concerns, allegations of dishonesty or bias, and past criminal charges. But it is inconsistent and incomplete and relies, in part, on police agencies to report integrity violations, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch found.

After reporters provided Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern with their analysis and raised questions about specific cases, he removed seven officers from the database and acknowledged one officer should have been added to it years earlier.

The haphazard nature of these tracking systems fails officers and people defending themselves, said Rachel Moran, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, who has extensively studied the issue nationwide.

“It does lead to wrongful convictions,” Moran said. “It leads to people spending time in jail and prison when they shouldn’t.”

Many criminal cases come down to whether jurors believe a defendant or a law enforcement officer.

The system of flagged officers — often known as a “Brady/Giglio list,” so named for two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases — is meant to help prosecutors fulfill their legal duty to share evidence that could help prove someone’s innocence.

Wisconsin does not have statewide standards for how such Brady information should be gathered, maintained and disclosed. It falls to local district attorneys to decide how to gather and share information about officers’ credibility, leading to inconsistencies across the state’s 72 counties.

Lovern maintains his office is fulfilling its obligations. By compiling the spreadsheet, his office already is doing more than required, he said in an interview. Just because an officer is on the list does not mean he or she was necessarily convicted of a crime or had a sustained internal violation.

“The database is complete to the best of my knowledge and belief,” he said in a follow-up email in February, adding it always is subject to change with new information.

Some of those changes were prompted by this investigation, which found multiple inaccuracies in the Brady list released last fall. One officer was described as being involved in a custody death but he was not. Two were listed with the wrong agency. Another was listed for a criminal case that was expunged in 2002. At least five officers on the list were deceased. 

After reporters raised questions, a West Allis officer who resigned after admitting he had sex with a woman while on duty at a school was removed from the list because, Lovern said, he did not lie about what he did. That officer was hired at another agency in the county.

The inconsistencies in Milwaukee County’s Brady list have frustrated defense attorneys and advocates for police officers — one union leader called it the “wild, wild west” — and are another example of a nationwide problem for legal experts like Moran.

“It’s just an ongoing travesty of constitutional violations,” she said. “It is a huge national problem that should be a national scandal.” 

Who is on the Milwaukee County Brady list and why?

The district attorney’s office started tracking officers with documented credibility concerns more than 25 years ago.

The full list has not been made public — until now.

The move came after years of pressure from defense attorneys, media outlets and a lawsuit threat. The decision to release the list was harshly criticized by Alexander Ayala, president of the Milwaukee Police Association, the union representing rank-and-file officers in the city.

“It’s only going to be detrimental to police officers or even ex-police officers because they’re trying to move on,” he said.

The district attorney’s office first released the list to media outlets last September in response to public records requests. At the time, Assistant District Attorney Sara Sadowski wrote, in part: “This office makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of the record.”

She also said that some criminal cases may have “resulted in an acquittal, that charges were dismissed, or that charges were amended to non-criminal offenses.”

That list, dated Sept. 20, contained 218 entries involving 192 officers and included a wide range of conduct, from a recruit who cheated on a test to officers sentenced to federal prison for civil rights violations.

The Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 and Wisconsin Watch spent five months tracking down information about the officers through court documents, internal police records and past media coverage. 

Milwaukee police officers made up the largest share of officers on the list, but nearly every suburban police agency in the county was represented, as well as the Wisconsin Department of Justice and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

At least a dozen officers kept their jobs after being placed on the Brady list, then landed on the list again.

One of them was Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputy Joel Streicher. 

Back in 2007, Streicher and five other deputies searched a drug suspect’s house without a warrant, according to a previous Journal Sentinel article. It wasn’t until 2019 that Streicher was added to the Brady list when he was caught up in a prostitution sting and pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.

A year later, Streicher was on duty when he ran a red light near the courthouse and killed community advocate Ceasar Stinson. He resigned and pleaded guilty to homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle. Streicher declined to comment when reached by a reporter last month.

Criminal cases like Streicher’s represent three-quarters of the entries on the Brady list. The other quarter are tied to internal investigations.

The news organizations also found:

• Of the 218 entries on the list, about 47% related to a direct integrity or misconduct issue, such as officers lying on or off duty. The allegations vary: One officer pleaded guilty to taking bribes for filling out bogus vehicle titles and was fired. Another former officer was charged with pressuring the victim in her son’s domestic violence case to recant. A lieutenant was demoted after wrongly claiming $1,800 in overtime. 
• About 14% related to domestic or intimate partner violence, and nearly 10% related to sex crimes, such as sexual assault or possessing child pornography.
• Another 14% involved alcohol-related offenses, most often drunken driving. At least six cases involved officers, most off duty, who were found to be driving drunk and had a gun with them.

Nearly 7% involved allegations of excessive force. One of the officers listed in the database for such a violation was former Milwaukee officer Vincent Woller, who was added in 2009 after receiving a 60-day suspension for kicking a handcuffed suspect in the head, according to previous Journal Sentinel reporting.

Woller remained on the force until last year. He recently told a TMJ4 reporter he had testified “hundreds” of times in the past 15 years and never knew he was on the Brady list.

When asked to respond, Lovern, the district attorney, removed Woller from the list, saying Woller’s internal violation was not related to untruthfulness.

Lovern, who served for 16 years as the top deputy to his predecessor, John Chisholm, said he reviews any potential Brady material brought to his attention from the defense bar. 

In those cases, he said, he often has concluded that while officers’ conduct may show “poor judgment,” it did not relate to credibility or untruthfulness. 

Others have strongly disagreed with those decisions.

Three years ago, the State Public Defender’s Office asked for the full Milwaukee County Brady list, only to receive a partial list of about 150 names of officers charged or convicted of crimes. 

Public defenders then shared police disciplinary records they had obtained while investigating and trying past cases, said Angel Johnson, regional attorney manager for the State Public Defender’s Office in Milwaukee.

Johnson had expected those officers would be added to the list.

“They were not,” she said.

How some police officers can be on the Brady list and keep their jobs

The Brady list is not a blacklist. 

Eighteen officers are still employed by the Milwaukee Police Department, while five others are members of the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, according to representatives for those agencies.

In some cases, an officer’s past integrity violation or criminal conviction, such as drunken driving, may not necessarily prohibit the officer from testifying. That means they can still be useful as police officers, officials say.

“For us, it’s not about being placed on the list, it is how they will be used by the district attorney’s office,” Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said in an interview.

Norman said he does consider an officer’s ability to testify when weighing internal discipline. 

Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball said she does not, instead concluding the internal investigation and deciding discipline before forwarding any information to the District Attorney’s Office.

“Somebody can just make a mistake,” Ball said. “If that’s the case, then their employment is retained.”

Norman stressed he takes integrity violations seriously and makes his disciplinary decisions after reviewing internal investigations, officers’ work histories, comparable discipline in similar cases and input from his command staff.

Depending on those factors, officers can keep their jobs despite an integrity violation.

Officers Benjaman Bender and Juwon Madlock were working at District 7 on the city’s north side in 2021 when a man reported that he had just been shot at in his vehicle a few blocks away, according to records from the department and the Fire and Police Commission.

The man handed Bender his ID. The officers did not write down his name, inspect his damaged car parked outside, interview witnesses, or ask him any other investigatory questions, even after the man took a call from someone involved in the shooting.

Instead, Bender instructed the man to return to the crime scene by himself and told him a squad would meet him there.

“So it’s cool for people to just go shoot at people now?” the man replied.

“Just go over there,” Madlock said, as he returned the man’s ID.

Bender later told a sergeant the man had been uncooperative and that he did not see the man’s ID. Madlock told another sergeant the man had walked out on his own. Video from the lobby contradicted their accounts.

Internal affairs found both officers failed to thoroughly investigate and had not been “forthright and candid” with supervisors. 

Norman suspended each officer for 10 days. They remain employed — and on the Brady list.

The department did not authorize the officers to speak with a reporter for this story.

In rare cases, the district attorney’s office will decide that an officer can never be called as a witness. Only two or three officers in the county have received that designation in the last 18 years, and none are still employed as officers, Lovern said.

Reporters were unable to track the current employment of every officer on the Brady list because the Wisconsin Department of Justice has refused to release a statewide list of all certified law enforcement officers, a decision that is being challenged in court.

The state has released a separate database of officers who were fired, resigned instead of being fired or quit while an internal investigation was pending.

A comparison to that database showed at least four officers on the Sept. 20 Brady list were working at different law enforcement agencies in the state. 

Credibility matters whether you’re an officer or a citizen accused of a crime

There’s no guarantee an officer’s past will come up in court.

A defense attorney has to decide whether to raise it. And if they do, a judge has to decide if a jury should hear about it.

But for any of that to happen, prosecutors must collect and disclose the information in the first place. 

“We don’t monitor the Brady list,” said Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley, who added that he has never encountered a Brady issue during his 25 years on the bench.

“We get involved once the matter is brought to our attention,” he said.

Some prosecutors across the country come up with different systems to learn of potential Brady material. In Chicago, prosecutors started asking police officers a series of questions, such as if they had been disciplined before or found to be untruthful in court, before using them as witnesses.

In Milwaukee County, the district attorney’s office relies on police agencies to self-report internal violations. Lovern defended the practice, saying the local agencies are “very direct with us.”

But that approach leaves gaps. 

Out of 23 law enforcement agencies in Milwaukee County, only seven provided a written policy detailing how they handle Brady material in response to a records request sent in November. 

The Milwaukee Police Department and eight other agencies in the county do not have a written policy, and the other agencies did not respond or the request remains pending.

Regardless, prosecutors have a constitutional requirement to find and disclose potential Brady material, whether the records are located in their office or at another agency, said Moran, the law professor.

“Prosecutors still have the ultimate obligation for setting up information-sharing systems,” she said.

Sometimes, officers slip through the cracks.

Before Frank Williams landed on the Brady list, the Milwaukee police officer had a history of misconduct allegations dating back to 2017. He had been investigated for excessive force, improperly turning off his body camera and interfering with investigations into his relatives, according to internal affairs records. 

His harshest punishment, a 30-day suspension in 2021, was for an integrity violation after he falsely reported he had stayed at home on a sick day when he instead played in a basketball tournament.

But Williams was not added to the Brady list until last year, when prosecutors charged him with child abuse. He later pleaded guilty to lesser charges of disorderly conduct and was forced to resign. Attempts to reach Williams and his attorney by phone and email were not successful.

When asked why Williams was not placed on the list earlier, Lovern said the Milwaukee Police Department did refer Williams for Brady list consideration in May 2021 after the integrity violation, and Williams should have been added then.

Lovern said he should have forwarded Williams’ information to a staff member to include him in the database. He found no record that he actually did.

As a result, Lovern’s office is now contacting anybody who was convicted in cases where Williams was a named witness in the three-year period he should have been in the database.

Officials with the State Public Defender’s Office said they appreciated Lovern’s decision, but said the case shows what can happen when a Brady list is incomplete.

