When he leaves the office at the end of the week, James Hutchinson, captain of the Milwaukee Police Department’s Homicide Unit, can’t wait for Monday so he can get back to work solving murders.

“I could have retired six months ago,” he said. “But I know that the work we do really makes an impact on people’s lives.”

That work doesn’t always go as planned. Last year Milwaukee homicide detectives cleared 78% of the 132 murder cases they investigated — the highest rate in years. From 2020 to 2023, when murder rates soared during the pandemic, clearance rates fluctuated between 50% and 59%, leaving many families without closure.

For those awaiting justice, Hutchinson said he wants them to know that his team of 33 investigators remains committed to solving their case.

“From the first two weeks to a month, or months or years down the line, we’re equally as committed to solving a murder as we were today.”

That work begins as soon as a homicide is reported, he said.

Homicide investigations in Milwaukee

Typically, said Hutchinson, uniformed officers are the first to arrive on the scene. They work to establish an incident command area, set parameters using police tape, control crowds and prevent any disruption of evidence.

Patrol officers are also the first to seek out witnesses and spot cameras.

Detectives are not far behind. As soon as a homicide is reported, Hutchinson said, a team of detectives and supervisors will immediately head to the scene and start their investigation.

Once they arrive, they assemble the information that’s already been collected, gather more clues, find additional witnesses and hopefully identify suspects. Investigations take place in homes, city streets and hospitals or even at the medical examiner’s office.

Critical, Hutchinson said, is the early stages of that investigation.

“Those first moments, those first hours, those first minutes are very important. Evidence starts to disappear. People go to different places. It could be as simple as video evidence being recorded over. We focus and attack an investigation very fast, very intensively,” he said.

When homicides happen in bunches, as was often the case during the pandemic, resources are pulled from other units to help.

The team approach

Hutchinson said MPD investigates homicides differently from any other large city in America, using a team approach rather than dedicating detectives to specific cases. Homicide investigators working that shift will begin the investigation and then debrief the next shift before handing off the case.

“They brief the incoming shift on what occurred, what was accomplished and what still needs to be done,” Hutchinson said. “That cycle continues until we run out of things we need to do right now.”

Utilizing this method allows for a continuous investigation, but it also creates some problems, acknowledges Hutchinson.

“Because there is this team concept, you have a potential for having not as much accountability per person,” he said. 

He said his division works to alleviate that problem by relying on sergeants and others, including himself, to oversee investigations and follow-ups.

Communication challenges

Another issue with not dedicating specific investigators to specific cases is communication.

“We love to get information, but we are not good at checking back in with the family and letting them know we haven’t forgotten,” he said. “We acknowledge that we have room for improvement.”

Not receiving regular updates from homicide investigators is a common complaint among family members of victims, especially those whose cases remain unsolved.

Brenda Hines, whose son Donovan was murdered in 2017, tracked down officers in person when they wouldn’t respond to her calls. 

“It’s a bad process,” she said. 

She founded the Donovan Hines Foundation in honor of her son and to help other families by providing grief support, mental health and other resources to residents. 

Hines said she believes police can still solve her son’s murder if anything should come up.

“They just don’t have enough evidence yet,” she said.

Janice Gorden, who created Victims of Milwaukee Violence to help families access funeral support and other services, said she believes police are doing what they can to solve homicides and work with families.

But families, she said, will not be satisfied until they have answers. Often it gets to the point where they become focused on investigating the case themselves.

“They have way more information than sometimes the detectives do,” Gorden said. “They drive themselves crazy trying to find answers to who killed their loved one.”

Both Hines and Gorden have worked with mothers to arrange meetings with police and the district attorney’s office to get information about homicide cases.

Hutchinson said two new victim support positions were created recently to help improve communication with families.

Notifying the family

Hutchinson worked his way up the ranks of MPD, first as a patrol officer, then gang squad, detective, robbery and vice squad, and as a homicide detective from 2008 to 2020.

Before becoming captain, he has often taken on the grim task of letting a family member know a loved one was killed.

“Making a death notification is one of the hardest parts of this job. It’s incredibly heartbreaking,” he said. “The range of reactions, you can’t even anticipate. There are completely stoic people that accept what you’re telling them, to some incredibly violent reactions.”

A much better feeling, he said, is when they are able to notify a family that an arrest has been made. But even that’s a struggle.

From investigation to charges

Although police might make an arrest in a homicide case, that doesn’t mean that charges will be filed.

Police, Hutchinson said, only need probable cause to make an arrest. The burden of proof at the district attorney’s office, which files homicide charges, is higher.

“The DA’s office has to be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said. “Many times we will make an arrest for probable cause, but we can’t get to that level.”

What often happens, Hutchinson said, is that officers will bring a case to the DA’s office or discuss what evidence they have and then talk about whether more is needed to file charges.

While that does bring some frustration, admits Hutchinson, it’s better than arresting the wrong person.

“My worst nightmare I would have in the world is to have the wrong person held accountable for a crime,” he said.

Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern acknowledges that the work to hold someone accountable for murder can be burdensome on families seeking justice.