“The ability to question those witnesses against our client and their credibility is fundamental,” said Bridget Krause, trial division director for the State Public Defender’s Office.

If the information is not disclosed, it can have devastating consequences.

“You can’t go back and unring some bells,” Krause said. “Somebody who served 18 months in prison and now you’re finding out this could have impacted their case, they can’t not serve that time.”

Criminal defense attorneys who regularly practice in Milwaukee County say they rarely receive disclosures about officers’ credibility.

One said he had been practicing for nearly 20 years and had never received one. Another said the district attorney’s office practices amounted to a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Johnson, a manager for the state public defender’s office in Milwaukee, has practiced in the county for 10 years and tried numerous criminal cases.

She said she’s received two Brady disclosures related to officers’ credibility.

Both came this year.

Duty to disclose: Gaps found in Milwaukee County tracking of officers with credibility issues 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.

For more than 25 years, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has maintained a list of law enforcement officers who have been accused of dishonesty, bias or crimes.

Often known as the “Brady list,” it is meant to help prosecutors fulfill their legal obligation to turn over evidence that could help defendants.

But a joint Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin Watch and TMJ4 News investigation found that the list is inconsistent and incomplete, raising questions about how useful it is in practice.

Here’s what to know about Brady lists.

What is a Brady list?

The Brady list is a compilation of law enforcement officials who have been accused of lying, breaking the law, or acting in a way that erodes their credibility to be a witness. It’s also sometimes known as the do-not-call list or the Brady/Giglio list.

The name comes from the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, which ruled that prosecutors cannot withhold material that might help the defense at trial.

What kind of behavior gets you on the Brady List?

The type of misconduct that can land a law enforcement officer on the Brady list is broad, ranging from violent crimes to workplace issues. An officer does not have to be found guilty of a crime or even charged with a crime to be placed on the list. 

Of the names on Milwaukee County’s Brady list, the majority involve criminal cases. Roughly a quarter involve internal investigations. 

The offenses range from crimes like domestic violence or drunken driving to integrity issues like falsifying police documents or cheating on police training tests. 

How does the District Attorney’s Office find out about potential Brady material?

The District Attorney’s Office is responsible for prosecuting crimes. If a law enforcement officer is referred for potential criminal charges, prosecutors would know about it because they make charging decisions.

But if an officer is facing an internal violation and not a criminal charge, it is up to the officer’s law enforcement agency to report the information to prosecutors, according to Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern.

Do police agencies have written policies for telling prosecutors about Brady material?

Not all of them.

The media organizations sent records requests to 23 law enforcement agencies in the county asking for any policies governing how to handle Brady material.

The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office and six other agencies provided a written policy. The Milwaukee Police Department and eight other agencies in the county said they do not have a written policy.

The remaining agencies did not respond or the request remains pending.

If an officer is on the Brady list, does that mean they can’t testify?

No. Being placed on the list only means that prosecutors have to disclose that officer’s history to the defense. If defense attorneys wish, they can raise the officer’s credibility issues with the judge.

At that point, it is up to the judge to decide whether or not the officer is credible enough to testify.

In rare cases, the district attorney’s office has determined an officer could never be relied upon to testify. Lovern said that has only happened two or three times in the past 18 years, and those officers are no longer employed as law enforcement.

If an officer is put on the Brady list, can they stay on the force?

Yes. Just because a law enforcement officer is on the list does not mean they are necessarily prohibited from testifying. That means they can still be useful as police officers, officials say.

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman and Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball say they carefully consider the facts and severity of each case before deciding whether to keep an officer on the force.

Where can I find Wisconsin’s Brady list?

In Wisconsin, there is no single Brady list. District attorney’s offices in each county are responsible for maintaining their own lists. 

But there’s no consistency to how prosecutors in Wisconsin maintain Brady lists. In an investigation last year, Wisconsin Watch filed records requests with prosecutors in each of the state’s 72 counties. Many denied the records request or said they didn’t keep track. The counties that replied disclosed a list of about 360 names. 

How many people are on Milwaukee County’s Brady List? 

You can find Milwaukee County’s Brady list here.

Nearly 200 current and former law enforcement officers are on the list, which dates back about 25 years. Some are accused of multiple offenses. Of those on the list, the majority are from the Milwaukee Police Department, but nearly every suburban police department is represented. 

Milwaukee County’s Brady list has flaws. Here’s what to know 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.

For more than 25 years, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has closely guarded its list of law enforcement officers who have been accused of dishonesty, bias or crimes. In September, after pressure from defense attorneys and media organizations, the office released the full list for the first time.

This compilation of officers, known as the “Brady list” because of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, is meant to help ensure that defendants get a fair trial.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Ashley Luthern, TMJ4 News reporter Ben Jordan and Wisconsin Watch reporter Mario Koran spent five months tracking down information about the officers on the list through court documents, internal police records and past media coverage. 

The list contained scant and sometimes inaccurate information, making it difficult for reporters to ascertain why officers were placed on the list and when.

Reporters combed through all 218 entries involving 192 officers, requesting hundreds of pages of records from court cases, internal investigations, and employment records to verify why officers had been added. Reporters also dug up archived stories and past media coverage of some officers on the list.

They then categorized each entry on the list based on the type of alleged misconduct: excessive force, alcohol-related offenses, domestic violence, sex crimes and direct integrity or misconduct. For example, allegations about drunken driving were categorized as alcohol-related offenses. Cases involving lying about overtime or failing to properly investigate a reported crime were categorized as integrity or misconduct issues.

In order to verify how many remain employed as law enforcement officers with the same agencies, reporters had to consult several sources. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office and Milwaukee Police Department confirmed those who remain employed with them.

But reporters were unable to determine how many officers are employed at other law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin because the state Department of Justice will not release its statewide list of all certified law enforcement officers. Reporters instead used the state agency’s list of flagged officers — those who were terminated, resigned in lieu of termination, or resigned prior to completion of an internal investigation — to determine at least four officers remain employed at agencies throughout the state.

The analysis found multiple errors with the database, including officers who were listed with the wrong agency or incorrectly described as being involved in an in-custody death. At least five officers on the list were deceased.

After reporters raised the inaccuracies on the list with Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern, his office released a new version of the list in late February with several revisions, including the addition of one officer who Lovern admitted should have been placed on the list years earlier but had been overlooked.

Lovern told reporters the list is complete to the best of his knowledge and that it always is subject to change with new information.

How we investigated Milwaukee County’s once-secret Brady list 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.

What is a year of life behind bars worth for someone who didn’t commit a crime?

One standard in Wisconsin suggests it’s no more than $5,000.  

That’s the maximum compensation the state offers for each year of incarceration to those wrongfully convicted of crimes — capping payouts at $25,000 across all years, with rare exceptions. 

Of the 35 states with wrongful conviction compensation laws, Wisconsin is stingier than most. 

The state on average pays about $4,200 per year of wrongful incarceration to those who filed and received compensation, according to an analysis of data collected by the National Registry of Exonerations. Meanwhile, Wisconsin is not among the 19 states that offer additional non-monetary compensation for health care, education, counseling and re-entry into society. 

The federal government, by contrast, offers up $50,000 per year of incarceration to those wrongfully convicted in the federal system, or up to $100,000 per year for those who were on death row. 

“One can be so quickly wrongfully convicted but it takes years to recover,” Fred Saecker, who in 1996 was exonerated by DNA testing for a rape he didn’t commit seven years earlier, testified to a legislative committee in 2017. “When we are released, we are sent out to fail without resources, health care or opportunities.”

In rare cases, the Wisconsin Claims Board can recommend that the Legislature provide additional compensation to exonerees. 

Daryl Holloway in 2022 received $1 million plus $100,000 in attorneys’ fees for the 24 years he spent wrongfully convicted of sexual assault charges. Just two years later, Derrick Sanders was awarded the state maximum of $25,000 for 26 years he spent in prison.

Sanders, who in 1993 was wrongfully convicted of murder, had requested more than $5.7 million from the state, citing his innocence, lack of a criminal record at the time of his arrest and his honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy. Although the board recognized “clear and convincing” evidence of his innocence, he was awarded a tiny fraction of that request. 

State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, supported past legislation to boost the compensation maximum. She said the current limit falls short of what’s just or helpful to someone reentering society.

“You can’t take away somebody’s entire life and then say, ‘Here’s $25,000, go start over,’” she said. “What does that begin to cover?”

Jarrett Adams was denied compensation in 2009, two years after being released from prison. Adams was a teenager in 2000 when an all-white Jefferson County jury convicted him of sexual assault. A federal appeals court later vacated the conviction, citing insufficient evidence and ineffective counsel. But in denying his claim for compensation, the Wisconsin Claims Board wrote that he lacked “clear and convincing” evidence of his innocence.

Adams went on to earn a law degree and was part of the legal team that successfully argued for a new trial for Richard Beranek, who spent two decades in prison on rape, battery and burglary charges before being exonerated with the help of DNA evidence. 

Adams testified in 2015 in support of bipartisan legislation to change compensation practices.

Among other changes, the legislation would have raised the limit on compensation to $1 million for all years of wrongful incarceration while adding additional services to help exonerees reenter society. The legislation unanimously cleared the Assembly but died in the Senate.

“There are no programs designed to help those wrongfully convicted reenter society,” Adams wrote in his testimony. “However, those who are convicted and released from prison are afforded services by the state.”

Years have passed since the last such proposal in the Legislature. Johnson said she would back similar legislation if it returned, but Republican colleagues tell her they lack the appetite. 

In the past 20 years, 61 people have had convictions reversed in Wisconsin, collectively spending about 500 years imprisoned. Of that group, 27 applied for compensation, with 15 receiving some amount. 

In each denial, the claims board concluded that the wrongfully imprisoned person lacked “clear and convincing” evidence of innocence.

Johnson said she was “shocked” by such denials.

In denying Danny Wilber’s compensation claim following the 2022 reversal of a first-degree murder conviction that sent him to prison for 16 years, the claims board wrote that vacated judgments or exonerations based on legal technicalities such as ineffective counsel or unjust treatment in court do not necessarily prove innocence.

Wilber’s conviction was vacated because the extreme way he was shackled in court could have prejudiced the jury.  

Wisconsin law “does not provide compensation to individuals who simply establish that their convictions have been overturned, it provides compensation to individuals who establish their innocence by clear and convincing evidence,” the board wrote. 

The claims board is currently considering requests by Robert and David Bintz, who spent 24 years in prison for a murder in Green Bay that they didn’t commit. They seek about $2.1 million each.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

DataWatch: Wisconsin gives little compensation to wrongfully convicted 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.

Several state lawmakers are working on a bill that would keep immigration officers out of “safe havens” throughout Wisconsin.

Their move comes as members of immigrant communities can no longer rely on places to be free from immigration enforcement, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the department that oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Reversing policy from the Biden administration, ICE officers can detain or arrest people for immigration violations inside churches, schools and hospitals.

“Given the recent executive orders and initiatives that the Trump administration has put forth, it is very harmful for our immigrant and migrant communities in various ways,” said state Sen. Dora Drake, D-Milwaukee, one of the co-authors of the bill.

“I’m a firm believer that families should be strengthened and not pulled apart.”

Federal policy

In 2021, the administration of former President Joe Biden issued guidelines about where immigration enforcement should be restricted — places referred to as “protected areas” — including schools, medical and mental health facilities, places of worship or religious study, locations where children gather, social service establishments, sites providing emergency or disaster relief, and venues for funerals, weddings, parades, demonstrations and rallies.

The guidelines stated that enforcement should be restricted in, or even near, these spaces so as not to discourage people from accessing essential services or participating in essential activities.

On Jan. 21, the day after President Donald Trump took office, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement about the cancelation of this Biden-era policy, effectively eliminating safe havens and allowing immigration enforcement, such as raids and arrests, to take place in these areas.

“We are protecting our schools, places of worship and Americans who attend by preventing criminal aliens and gang members from exploiting these locations and taking safe haven there because these criminals knew law enforcement couldn’t go inside under the previous administration,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary of public affairs, in an email.

Local response

The sorts of places identified by the proposed bill overlap with but are not identical to the ones in the policy of the Biden administration.

It identifies schools, places providing child care, places of worship, places providing medical or health care services, and state and local government buildings.

State Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, another co-author of the bill, said that he and his colleagues “wanted to hit the main ones right away that we were hearing from people.”

However, Carpenter, whose Senate district has the highest percentage of Hispanic residents in the state – more than 45% – said that he is open to amending the bill to include more places.

The sorts of spaces in Milwaukee currently mentioned in the bill are responding in varied ways.

Milwaukee Public Schools has taken quite a clear stance, reaffirming in January its own “safe haven” resolution adopted in 2017.

The resolution vows to oppose actions by ICE on school grounds by “all legal means available.”

The union representing MPS teachers, Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, fully supports the resolution as well.

In other types of places, the response is less clear-cut.

A spokesperson for Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin, one of the largest hospital systems in the state, said in an email that staff is “closely reviewing recent federal policy changes and discussing their potential impacts,” adding that they “remain focused on our commitments to delivering exceptional care with dignity and respect while achieving the best possible health outcomes.”

Places not identified in the initial version of the bill also are grappling with the changes in immigration policy.

Milwaukee Christian Center, for example, which provides social services such as housing support and violence prevention, intends to comply with the law in terms of a judicial warrant and would confer with counsel about what to do regarding an administrative warrant, said Karen Higgins, executive director of the organization.

Difference between warrants

This difference between types of warrants is crucial for the authors of the bill. 

A judicial warrant is issued and signed by a judge, while an administrative warrant is issued by a federal agency specifically for immigration violations.

Unlike judicial warrants, administrative warrants do not require compliance from local law enforcement or private entities, including schools, churches and hospitals, unless they choose to comply. 

The state bill, if it became law, would apply to administrative warrants rather than judicial ones.

No one is trying, Drake said, to provide havens for people who are being detained or arrested on a judicial warrant. 

“We’re not saying that there aren’t individuals that are causing harm out there,” she said.  

McLaughlin, of the Department of Homeland Security, described a thoughtful process when a safe haven is involved in immigration enforcement. 

“Our agents use discretion. Officers would need secondary supervisor approval before any action can be taken in locations such as a church or a school.”

“We expect these to be extremely rare,” she added.

‘I am asking them to follow the law’

Rep. Sylvia Velez-Ortiz, D-Milwaukee, the main author of the bill, frames the issue in basic constitutional terms.

“I’ve never said the word ‘safe haven’ or ‘sanctuary,’” she said. “I am asking them (the federal government) to follow the law. I expect them not to do illegal searches and seizures.”

“And,” she added, “I expect them to pay for their own operations.”

What’s next?

Velez-Ortiz said that the bill has about 20 co-sponsors and was expected to be handed to the clerk Tuesday and posted online.

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

ICE enforcement: Wisconsin bill would restore ‘safe haven’ status to churches, schools and hospitals 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 this week will propose a significant overhaul of Wisconsin’s corrections system, pushing a plan that would close one of the state’s two oldest prisons, renovate the other and convert the state’s youth prison into a facility for adult men. 

The proposal, which totals just shy of $500 million, will be included in the governor’s budget proposal, which he will unveil on Tuesday night. The governor shared details of the plan with reporters Friday morning.

The “domino series of facility changes, improvements and modernization efforts,” as Evers described them, would take place between approval of the budget and 2031. The proposal is the solution to the state’s skyrocketing prison population, Evers said, adding there is “not an alternative to my plan that is safer, faster and cheaper.”

The first step would be building a facility for youth offenders in Dane County, allowing the state to close its current beleaguered juvenile prison complex in Irma, home to Lincoln Hills School for boys and Copper Lake School for girls. The cost would be $130.7 million.

Completing the juvenile Dane County facility would be the latest step in a years-long effort to shutter Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. A similar facility opened in Racine County earlier this month, with another juvenile facility in Milwaukee poised to open next year. With the addition of the Dane County facility, the state would be able to move youth offenders out of Lincoln Hills in early 2029, according to the Evers administration.

The Lincoln County complex would then undergo $9 million in renovations to be converted into a 500-bed, medium-security institution for men.

Another key piece of Evers’ plan would be converting Stanley Correctional Institution into a maximum-security facility for $8.8 million. That would allow the state to renovate Waupun Correctional Institution, the state’s oldest facility, where at times inmates were confined to their cells for months and denied medical care, according to an investigation by Wisconsin Watch and The New York Times. Waupun staff also have faced criminal charges following the deaths of five inmates. 

The estimated $245 million renovation would involve demolishing the prison’s existing cell halls and replacing them with new, medium-security facilities known as a “vocational village” — the first in Wisconsin based on a model used in other states. The facility would be “designed to expand job and workforce training to help make sure folks can be stable, gainfully employed and can positively contribute to our communities when they are released,” Evers said.

Under the plan, the John Burke Correctional Center in Waupun would also be converted to a 300-bed facility for women “with little to no capital cost,” said Jared Hoy, secretary of the Department of Corrections.

Green Bay Correctional Institution, constructed in 1898, would close under the proposal sometime in spring 2029 at a cost of $6.3 million. Many have pushed for the closure of the prison due to overcrowding, poor conditions and staffing issues.

To compensate for the lost beds, the last project in the “domino” series would add 200 beds to Sanger B. Powers Correctional Center in Brown County.

The governor’s budget will guarantee Green Bay staffers a role at another DOC facility to account for the prison’s closure, the Evers administration said. The facility would likely then be sold, the governor told reporters.

In totality, the plan aims to avoid building a new prison in Wisconsin, which the governor’s administration estimates would cost $1.2 billion and take a decade to construct. Evers said Friday that he had not discussed the plan with Republican lawmakers, but implied he was slated to meet with them over the weekend.

The state’s adult institutions were locking up more than 23,000 people as of Feb. 7. That’s more than 5,000 above the design capacity of Wisconsin’s prisons and more than 3,000 above levels four years ago when COVID-19 actions shrunk prisoner ranks.

Justice reform advocates have argued that Wisconsin can’t substantially improve conditions without decarceration, including releasing more inmates and diverting others to programs rather than prisons. 

Other states — some led by Republicans and some by Democrats — have managed to close prisons by adopting rehabilitation-focused reforms that cut thousands from the population. 

The governor is also seeking some policy changes that could trim the population. For example, he wants to expand the capacity of the state’s existing earned release program for nonviolent offenders with less than 48 months remaining on their sentences, allowing more inmates to access vocational training and treatment for substance use disorders.

Evers noted there are 12,000 inmates on a waiting list to access vocational programming, and expanding the earned release program would likely make another 1,000 inmates eligible for the program.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Tony Evers to propose $500 million prison overhaul, closing Green Bay facility by 2029 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.

Unless things change soon, it appears unlikely that the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee Public Schools will meet the Feb. 17 deadline to place at least 25 student resource officers in schools.

Wisconsin Act 12, a law enacted in summer 2023, mandated that police officers be placed in MPS and stipulated that they must first complete 40 hours of training through the National Association of School Resource Officers.

This has yet to happen.

A school resource officer is a law enforcement officer who works full time in collaboration with a school district, according to Act 12.

School resource officers typically carry firearms, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers.

No trainings scheduled

Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, said no Milwaukee Police Department officers have completed or are scheduled to take the weeklong training before Feb. 17. 

“We are never going to recommend that an officer start working in a school without first being put through this training,” Canady said. “We’re talking about the most unique assignment in law enforcement: putting men and women in schools and trusting them to do good work with adolescents in the school environment.”

MPD did not confirm its timeline for training or whether it has enough officers who have completed the training in the past.

Even if there were officers with past training, though, that wouldn’t necessarily be the best or safest option, Canady said.

“We don’t have a timeline on when you should retake the training,” but “there have been massive changes” in the past five years, Canady said. 

Subjects that have been updated or added include training on how adolescent brains develop, forms of bias and how to understand trauma, he said.

A spokesperson for MPD deferred all questions to the City Attorney’s Office, stating the department is “unaware of the status of the agreement.”

Several attempts to speak with the City Attorney’s Office were unsuccessful as were attempts to speak with every member of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors except one. 

Training is the most important concern when it comes to officers in schools for Henry Leonard, Milwaukee Public Schools board director of District 7.

Without this training, Leonard said he fears “a haphazard approach to this and it turns into a disaster.”

Next steps

There are no consequences for having not met the 2024 deadline stipulated by Act 12, according to an analyst with the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan agency that provides research and legal services to lawmakers.

An additional hearing has been scheduled if the Feb. 17 deadline is not met.

Jeff Fleming, a spokesman for Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, said there have been some productive meetings between the city and MPS.

“The Mayor is optimistic the outstanding issues can be resolved,” he wrote in an email to NNS.

How we got here

In 2016, MPS pulled officers from inside its schools and, four years later, ended a contract with MPD for patrols outside its buildings.

Act 12 required the city to beef up its police force by 2034 and ordered officers back into MPS by Jan. 1, 2024. That deadline came and passed as the school district and city jostled over who would pay the estimated $2 million cost to fund the officers. 

Pressure to bring officers back into schools picked up after a mother of an MPS student who was bullied sued the city and school district for not meeting Act 12 requirements.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge David Borowski decided in favor of the mother, ruling that the city of Milwaukee and MPS are responsible for getting officers in schools by Feb. 17.

Impact on current officer shortage

NNS reported in December about hiring challenges within MPD as the number of new recruits wasn’t enough to offset the retirement and departure of other officers or potentially the new requirements of Act 12.

Leon Todd, executive director of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, said officers placed at MPS would come from the current ranks of the MPD, which could stretch the department’s already thin ranks.