“Obviously, there is a significant gap between the evidence needed to make an arrest versus the evidence needed to successfully prosecute a case,” Lovern said.

The reason for caution and continued dialogue with officers in hopes of building a strong case is because there’s no room for error.

“We really have one opportunity with a particular suspect to bring forward charges and we want to get it right. Not only for the person charged, but the victim’s family and the integrity of the system,” he said.

‘We never forget about the victims’

Depending on the time of year and other circumstances, homicide investigation units can get extremely busy, Hutchinson said. Even when pulling resources from other units, it can still impact the amount of time investigators have for each case.

On the flip side, he said, sometimes they’ve hit the point where they don’t have anything left to do at the moment. But, he said, he wants families to know that victims are more than just a name to them.

“They are someone’s family member or friend, and the day they died is probably the worst day of many people’s lives,” he said.

Whether it’s been days, months or years, he wants family members to know his unit remains committed to solving their murder.

“Everyone can be assured that we never forget about the victims,” he said. “There is no replacement for their loved one, but it feels great to be able to notify the family that we have made an arrest.”

How you can help

Anyone with information on homicides is asked to contact Milwaukee police at 414-935-7360, or to remain anonymous, contact Crime Stoppers at 414- 224-TIPS.

What happens when someone is murdered in Milwaukee? An inside look at homicide investigations 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 Milwaukee Police Administration Building downtown. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

A $6.96 million settlement — the second largest in Milwaukee’s history — stems from a federal civil lawsuit which accused Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) detectives of fabricating evidence against Danny Wilber, framing him for a 2004 homicide. Wilber spent 18 years in prison for a crime he always asserted he didn’t commit. 

Wilber’s homicide conviction was ultimately overturned after he was found to have had an unfair trial in a federal appeals court. On May 8, the city’s Judiciary and Legislation Committee recommended approving the settlement. Yet before it was approved, elected leaders expressed discontent that taxpayers in Milwaukee would be footing the bill. 

Further approvals will be needed from the Common Council and Mayor Cavalier Johnson. In a statement, Wilber said that the settlement “clearly establishes what I have truthfully maintained at all times — that I was completely innocent and that it was physically impossible that I committed this murder.” 

Ald. Mark Chambers Jr. called the judge in Wilber’s case “incompetent”, while Ald. Robert Bauman said the judge made “some pretty bad decisions,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Council President Jose Perez said the city was “paying the price for some bad judgement and it’s inexcusable.” Yet it was city of Milwaukee police detectives, not a judge, who manipulated evidence in the case, and laid the groundwork for the settlement nearly 20 years after they arrested Wilber. 

In January 2004, Wilber was at an after-hours party when, according to a federal complaint, he got into an argument with another party guest. As more people got involved the argument became a physical altercation which was being watched by another guest, David Diaz. At some point during the fight, someone standing behind Diaz shot him in the back of the head at close range. Diaz died instantly, and everyone who’d been in the kitchen panicked and left. 

The complaint states that physical evidence from the scene showed that Diaz had been shot from behind. One of the named defendants in the civil action, Milwaukee police detective Thomas Casper, collected measurements from the scene and recovered bullet fragments that showed that Diaz had been shot from behind. Diaz’s autopsy corroborated those findings. “It was and is undisputed that, at the time of the shooting, Plaintiff Wilber was inside the kitchen and in front of David Diaz,” the complaint reads. 

Despite the ballistic evidence, MPD detectives honed in on Wilber as the main murder suspect. Detectives didn’t look into multiple other plausible suspects, and went as far as to fabricate witness statements, the complaint states. Two other detectives, Randolph Olson and Louis Johnson, interrogated a witness to the shooting, Richard Torres, who was wanted for probation violations and turned himself in for questioning. Olson and Johnson used “threats and intimidation” to compel Torres to give a false statement by threatening to charge him with murder, and making clear that they were interested in Wilber as the shooter. Around the same time, another detective, Gregory Schuler, interrogated another witness, Jeranek Diaz. The complaint accuses Schuler of fabricating “substantial parts of a statement” from Diaz, including that at the time of the shooting, David Diaz had just turned around and was about to leave the kitchen when he was shot. Jeranek Diaz never said those statements, and was not allowed to review the typewritten version of his statement. Notes that Schuler allegedly took during the interview were never presented either to the prosecution or to Wilber’s attorneys. 

Other detectives interviewed witnesses who had a learning disability and said after the shooting that she saw her brother pat himself down to check if he’d been shot. The detectives, Timothy Duffy and Joseph Erwin, wrote that the witness ducked her head and when she looked back up, everyone was running out the door and she hadn’t seen her brother. Duffy and Erwin did not read the witness’s statement back to her, and she signed the statement without knowing what it said. 

One witness who was detained overnight without food, water or access to showers was told after interviews by detectives that he was “not telling us what we need to hear”, before being returned to a cell. Eventually, the exhausted witnesses agreed to make false statements if he was allowed to go home. Detectives also manipulated scene diagrams, and Wilber was charged with first-degree intentional homicide with a dangerous weapon in February 2004. Prosecutors heavily relied on evidence compiled by detectives, as well as false witness statements. 