“One of our top priorities is to grow the size of MPD, and we obviously want to limit the strain,” Todd said. “While these officers would be placed in MPS and wouldn’t be available to take other calls for service, the number of calls are going to be reduced as they won’t need to respond because they will already have officers in schools.”

According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, there were 40,643 calls to police from MPS-associated addresses from 2013 to 2024, although 7% of those calls were during nighttime hours.

The Fire and Police Commission is typically in charge of hiring all new officers. But because the school resource officers are going to be current officers, Todd said, the police chief or the department’s executive command staff will decide who is sent into schools. 

Canady emphasized the importance of carefully selecting those officers.

“There should be input from the school community,” Canady said. “These should be officers who are veterans, who have been with the department at least three years, so we know something about their character. They should be officers who have shown sincere interest in working with youth.” 

Leaders Igniting Transformation, a youth-led nonprofit in Milwaukee, doesn’t want officers back in schools at all. 

“We are angry and terrified at the thought of placing armed police officers back in Milwaukee classrooms, who have shown time and time again that they are unfit to work with students and have no place in our schools,” a recent statement from the group said.

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

Will police officers be placed in Milwaukee public schools before Feb. 17 deadline? Not likely 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.

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

A blender, still in its box, won at a grocery store raffle. Framed photos from a child’s birthday party. A rabbit-hair felt sombrero and a pair of brown leather boots that cost more than half a week’s pay.

Box by box, the Nicaraguans who milk the cows and clean the pens on Wisconsin’s dairy farms, who wash dishes at its restaurants and fill lines on its factory floors, are sending home their most prized possessions, bracing for the impact of President Donald Trump’s mass deportations.

In the contents of the boxes is a portrait of a community under pressure. The Nicaraguans are as consumed as everyone else by the unfolding of Trump 2.0, wondering whether the bluster about deporting millions of people, most of whom live quiet lives far from the southern border, is going to mean anything in the Wisconsin towns where they’ve settled. For now, many are staying in their homes, behind drawn curtains, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible as they travel to and from work or pick up their kids from school. Few have given up on their lives in America, but they’re realistic about what may be coming. Methodically, they have begun packing their most cherished belongings into boxes and barrels and shipping them to relatives back in Nicaragua, ahead of their own anticipated deportations.

“We don’t have much, but what we do have is important,” said Joaquín, the man with the love of western boots and sombreros. He’s 35 years old and has worked over the last three years as a cook at the restaurant below his apartment. “We have worked so hard and sacrificed so much in order to acquire these things,” he added.

The packing is happening all across Wisconsin, a state that in recent years has become a top destination for Nicaraguans who say they are fleeing poverty and government repression. And it is happening among immigrants of varying legal statuses. There are the undocumented dairy workers who came more than a decade ago and were the first from their rural communities to settle in Wisconsin. And there are the more recent arrivals, including asylum-seekers who have permission to live and work in the U.S. as they await their day in immigration court.

Nobody feels safe from Trump and his promises; in just his first week back in office, the president moved to end birthright citizenship, sent hundreds of military troops to the southern border and launched a flashy, multi-agency operation to find and detain immigrants in Chicago, only a few hundred miles away.

Yesenia Meza, a community health worker in central Wisconsin, began hearing from families soon after Trump’s election; they wanted help obtaining the documents they might need if they have to suddenly leave the country with their U.S.-born children, or have those children sent to them if they are deported. When she visited their apartments, Meza said, she was stunned to discover they had spent hundreds of dollars on refrigerator-sized boxes and blue plastic barrels that they’d stuffed with nearly “everything that they own, their most precious belongings” and were shipping to their home country.

At one home, she watched an immigrant mother climb into a half-packed box and announce, “I’m going to mail myself.” Meza knew she was joking. But some of the immigrants she knew had already left. And if more people go, she wonders what impact their departures — whether voluntary or forced — will have on the local economy. Immigrants in the area work on farms, in cheese-processing factories and in a chicken plant — the kind of jobs, she said, that nobody else wants. She’s talked to some of the employers before and knows “they’re always short-staffed,” Meza said. “They’re going to be more short-staffed now when people start going back home.”

Recently, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, I traveled to Wisconsin along with photographer Benjamin Rasmussen to capture what sounded like the beginning of a community coming undone. We talked to Nicaraguans in their kitchens and bedrooms, and in restaurants and grocery stores that have sprung up to cater to them. Many of the people we met either were packing themselves or knew someone else who was, or both.

Some were almost embarrassed to show us what they were packing — items that might have been considered frivolous or extravagant back home. Nicaragua was already one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere before its government took a turn toward authoritarianism and repression, further sinking the economy. But thanks to their working-class jobs at American factories and restaurants, they could afford these things, and they were determined to hold on to them. Some of their belongings carried memories of loved ones or of special occasions. Other items were more practical, tools that might help them get started again in Nicaragua.

From the stories these immigrants told about their belongings emerged others, stories about what had brought them to this country and what they have been able to achieve here. They spoke about the panic that now traps them in their homes and keeps them up at night. And they shared their hopes and fears about what it might mean to start over in a country they fled.

What’s in the boxes

Yaceth’s guilty pleasure is shoes. The 38-year-old left Nicaragua nearly three years ago and works in the same restaurant kitchen as Joaquín. Her wages allowed her to buy a pair or so a month on Amazon, mostly Keds lace-up sneakers, though she also owns glittery stilettos and knee-high red boots. The boxes fill the top half of her closet. Some pairs have never been worn.

We stood along the edge of her bed, admiring her collection. “I’m a bit of an aficionado,” she said sheepishly. Like the other immigrants we spoke with, Yaceth asked not to be identified by her full name to lessen the risk of deportation.

Yaceth said she stopped buying shoes after Trump’s election, uncertain how her life, not to mention her finances, might change once he took office. By the time we met, she had already packed one box of belongings and sent it to her mother in Estelí, a city in northwestern Nicaragua. In the corner of her already crowded bedroom, she kept a blue plastic barrel, which is where she’d planned to put the shoes, hoping it would keep them dry and undamaged during the shipping. If she goes, they’re going, too.

She rents a room in the apartment of another family. They, too, are thinking about what it might look like to return to Nicaragua. Hugo, 33, is setting aside items that might help him make a living back in his hometown of Somoto, about an hour and a half north of Estelí. This includes a Cuisinart digital air fryer he bought with his wages from a sheet-metal factory. Hugo used to sell hot dogs and hamburgers at a fast food stand in Somoto. If he has to return, he envisions starting another food business. The air fryer would help.

We visited a new Nicaraguan restaurant in Waunakee, a village in Dane County that’s seen significant numbers of Nicaraguan arrivals in recent years. One diner, a 49-year-old undocumented dairy worker, told me he plans to send barber trimmers and other supplies for the barbershop he’d like to open up if he’s deported. As we spoke, his dinner companion called a friend who lives a few towns away and handed me the phone; that man, also a dairy worker, told me he is sending back power tools he bought on Facebook Marketplace that are expensive and difficult to find in Nicaragua.

Other immigrants expressed deep uncertainty about whether they might face jail time or worse if they are deported, due to their previous involvement in political activities against the Nicaraguan government. If you don’t toe the party line, said Uriel, a former high school teacher, “they turn you into an enemy of the state.”

Uriel, 36, said he never participated in any anti-government marches. But he worried that local party leaders had been watching him, that they knew how he spoke about democracy and free speech in the classroom.

He said he left Nicaragua almost four years ago both because of the political situation and because he knew he could make more money in the U.S. He has an ongoing asylum case, a work permit and a job at a bread factory. His wages have allowed him to buy a plot of land for his wife and two children, still in Nicaragua, and begin construction on a house there.

He’d hoped to stay in Wisconsin long enough to pay to finish it. But bracing for the inevitable, he’s got a barrel too. Soon, he plans to pack and send a used Yamaha guitar he was given as a gift a few years earlier. Uriel learned to play the instrument by watching YouTube videos and now plays Christian hymns that he said make him feel good inside.

This summer, he plans to return as well. His children have been growing up without him. He has been told his 6-year-old daughter points to planes in the sky and wonders whether her father is inside. He worries that his son, 11, will grow up believing he has been abandoned.

It has been hard to be separated from his children, he said. But he left in order to provide them a life he didn’t believe he could have if he had stayed — a reality he thought was missing from so much of the new president’s rhetoric on immigration. “We are not anybody’s enemy,” Uriel said. “We simply are looking for a way to make a living, to help our families.”

A life in hiding

It used to be that on Sundays, his day off, Joaquín would pull on his favorite boots and sombrero to drive somewhere — to a restaurant or to visit family and friends who had settled in south-central Wisconsin. But ever since Trump’s election, he doesn’t leave his apartment unless he has to. Some days, he says, he feels like a mouse, scurrying downstairs to work and upstairs to sleep and back downstairs again to work, always alert and full of dread.

The gray 2016 Toyota 4Runner that he bought last year, his pride and joy, sits mostly unused behind his apartment building. He’s too afraid of driving and getting pulled over by police officers who, by randomly checking his vehicle’s plates, could discover he doesn’t have a driver’s license. Joaquín doesn’t have the documents he needs to qualify for one. He worries that drawing the attention of police, even for the smallest of infractions, could get him swept into the immigration detention system and deported. “What’s happening now is a persecution,” he said.

On a recent Sunday, his apartment was filled with the sweet, warm smell of home-baked goods. Joaquín said he spent two hours making traditional Nicaraguan cookies called rosquillas and hojaldras, one savory and the other sweet. We talked over coffee and the cornmeal cookies. Half of his living room floor was covered with piles of clothes and shoes, and one tall, empty box. There were shirts, pants and sneakers for each of his three children, who remain in Nicaragua. Most of the clothes belonged to Joaquín: a crisp pair of tan Lee jeans, rarely worn; several pairs of boots; a box of sombreros.

Joaquín said he plans to send all of it to relatives in Nicaragua in February. It pains him to imagine being trotted onto a deportation flight and leaving everything he owns here to get tossed in a landfill somewhere.

Another day, I spoke by phone with an immigrant named Luz, 26. Like Joaquín, she said she rarely leaves her apartment anymore. The week Trump was inaugurated, she stopped going to her job at a nearby cheese factory, afraid of workplace raids. She now stays home with their 1-year-old son. A woman she knows picks up the family’s groceries so they don’t have to risk being out on the street.

Like many of her friends and relatives, Luz came to the U.S. as an asylum-seeker almost three years ago. She missed an immigration court hearing while pregnant with her son and now worries she has “no legal status here.”

“Those of us who work milking cows, we can’t afford to hire a lawyer,” she said. “We don’t even know what’s happening with our cases.”

After Trump’s election, she began packing some of the things she’d accumulated in her time in Wisconsin, including some used children’s clothes she’d received from Meza, the community health worker. She packed most everything in her kitchen: most of her pots and pans, some plates and cups, knives, an iron and “even chocolates,” she said, almost laughing. “It is a big box.”

Luz said she wants all of her household items to be in Nicaragua when she returns with her family. They hope to leave in March. “I don’t want to live in hiding like this,” she said.

Family separation redux

Isabel’s son cried as she filled her box. In went the shiny red car, big enough for the 14-month-old to sit in and drive. It had been a gift from his godfather on his first birthday. She added other, smaller cars and planes and stuffed animals. A stroller. A framed photo from the birthday party, the chubby-cheeked boy surrounded by balloons.

The 26-year-old mother knew her son was too young to understand. But she hoped he would if the dreaded time came when they had to return to Nicaragua.

And to make sure she wouldn’t be separated from him, she applied for his passport early last fall, when she became convinced that Trump would win the election. She could see his lawn signs all around her in the rural community in the middle of the state where she lives. Her husband, who works on a dairy farm, told her he’d begun feeling uncomfortable with the way people glared at him at Walmart. Sometimes, they shouted things he didn’t understand, but in a tone that was unmistakably hostile.

Their son was born in the U.S. to noncitizen parents — exactly the kind of child Trump says does not deserve citizenship here. Isabel got his passport both to secure his rights as an American citizen and to secure her rights to him. She wants to make sure there is no mistaking who the boy belongs to if she gets sent away.

We met Isabel about a week after she’d shipped off the box with her son’s red toy car to her mother’s home in southern Nicaragua. It was the morning of Trump’s inauguration, and Isabel welcomed us into her apartment, her eyes still red and bleary from an overnight shift at a nearby cheese-processing factory.

She said they were ready to go “if things get ugly” and the people around her start getting picked up and sent back. But there was another box, still flat and unpacked, propped up against a wall in the living room. That one, she explained, belonged to a neighbor with the same game plan.

I ask her what happens if they don’t get deported, but their most precious belongings are gone. Won’t they miss those things? “Yes,” she said. But it would be even worse to go back to Nicaragua and have nothing.

Additional design and development by Zisiga Mukulu.

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Boxed up: a portrait of an immigrant community living under threat of deportation 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 new television attack ad in Wisconsin’s hotly contested Supreme Court race features a doctored image of the liberal candidate, a move that her campaign claims could be a violation of a recently enacted state law.

The image in question is of Susan Crawford, a Dane County circuit court judge. It appeared in a new TV ad paid for by the campaign of her opponent Brad Schimel, a Waukesha County circuit court judge.

The winner of the high-stakes race on April 1 will determine whether the Wisconsin Supreme Court remains under a liberal majority or flips to conservative control.

The Schimel campaign ad begins and ends with a black-and-white image of Crawford with her lips closed together. A nearly identical color image from her 2018 run for Dane County Circuit Court shows Crawford with a wide smile on her face.

Crawford’s campaign accused Schimel of manipulating the image, potentially in violation of a state law enacted last year. The law, passed with bipartisan support in the Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, requires disclosure if political ads use audio or video content created by generative artificial intelligence. Failure to disclose the use of AI as required can result in a $1,000 fine.

“Schimel will try to manipulate images and the facts because he’s desperate to hide his own record of failure,” Crawford spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said in a statement.

Schimel’s campaign spokesperson Jacob Fischer said the image was “edited” but not created by AI.

Peter Loge, the director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at George Washington University, said images should never be changed to give a false impression.

“That said, as these things go, it’s not that egregious,” Loge said of the Schimel ad.

He pointed to numerous other examples of images being doctored for use in political ads, including one in 2015 by a political action committee supporting Wisconsin Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson. The image showed then-President Barack Obama smiling and shaking hands with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. In 2020, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, posted the fake image again on social media.

Obama and Rouhani never met. The image was fake.

A doctored image was also used last year in a television ad in the Indiana governor’s race.

“A good rule of thumb is to take everything with a grain of salt,” Loge said. “Just because you see it on television or on the internet doesn’t mean it’s true.”

The Schimel ad attacks Crawford over the release of a convicted rapist in 2001 because the state’s office of criminal appeals missed the deadline to appeal to the state Supreme Court. Crawford headed the division at the time, but the error miscalculating the appeal deadline was made by another attorney in the office and by two secretaries, according to a report by the attorney general.

“Crawford didn’t bother filing the appeal in time, letting the rapist walk free,” the Schimel ad claims.

After that error was discovered, Crawford ordered a review of every pending appeal’s deadline and personally calculated the deadline for petitions for review to the state Supreme Court. Republican officeholders at the time who investigated what happened, including then-state Rep. Scott Walker, said the error was an isolated incident.

Schimel served one term as attorney general between 2015 and 2019 when Walker was governor. Walker appointed Schimel as a judge the day after Schimel lost reelection in 2018.

Altered image of Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford in ad raises ethics concerns 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.

In many ways, Hamid Abd-Al-Jabbar’s life story involved redemption. A victim of abuse who was exposed to alcohol and drugs while growing up on Milwaukee’s North Side, he made dangerous choices as a teenager. By age 19, he landed in prison after shooting and killing a man during a 1988 drug house robbery. 

But he worked on himself while incarcerated, his wife Desilynn Smith recalled. After he walked out of prison for good, he found a calling as a peace activist. He became a violence interrupter for Milwaukee’s 414 Life program, aiming to prevent gun violence through de-escalation and intervention. 

Abd-Al-Jabbar may have looked healed on the outside, but he never moved past the trauma that shaped much of his life, Smith said. He wouldn’t ask for help.

That’s why Smith still grieves. Her husband died in February 2021 after ingesting a drug mixture that included fentanyl and cocaine. He was 51.

Smith now wears his fingerprint on a charm bracelet as a physical reminder of the man she knew and loved for most of her life.

“He never learned how to cope with things in a healthy way,” said Smith, executive director of Uniting Garden Homes, Inc., an organization that provides mental health and substance use services on Milwaukee’s North Side. “In our communities addiction is frowned upon, so people don’t get the help they need.”

Abd-Al-Jabbar is part of a generation of Milwaukee’s older Black men who are disproportionately dying from drug poisonings and overdoses, even as the opioid epidemic slows for others.

Milwaukee County is among dozens of U.S. counties where drugs are disproportionately killing a generation of Black men, born between 1951 and 1970, an analysis by The Baltimore Banner, The New York Times and Stanford University’s Big Local News found. Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and Wisconsin Watch are collaborating with them and eight other newsrooms to examine this pattern.

Times and Banner reporters initially identified the pattern in Baltimore. They later found the same effect in dozens of counties nationwide.

In Milwaukee, Black men of the generation accounted for 12.5% of all drug deaths between 2018 and 2022. That’s despite making up just 2.3% of the total population. 

The county’s older Black men were lost to drugs at rates 14.2 times higher than all people nationally and 5.5 times higher than all other Milwaukee County residents. 

Six other Wisconsin counties — Brown, Dane, Kenosha, Racine, Rock and Waukesha — ranked among the top 408 nationally in drug deaths during the years analyzed. But Milwaukee was the only one in Wisconsin where this generation of Black men died at such staggering rates.

Milwaukee trend accelerates

The trend in Milwaukee County has only accelerated since 2022, the last year of the Times and Banner analysis, even as the county’s total drug deaths decline, Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch found.

Drugs killed 74 of the county’s older Black men in 2024. The group made up 17.3% of all drug deaths  — up from 16.2% in 2023 and 14.1% the previous year, medical examiner data shows.

Abd-Al-Jabbar’s story shares similarities with many of those men. Most used cocaine that was cut with stronger fentanyl — the faster-acting drug has fueled the national opioid epidemic. Most had a history of incarceration. 

They lived in a state that imprisons Black men at one of the country’s highest rates. Wisconsin is also home to some of the country’s widest disparities in education, public health, housing and income. Milwaukee, its biggest city, helps drive those trends. 

Marc Levine, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researcher, concluded in 2020 that “Black Milwaukee is generally worse off today than it was 40 or 50 years ago” when considering dozens of quality of life indicators.

Meanwhile, limited options and lingering stigma prevent a generation of Black men from accessing drug treatment, local experts told Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch.  

“Black men experience higher rates of community violence, are often untreated for mental health issues and experience greater levels of systemic racism than other groups,” said Lia Knox, a Milwaukee mental wellness consultant. “These all elevate their risk of incarceration, addiction and also death.” 

A network of organizations providing comprehensive treatment offers hope, but these resources fall far short of meeting community needs. 

A silent struggle 

Smith and Abd-Al-Jabbar first started dating at 14, and they had a child together at 16. But as their relationship blossomed, Smith said, Abd-Al-Jabbar silently struggled with what she suspects was an undiagnosed mental health illness linked to childhood trauma.

“A lot of the bad behaviors he had were learned behaviors,” Smith said. 

Abd-Al-Jabbar became suicidal as a teen and began robbing drug dealers. 

When he entered prison, Abd-Al-Jabbar read and wrote at a fifth grade level and coped like a 10-year-old, Smith said. By age 21, she said, he’d already spent two years in solitary confinement. But he had the resolve to change. He began to read voraciously and converted to Islam. 

He was released from prison after 11 years, but returned multiple times before leaving for good in 2018. Smith and Abd-Al-Jabbar married, and he started earning praise for preventing bloodshed as a violence interrupter. 

Still, he struggled under the pressures of his new calling. The work added weight to the trauma he carried into and out of prison. His mental health only worsened, Smith said, and he turned back to drugs as a coping mechanism.   

“The main thing he learned in prison was how to survive,” she said. 

Most men lost were formerly incarcerated

At least half of Milwaukee’s older Black men lost to drugs in 2024 served time in state prison, Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch found by cross-referencing Department of Corrections and medical examiner records. More than a dozen other men on that list interacted with the criminal justice system in some way. Some served time in jail. For others, full records weren’t available.

Most of the men left prison decades or years before they died. But three died within about a year of their release. A 55-year-old North Side man died just 22 days after release. 

National studies have found high rates of substance use disorders among people who are incarcerated but low rates of treatment. Jails and prisons often fail to meet the demands for such services. 

In Wisconsin, DOC officials and prisoners say drugs are routinely entering prisons, putting prisoners and staff at risk and increasing challenges for people facing addiction. 

Thousands wait for treatment in prison

The DOC as of last December enrolled 815 people in substance abuse treatment programs, but its waitlist for such services was far higher: more than 11,700.   

“You don’t really get the treatment you need in prison,” said Randy Mack, a 66-year-old Black man who served time in Wisconsin’s Columbia, Fox Lake, Green Bay and Kettle Moraine correctional institutions.

Leaving prison can be a particularly vulnerable time for relapse, Mack said. Some men manage to stop using drugs while incarcerated. They think they are safe, only to struggle when they leave. 

“You get back out on the streets and you see the same people and fall into the same traps,” Mack said. 

Knox, the wellness consultant, agrees. After being disconnected from their communities, many men, especially older ones, leave prison feeling isolated and unable to ask for help. They turn to drugs. 

“Now with the opioids, they’re overdosing and dying more often,” she said. 

For those who complete drug treatment in prison, the DOC offers a 12-month medicated-assisted treatment program to reduce the chances of drug overdoses. Those who qualify receive a first injection of the drug naltrexone shortly before their release from prison. They continue to receive monthly injections and therapy for a year. 

Access to the program is uneven across the state. Corrections officials have sought to expand it using settlement money from national opioids litigation. In its latest two-year budget request the department set a goal for hiring more vendors to administer the program. 

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers plans to release his full budget proposal next month. His past proposals have sought millions of dollars for treatment and other rehabilitation programs. The Republican-controlled Legislature has rejected or reduced funding in most cases.

Mack said he received some help while in prison, but it wasn’t intense enough to make a breakthrough. Now he’s getting more holistic treatment from Serenity Inns, a North Side recovery program for men. 

Executive Director Kenneth Ginlack said the organization helps men through up to 20 hours of mental health and substance use treatment each week. 

What’s key, Ginlack said, is that most of his staff, including himself, are in recovery. 

“We understand them not just from a recovery standpoint, but we were able to go back to our own experiences and talk to them about that,” he said. “That’s how we build trust in the community.” 

Fentanyl catches cocaine users unaware

Many of the older men dying were longtime users of stimulants, like crack cocaine, Ginlack said, adding they had “no idea that the stimulants are cut with fentanyl.”

They don’t feel the need to use test strips to check for fentanyl or carry Narcan to reverse the effects of opioid poisoning, he said. 

Last year, 84% of older Black men killed by drugs had cocaine in their system, and 61% had fentanyl, Milwaukee NNS and Wisconsin Watch found. More than half ingested both drugs. 

Months after relapsing, Alfred Carter, 61, decided he was ready to kick his cocaine habit. 

When he showed up to a Milwaukee detox center in October, he was shocked to learn he had fentanyl in his system. 

“What made it so bad is that I hear all the stories about people putting fentanyl in cocaine, but I said not my people,” Carter said. “It puts a healthy fear in my life, because at any time I can overdose — not even knowing that I’m taking it.” 

Awareness is slowly increasing, Ginlack said, as more men in his program share stories about losing loved ones.

Milwaukee’s need outpaces resources 

Expanding on its original outpatient treatment center on West Brown Street, Serenity Inns now also runs a residential treatment facility and a transitional living program and opened a drop-in clinic in January.

Still, those don’t come close to meeting demands for its services. 

“We’re the only treatment center in Milwaukee County that takes people without insurance, so a lot of other centers send people our way,” said Ginlack, who said the county typically runs about 200 beds short of meeting demand.

“My biggest fear is someone calls for that bed and the next day they have a fatal overdose because one wasn’t available.”  

‘I don’t want to lose hope’

Carter and Mack each intend to complete their programs soon. It’s Mack’s fourth time in treatment and his second stint at Serenity Inns. This time, he expects to succeed. He wants to move into Serenity Inns’ apartment building — continuing his recovery and working toward becoming a drug counselor. 

“My thinking pattern has changed,” Mack said. “I’m going to use the tools we learned in treatment and avoid high-risk situations.” 

Carter wants to restore his life to what it was before. He spent years as a carpenter before his life unraveled and he ended up in prison. He knows he can’t take that life back if he returns to drugs.

“I have to be able to say no and not get high. It doesn’t do me any good, and it could kill me,” he said. “I have to associate myself with being clean. I don’t want to lose hope.”

As Smith reflects on her partner’s life and death, she recognizes his journey taught her plenty, too.  “I was hit hard with the reality that I was too embarrassed to ask for help for my husband and best friend,” she said. “I shouldn’t have had that fear.”

Need help for yourself or a loved one?

You can find a comprehensive list of substance abuse treatment services by visiting our resource guide: Where to find substance use resources in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee is losing a generation of Black men to drug crisis 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.

Milwaukee Alderwoman Larresa Taylor said at a news conference Wednesday that she is confident of two things: that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to move its Milwaukee-based facility to the northwest side of the city and that she is going to fight any such move. 

“We are a district that has tremendous potential, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to accept any and everything, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we’re going to allow someone to just come into our district without warning or without knowledge,” she said.

She is not alone in her opposition.

Many officials and activists stood in solidarity with Taylor, including other alderpeople, Milwaukee County Board supervisors, community organizers, business improvement district representatives and state lawmakers.

“People are scared. Kids are scared. This is the time to push back hard,” said Milwaukee Common Council President José Pérez at the news conference. “Whether here or somewhere else in the city, my role as council president is to assure that the laws are followed, and those laws are to protect our families, our most vulnerable.”

What might happen? 

The current building ICE is using downtown as a processing center is being sold, said Taylor, who said her office received a request on Dec. 9 regarding the modification of a building at 11925 W. Lake Park Drive on Milwaukee’s northwest side.

These modifications include a sally port, a type of secured entryway and a chain link fence with privacy slats.

Taylor said that these modifications are consistent with the use of the building as an ICE processing center, where ICE could transport and temporarily hold people.

Nuts and bolts

As far as zoning goes, the West Lake Park Drive location is designated as planned development, rather than traditional zoning.

With traditional zoning, there are clearly delineated uses, but, with planned development, “Everything done gets either approved or denied by the (city of Milwaukee) Department of City Development,’ said Tyler Hamelink, plan examiner from the city of Milwaukee’s Permit and Development Center. 

Taylor said that her office is “definitely in communication with the Department of City Development.”

“That is where our information is coming from,” she added.

Taylor also is planning to meet with the owner of the building to discuss possibilities.

What happens next?

Pérez said that options to fight back include “legal appeal or by the screaming of our voices.”

Milwaukee County Board Supervisor Juan Miguel Martínez announced the formation of a coalition to oppose an ICE facility at this District 9 location.

The coalition is currently solidifying support and mulling its options, said Eddie Cullen, spokesperson for the county board.

“The mayor has not publicly opined about a plan to replace the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility currently located at Broadway and Knapp Street,” said Jeff Fleming, spokesperson for Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson. “The contact the city has had about the proposed northwest side location has come only from private sector building owners.”

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

Milwaukee leaders voice opposition to ICE facility on city’s northwest side 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.

Newly elected Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern has made it a priority to listen to residents on the north and south sides of Milwaukee.

“What I have heard loudly and clearly is everyone wants to feel safe, and everyone wants that safety in their daily lives, and they want that for their children,” Lovern said.

With nearly 30 years of experience as a prosecutor, he’s recognized for his collaborative approach to systemic issues.

Lovern focuses on collaborations outside his office, in part, because he believes these collaborations are necessary to sustainably reduce violence and increase public safety in Milwaukee. 

“I just feel like we need to better connect into one another and develop our own system of public safety – one that is really framed up as community development, economic development, educational development and the public safety comes with that,” he said.

Among Milwaukee’s large network of criminal justice advocates, many say they feel heard by Lovern. 

“Kent has always been thoughtful and responsive to me,” said Emilio De Torre, executive director of Milwaukee Turners, which advocates for various criminal justice initiatives as well as those impacted by the criminal justice system.

Working together

“We can’t unring the bell of a crime, right? If somebody commits a crime, like myself, they need to be prosecuted,” said Adam Procell, who coordinates the monthly resource fair Home to Stay, for formerly incarcerated individuals reentering society. “But after that time period, when somebody gets out, he (Lovern) also understands that if we don’t provide the person with an opportunity to lead an optimal lifestyle, they’re going to have to prosecute them again for another crime.”

For Lovern, people reentering have a unique ability to lead others away from crime. 

“People returning back to communities, looking to be proactive members of their community, looking for ways to help mentor young people and help instruct young people about the pitfalls and the mistakes they made – that’s a very powerful group,” he said.

Milwaukee County has the largest population of people on parole, probation or extended supervision in the state. At the end of October, nearly 13,000 people were under supervision, state correctional data show.

“On the whole, I have heard more interest in reentry across the board … than I have heard at any time in my career,” Lovern said.

Causes of crime

Lovern’s support of reentry is consistent with an overall preventive approach to crime.

He cites the relationship between drug addiction and crime as a good example.

“We’ve had a strong approach to this for some time because right after John (Chisholm) was elected, 18 years ago, we created an early intervention unit, and that was immediately designed to offer opportunities for people to work through a criminal charge … and we’ve seen a lot of success with that.”

WISDOM, a statewide faith-based organization, wants Lovern to expand on this philosophy.

“There’s a lot of room for certainly expanding treatment alternatives to incarceration for people living with mental illness and with addiction issues, and there are many opportunities to divert more people from the system. I’m definitely optimistic that those types of programs will continue and will expand,” said Mark Rice, coordinator of WISDOM’s Wisconsin Transformational Justice Campaign.

Lovern is proud of Milwaukee’s mental health courts, which address cases involving mental health concerns, including assessments of competence and insanity pleas.

An intermediate goal the DA’s office is close to achieving, he said, is increasing the number of cases handled in these courts to 30 cases on an ongoing basis, compared to 10 cases previously. 

“Somebody might come first through the police department or to the DA’s office, and we may be saying, ‘Look, this person isn’t really committing criminal behavior – the bigger concern here is the mental health piece,’” said Lovern.

Current crime and safety risks

Recent data from the Milwaukee Police Department show notable declines since 2023 in violent crimes, especially homicides and non-fatal shootings, and a reduction in most property crimes. 

But certain violent crimes have increased since 2022, including robberies and carjackings.

“There’s no question that there is additional work that needs to be done to drive down the level of violent crime we see in this community,” Lovern said.

The problem, he added, is not evenly spread throughout the city.

A quarter of Milwaukee County homicides since 2023 occurred in only two ZIP codes.

“Everyone’s concerned about crime everywhere, but we know where the concentrations of violent crime exist,” said Lovern, adding that many residents in these neighborhoods tell him that “a strong response” to crime is needed and that these “neighborhoods need to be valued.”

Limits of the office

Rice, of WISDOM, does not want fairness and justice to be lost, however.  

“We still in Wisconsin incarcerate Black people at one of the highest rates in the nation,” he said. “There’s a lot of discretion up front when plea bargains are reached in terms of who gets diverted from the system and who goes in.” 

Rice and others also worry about the systemic limitations of the DA’s office to address such problems.

“Jobs like the DA’s office, mayor’s office, police chief tend to be very difficult, with unforeseen pressures and inherent flaws in how they’ve been systemized over the years,” said De Torre, of Milwaukee Turners. “The real test is how a person acts and what they do within a flawed system.”

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

Criminal justice advocates express high hopes for Milwaukee County’s new district attorney 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.

During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to use executive orders to implement stricter immigration policies, saying that he would “carry out the largest deportation operation of criminals in American history.”

Now with less than a week before Trump’s inauguration, members of Milwaukee’s immigrant community are bracing for the next four years.

“People are taking the (future) administration at their word,”  said Alexandra Guevara, communications director for Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant advocacy organization in Milwaukee.

Guevara said her organization has been fielding phone calls from worried residents.

Here are answers to five key immigration-related questions.

1. Who may be affected?

Unauthorized immigrants can be arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection and may be subject to deportation proceedings.  

Unauthorized immigrants include those who enter the U.S. illegally, overstay a visa or violate terms of admission.

It is unclear how stricter immigration policies will affect those with short-term protections, such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protective Status.

“But I think the writing is on the wall for those” protections, said Marc Christopher, managing attorney and owner of Christopher & De León Law Office, a law firm based in South Milwaukee that practices immigration law.

Trump’s first administration expanded the use of expedited removal, which allows deportation of an unauthorized individual without appearing before an immigration judge.

Many advocates worry that this expansion will happen again, making people who are unable to prove at least two years of continuous physical presence in the country eligible for expedited removal, said Cain Oulahan, attorney with Oulahan Immigration Law.   

Because of the general confusion and shifting political landscape, Guevara worries that there will be an increased risk of racial profiling.

2. What can be expected from local enforcement?

ICE relies on local law enforcement to help carry out its duties, but the level of cooperation with ICE varies greatly depending on the area.

Milwaukee Police Department policy states it does not routinely inquire about immigration status during operations, emphasizing that most immigration violations are civil, not criminal.

However, Christopher thinks it is likely the Trump administration will begin to put more pressure on cities to comply with ICE.

The policy of the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department does not completely shut the door on cooperating with ICE in certain scenarios where someone is detained for committing a crime and is also suspected of being an unauthorized immigrant.

On a practical basis, though, the nature of the crime in this scenario is likely to make a difference, said Ruby De León, staff attorney at Voces.

“It doesn’t seem like day-to-day traffic stops – I don’t believe they would prioritize contacting ICE over these incidents.”

NNS reached out to ICE for comment about its priorities and plans for Milwaukee but did not receive a response. 

3. What rights do people have?

Advocates stress that constitutional protections apply regardless of citizenship status, including the right to remain silent, the right to talk to a lawyer and protection from illegal search and seizure.

If law enforcement asks people to show immigration documentation, they have the right to remain silent or refuse to answer questions.

Law enforcement must have reasonable suspicion of unauthorized presence in the country to demand proof of immigration status, said R. Timothy Muth, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin.

At the same time, if people are not citizens but have documentation that permits them to stay in the country – such as a green card – they are required to keep that documentation with them, Muth said.

If a person is approached at home, a warrant for deportation allows officers to enter a home only if it is signed by a judge.

“And you should ask to see it,” Muth said. “You ask them to slip it under the door or show it to you at your window. You have a right to see the warrant and look at the signature line.”

With potential immigration violations, people have the right to speak to an attorney. But unlike with criminal arrests, the government does not have to provide the lawyer, De León said.

Additionally, individuals with a legitimate fear of persecution or torture in their home country have a right to seek asylum or asylum-type protection, Oulahan said.

4. What should be avoided if approached by law enforcement?

Voces and the ACLU advise against signing documents without a lawyer, running away or lying.

Running away and lying can be separate criminal acts, Muth said.

If people suspect their rights are being violated, such as being unlawfully searched, then they should not physically intervene, Muth added. They should instead document what they can and clearly state that they do not consent.  

Voces and the ACLU also suggest taking photos or videos of agents, noting names and badge numbers.

5. What tangible steps can people take now?

Voces offers workshops to educate people about their rights.

Advocates recommend ensuring documentation is current, applying for passports for U.S.-born children and pursuing citizenship or legal status if eligible, perhaps through an employer or family member.

A city of Milwaukee municipal ID can serve as a form of identification for city residents who cannot get state identification.

Muth recommends carrying documentation showing continuous presence in the country for more than two years, such as a lease agreement, pay stubs or utility bill in a person’s name.

Voces also suggests completing power-of-attorney forms to plan for potential family separation.

Resources

Organizations like Catholic Charities Refugee and Immigration Services, International Institute of Wisconsin and UMOS offer free or low-cost legal assistance regarding immigration and citizenship.

Voces deems the following attorneys trustworthy: Abduli Immigration Law; Christopher & De León Law Office; Layde & Parra; Maria I. Lopez Immigration Law; Oulahan Immigration Law; and Soberalski Immigration Law.

Immigration Advocates Network provides a list of resources.

Immigrant Legal Resource Center provides a downloadable card listing people’s rights and protections.

We’re here to help

Do you have questions we can help get answered? Send an email to dblake@milwaukeenns.org.

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

A new Trump presidency raises questions for immigrants. Here’s what we know. 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.

Vacancies for community corrections staff in Milwaukee County, including probation and parole officers, have nearly tripled since before the pandemic, Wisconsin Department of Corrections data shows. 

Some people are worried that fewer officers will make it harder to stabilize their lives after incarceration. 

“With fewer agents, it can affect the way individuals can participate in programs while in the community and … in the right path to have sustained and continued success,” said Wilfredo Diaz, who is incarcerated at Stanley Correctional Institution.

Gaps in essential services

“The biggest effect is less service to people who need it the most,” said Peggy West-Schroder, former executive director of FREE, a statewide organization that addresses the needs of women and girls who are incarcerated, formerly incarcerated or otherwise affected by the criminal justice system. 

Community corrections staff monitor people on parole, probation and extended supervision – with the goal of enhancing public safety and reducing the likelihood the person will reoffend, according to the Department of Corrections. 

Those under supervision are supposed to be monitored for compliance with standard supervision rules concerning their activities and whereabouts. Depending on the type of conviction, such as sex crimes, there are additional supervision rules. 

Community corrections staff focus on connecting a person to housing, employment and job training resources, among other resources, according to the Department of Corrections. 

This is consistent with the needs of people who are leaving incarceration. Housing and employment are two of the most common needs among those who are reentering, said Conor Williams, who serves as facilitator of the Milwaukee Reentry Council.

Another major need for people post-incarceration is substance abuse treatment, and community corrections staff can help connect people to such resources as well. 

According to a report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, 72% of people on supervision in Wisconsin in 2022 had a “substantial need” for some kind of substance abuse treatment. 

Unfilled positions

Around March 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage of vacancies among security staff and correctional officers inside prisons began to increase, according to data from the Department of Corrections.  

While staffing levels for security positions within prisons have rebounded since the pandemic, the shortage of community-based staff continues. 

At the start of the pandemic, the percentage of unfilled community corrections staff serving Milwaukee County was just over 11%, according to Department of Corrections data. By the end of October, it shot up to more than 29% – the highest of any other correctional region in the state, DOC data also shows.

At the same time, the county has the highest number of individuals who require supervision, noted Rep. Darrin Madison,  D-Milwaukee, who serves on the state’s Assembly Committee on Corrections.  

At the end of August, there were just about 13,000 individuals in the county who were under some form of supervision, correctional data also shows.  

The Department of Corrections did not respond to several requests for comment about vacancy rates among community corrections staff.  

Unmet needs

“I think a lot of people are just falling through the cracks, honestly,” said Juliann Bliefnick, administrative coordinator for FREE, who also is under supervision.

Bliefnick moved to a different part of Wisconsin in 2018 because she was not able to get her needs met in Milwaukee, she said.

The continued rise in unfilled community corrections positions has made the situation worse, Bliefnick said.

“I know people who have been on probation for three years and had seven different agents in those three years,” she said. “You can’t even get anything done when there’s that much turnover.”

West-Schroder and Bliefnick said there is a much higher risk of people being reincarcerated when they do not get the support they need. 

Over 30% of people released from prison in 2020 were reincarcerated in Wisconsin within three years of release, according to publicly available correctional data.

Solutions

Lawmakers and advocates are offering their ideas for attracting more supervision staff. 

“We must raise the wages and restore labor rights of community corrections staff in order to fill positions and retain workers for longer,” said Madison. 

For the latest state budget, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers requested more money to do just this. 

The final budget included a new base pay and pay progression for probation and parole officers.

In October 2023, base pay for new probation and parole staff went from $21.21 to $22.06 per hour. In June, it increased again, to $22.51 per hour. 

So far, the pay changes have not resulted in a decrease in the number of unfilled community corrections positions.

West-Schroder has a different idea. 

“We have talked to DOC (Department of Corrections) several times about implementing in-house peer support services, understanding that officers can’t take on huge caseloads while providing these resources,” she said. “Let people who have been in this position before provide support … .” 

“A tag team approach if you will,” she added.

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

Staff shortages in Milwaukee County create less support for people after incarceration 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.

Denny Tubbs loves his new job as a community health worker, connecting people who have been incarcerated to various resources. 

However, it is challenging.  

“You always have to do your own research and make sure everything applies for the person and is helpful,” he said. 

Tubbs, who works for a local hospital in the Milwaukee area, does not want to waste people’s time. Having left incarceration himself, he knows what it feels like to go from one place to another, trying to put all the post-incarceration pieces together.  

A new website, which launched in November, aims to make the process easier by providing clear, accurate information about resources most often needed by people leaving incarceration. 

‘Comprehensive and logical’

The website is an extension of the Home to Stay monthly resource fair for people who have left incarceration, or who are “reentering” the community after incarceration. 

In the same spirit as the resource fair, a major function of the site is to provide a one-stop shop where people reentering can go for information, support and resources, said Adam Procell, who coordinates the resource fair and has been developing the site. 

The site groups resources by type, such as legal, food, housing and clothing, and can be filtered further by county. 

“It will be helpful to have reentry resources organized in this comprehensive and logical way,” said Conor Williams, who facilitates the Milwaukee Reentry Council, which coordinates reentry resources on a county level.

Tubbs said that the most common thing people ask him about is employment. 

“Anyone that’s getting home from prison, they’ll have a resource directory to go get help wherever they are,” said Shannon Ross, who worked with Procell on the site and is the executive director of The Community, a Milwaukee nonprofit that creates content for and about people who have been incarcerated. 

Additional features

The site also includes information about activities, events and success stories.  

“The success stories are powerful testimonies from peers and should help to foster hope,” said Williams. 

The site will have content for the wider community of people impacted by the criminal justice system as well, including crime survivor resources and systemic reform efforts, said Ross. 

Ross and Procell also are developing an app to mirror the website, which would include even more features. 

“Let’s say you get out and you have ‘driver’s license’ as one of your needs that’s listed. If you’re walking past the DMV, you’ll get a text that says, ‘look to your left’ or ‘in 15 feet, you’ll see one,’” said Procell. 

Ross and Procell collaborate with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections on reentry-related efforts, so another goal is to have departmental staff share the site with people who are incarcerated and reentering.

Less work, more help

After using the site for the first time, Tubbs immediately saw its value. 

“The website eliminates just having to go to Google, searching and typing in something and then going to that,” Tubbs said.  

“Now, you go to one website that brings to you all that information, everything you need.” 

It’s also easy enough for anyone to use – not just reentry professionals but people themselves who need the resources, Tubbs said. 

While it took several years to get the site up and running, that doesn’t mean it’s a complicated idea, Procell emphasized.  

“It’s shocking we haven’t had this yet,” he said. “To me, it’s not rocket science.”

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

One-stop digital shop launches for people leaving incarceration 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.

Attempts to implement a red flag gun control measure in Wisconsin have been rebuffed several times in recent years, but some legislators hope the results of November’s election can change that. 

“When the political dynamic shifts in the Legislature, we have a better shot at not only introducing the (red flag) legislation but giving it a fair public hearing,” said Dora Drake, current state representative and senator-elect. “The people of Wisconsin overwhelmingly support red flag laws.”

Red flag laws, also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders, allow judges to issue court orders to temporarily restrict access to guns by individuals who could pose a threat to themselves or others.

A red flag resolution was last introduced in Wisconsin in July 2023 but was shelved along with other resolutions in April.

In an interview before the election, Drake said she was hopeful that Democrats, who overwhelmingly support red flag laws, would assume a majority control in the Wisconsin Assembly.

That didn’t happen.

Instead, when the Wisconsin Legislature returns, Republicans will be in charge but have the narrowest majority since 2011, when they took control.

A push for stronger gun control laws

Drake said Wisconsin Republican lawmakers have not done enough when it comes to gun control measures. As a result, she said, people are at risk.

“As Democrats, we just want common sense laws on gun control, and that doesn’t mean we’re trying to take away someone’s Second Amendment rights,” she said. “People are tired of life being unnecessarily taken away.”

Jacob Taylor, communications director for Sen. LaTonya Johnson, said he thinks Gov. Tony Evers will once again include Extreme Risk Protection Orders policy in his biennial budget proposal. If Republicans remove it, he said, it will be reintroduced by Johnson and other legislators.

Red flag “legislation will remain a priority for Senator Johnson and other Democrats committed to reducing gun violence in our state,” Taylor said.

Twenty-one other states, including neighboring states Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota, have already enacted red flag measures.

In March, the U.S. Department of Justice launched the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center, which provides training and technical assistance to law enforcement, judges, social service providers and others on how to implement red flag laws.

Gun laws don’t address core issues, opponents say

Nik Clark, founder and chairman of Wisconsin Carry Inc., a group that advocates for Second Amendment protections, said his organization is against red flag laws for a number of reasons.

Specifically, he doesn’t believe the laws will reduce crime.

“Ninety-five percent of crime is committed by people who are already felons and not even allowed to have a gun,” Clark said.

He said red flag laws and other gun control measures such as universal background checks are attempts by the government to weaken due processes for gun owners, making it easier for their weapons to be unlawfully seized.

He said taking away people’s rights to legally bear arms won’t make communities safer.

“If someone is willing to harm someone else, they don’t care about any laws,” Clark said. “We spend so much time on trying to prevent things, and we need to spend more time on preparedness to address them.”

What do Extreme Risk Protection Order laws do?

Nick Matuszewski is the director of policy and program at WAVE Educational Fund, Wisconsin’s oldest anti-violence advocacy group.

He said Extreme Risk Protection Order laws add a layer of protection for communities by improving the system in which a gun can be removed from people in crisis or are looking to harm themselves or others.

These laws “can be applied in cases where family members and other folks in the community are able to notice that there are dangers,” Matuszewski said. 

He said red flag laws are known to reduce firearm suicides and can help prevent mass shootings.

“Unfortunately, there are too many folks in the state legislature . . . beholden to the gun lobby and are unwilling to enact a gun policy that infringes upon that relationship,” Matuszewski said.

What happens next?

Now that the dust has mostly settled from Election Day and Republicans still control the Assembly and Senate, will anything change?

Drake said lawmakers need to work together to move the needle in the right direction when it comes to preventing gun violence.

“We’ve already experienced so much trauma in our own communities, but there are things we can do to be preventative and intervene before more lives are lost, like implementing red flag laws,” she said. 

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

Will Wisconsin enact a red flag gun control law? The results of the recent election may not help 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.

Candles, flowers, crosses and plenty of television cameras have accented the Madison cityscape following a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School that wounded six and killed three, including the 15-year-old shooter. 

Here’s what it looked like this week as community members gathered to support traumatized families and memorialize lives lost.

Police and first responders lined Buckeye Road as investigations continued.

Abundant Life remains closed to students. The United Way of Dane County has established an Abundant Life Christian School Emergency and Recovery Fund, with all proceeds going to those affected by the shooting, according to the school’s website. Supporters can donate online or text help4ALCS to the number 40403.

By Tuesday morning, news media vehicles swarmed where parents would have dropped off their children on normal school days. Reporters conducted interviews along Buckeye Road, lining sidewalks and street parking spaces.

Police tape surrounded the school and neighboring City Church. Flowers and candles lined the sidewalk.

On a chilly Tuesday evening, hundreds mourned at a candlelit vigil at the Wisconsin Capitol.

Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent Joe Gothard and Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway called on the community to support those affected. 

“That is where our focus is right now — caring for everyone who has been impacted,” Rhodes-Conway said. “Let us be a community that takes care of each other.”

She highlighted resources available through the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety and Office of Crime Victim Services, available 24-7 at 1-800-697-8761 or schoolsafety@doj.state.wi.us.

Vigil attendees sang and held their hands near their candles, protecting flames from gusts of wind. They wrote messages on crosses representing the dead.

“We will fight for change so this can’t happen again,” read one message.

Calls to end gun violence have echoed throughout Madison, including a plea from the Wisconsin State Journal’s editorial board to “break America’s curse of gunfire in schools.”

Photos: Madison mourns after Abundant Life Christian School shooting 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.

The school shooting this week at Abundant Life Christian in Madison, Wisconsin, is tragic and senseless, but it’s not at all shocking. Deliberately planned school shootings happen multiple times every school year, mostly in smaller rural and suburban communities. The perpetrators of these attacks are almost always actively suicidal current or former students at the school they target.

Back in April, I wrote an article for the 25th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting. This trend line turned out to be sadly accurate. With the shooting at Abundant Life Christian, there have been five pre-planned attacks at schools this year.

Regardless of how you measure school shootings — guns fired, wounded, killed, active shooter, planned attacks, or near misses — the trend line is going up. While these planned school shootings have taken place since the 1960s, the frequency of the attacks is steadily increasing.

Like the other planned attacks this year in Perry, Iowa; Mount Horeb, Wisconsin; Apalachee, Georgia; and Palermo, California, these incidents have common patterns and connections to prior school shootings. The number of “near misses” where a school shooting almost happens are also going up.

Columbine connection

The father of the 15-year-old Madison, Wisconsin, school shooter posted a Facebook photo of his daughter at a shooting range in August. His cover photo shows Natalie Rupnow, who went by the name Samantha.

Natalie can be seen wearing a black shirt with the name of the band KMFDM. The German industrial rock band’s lyrics were thrust into the dark subculture of school shooters by the students who carried out the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.

In the Columbine “basement tapes,” Dylan Klebold can be seen wearing the same shirt. It’s critical for parents to study prior school shooters, know their names and faces, and recognize symbols like KMFDM that represent idolization of prior attacks.

In January 2024 at Perry High, the 17-year-old student perpetrator entered the school with a shotgun, pistol, knife, and IED inside a duffel bag (important note: both planned attacks at schools in the spring of 2024 involved IEDs). He spent 22 minutes inside a school bathroom where he posted photos of himself with the gun, posted on a Discord “school shooting massacres” channel, posted the same KMFDM song played by the Columbine shooters, and started a livestream on social media.

Insider attacks

The Madison shooting follows the common patterns with planned attacks at schools. The perpetrator was a student (insider), committed a surprise attack during morning classes and died by suicide before police arrived.

Most school shootings are committed by current or former students who are “insiders” at the school and know the security plan/procedures.

Since an insider is someone who is allowed to be inside the school, most of these attacks are committed by current students.

Female school shooter

I co-published an article in the Los Angeles Times: Here’s what is so unusual about the Wisconsin school shooting — and what isn’t:

Inside during morning classes

Pre-planned school shootings usually take place during morning classes or at the start of the school day when the building is open before classes start.

Just like the shooting in Wisconsin this week, the most common outcome is the teenage student shooter commits suicide, surrenders or is subdued by students or staff before police intervene.

Begins and ends in the same room

While “active shooter training” videos produced by the Department of Homeland Security and ads by security tech vendors portray assailants roaming throughout a building while searching for every possible victim, most school shootings begin and end in the same room.

There isn’t much use for a ballistic chalkboard, drop bar lock on the door or panic button when the victims are all in close proximity to an armed assailant who is inside the same room with them.

Following this pattern, the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, took place in a classroom during study hall, and the victims were in the same age group. The teenage shooter didn’t roam the building looking for the elementary school kids; she killed herself before police arrived.

Police usually don’t stop these single shooter insider attacks because they are very short duration incidents that are usually over within the first two minutes.

Concealed handguns

When a student is committing a surprise attack inside a school, the easiest weapon to sneak inside is a handgun. Most students who are arrested inside schools with guns have a handgun hidden inside their backpack. Because of that, it’s not a surprise that a handgun is the most common weapon used during a school shooting by an insider.

During just these deliberately planned attacks over the last 60 years (these victim counts in the chart do not represent all shootings on school property), there have been roughly twice as many victims killed or wounded with handguns versus rifles.

This doesn’t mean that rifles aren’t as dangerous. At Apalachee High, a student committed an insider attack by sneaking an AR-15 into the building inside a posterboard. Until the last decade, AR-15s weren’t cheap and easily accessible. As there continue to be more school shootings involving rifles, this chart will likely even out over time (unless we take meaningful action to stop these attacks).

Preventing the next school shooting

I spoke to NBC 5 Investigates on Monday afternoon right after the school shooting. I said that this shooting at Abundant Life Christian School followed a common pattern in that it was carried out by an “insider” — a student familiar with the school grounds.

“We need to understand the actual nature of this problem and apply solutions towards identifying the student who has a grievance, identifying a student who is talking about students and realizing that these are rarely random acts. All the opportunities to prevent it happen before they ever come to campus with a gun,” Riedman told NBC 5 Investigates.

Riedman said the focus should not be on fortifying schools with additional weapons detectors or metal detectors but focusing on the students’ behaviors that may help foretell a future incident — adding that there is a need to “dispel the myth that these school shootings are committed by scary outsiders,” when data shows that they are often committed by those who are familiar with the school and have a grievance that ends in violence.

“We will probably hear in the coming days about a series of missed warning signs, social media posts, a manifesto and so on,” he said.

Analysis: Six common factors in the school shooting at Abundant Life Christian 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.