Wilber spent 18 years in prison, with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office formally dismissing his case in May 2022. In order to carry out what the complaint describes as a “conspiracy,” the detectives would have needed to act alongside other MPD investigative, supervisory and command personnel, as well as “other unknown co-conspirators.” Casper would eventually go on to become one of the first commanders for the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team (MAIT), a network of detectives that focuses on civilian deaths by police, and which has been criticized for conducting problematic death reviews. MAIT selected a different commander in 2020, and Casper died by the time Wilber’s lawsuit reached its conclusion.

“The evidence that came out in this case showed that this was not a series of mistakes by a squad of incompetent detectives,” Wilber said in a statement. “No, it was a conscious plan to construct a false case against me with manufactured witness statements in order to put me behind bars. It was a plan that they have used again and again against Black, Indigenous and other poor people of color. In this case, like in many others, the prosecutors and the Court system were, from beginning to end, vindictively complicit in my wrongful conviction and incarceration. This settlement delivers a measure of justice against the police who framed me, but what about the prosecutor who presented the false evidence at trial? What about the Judge who allowed it and violated my constitutional rights? What about the Assistant Attorney General who fought for years to keep me in a cage after my conviction was overturned and took the case all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States? They’re all complicit and because of the corrupt system, they get to walk away, free to repeat the egregious misconduct under the guise of due processes.”

Attorneys Ben Elson and Flint Taylor of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, who represented Wilber, said that the city would be paying him nearly $7 million because its detectives framed an innocent man. The attorneys addressed statements made by local elected officials, who were quick to blame the judge and other non-city government figures in the case. “Instead of passing the blame onto others, the City should publicly acknowledge its role in Danny Wilber’s wrongful conviction and make a sincere apology.”

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.

The Milwaukee Police Department has a hiring problem.

It can’t find enough recruits to offset retirements and the departure of others. 

Ald. Lamont Westmoreland, who represents the 5th District on the city’s Northwest Side, said residents are feeling the impact.

“Lack of police presence, long wait times on calls, all tied back to the lack of sworn officers that MPD has,” Westmoreland said.

Leon Todd, executive director of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, which has primary responsibility in the city for recruiting, testing and hiring new officers, agrees.

“Having more officers and growing the size of MPD will do a host of things to improve public safety,” he said. “Shorter response times, higher clearance rates, more proactive time for officers to do follow-up or investigative work and have greater visibility and engagement opportunities in the community all drive down crime in various ways.”

In 2023, the Milwaukee Fire and Police Academy graduated 101 new police officers, while the Milwaukee Police Department lost 112 officers to retirement, resignation or termination, Westmoreland said.

The pace of recruitment is slow again this year, with departures of officers once again outpacing new police cadets.

The city also risks missing mandates that require beefing up the number of police officers in the city as part of the Act 12 Wisconsin funding law or face millions in fines. Act 12 created avenues to implement local sales taxes as a way to pump more money into the budget and offset spiraling costs.

“I have no issue with the mandate because I do think that we need more officers on the streets,” Westmoreland said. “At the same time, you can’t force people to apply for the job.”

Recruitment challenges and efforts

Westmoreland said Milwaukee is among a number of urban cities that are facing similar hiring challenges, including competition from better-paying suburban police departments with less dangerous work environments.

“We can’t use that as a crutch,” Westmoreland said. “We’ve got to be creative with the approach of recruitment.”

Todd said the Fire and Police Commission has made several adjustments over the past few years to find new police, including hiring two staff members dedicated to recruitment, participating in more community events and job fairs and ramping up marketing efforts to city residents.

“One of the things we’ve tried to do is highlight the stories of officers to let residents know that they are people that care about the community and want to help make it safer,” Todd said.

The commission also now accepts applications year-round instead of shorter windows of a few months. It also changed the testing process to allow for online entrance exams, eliminating additional barriers for applicants. 

Changes since pandemic and civil unrest

Kristine Rodriguez, a deputy for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office who also supports recruitment efforts, said her organization faces similar challenges as MPD, especially since COVID and the George Floyd protests.

“Some of the things that happened during that time still resonate with people,” she said.

She said pay is also an issue, with suburban departments offering hiring bonuses and higher starting pays. They also work fewer hours sometimes, she said, as staffing shortages can result in mandatory overtime and fewer days off.

The current starting salary for recruits at MPD is $47,673.69 and increases to $63,564.75 upon graduation from the academy. Police officers can earn up to $84,743.87 while supervisors and other specialists can earn more.

‘Under a microscope’

Another possible deterrent, Rodriguez said, is the scrutiny officers face nowadays.

“You’re under a microscope 24/7 and that might scare some candidates away,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said that her department places a heavy emphasis on community engagement, cultural competency and mental health training and that its relationship with the community has improved. She said the job itself is extremely fulfilling.

“We know that our heart is in the right place, and that’s what makes the job the most rewarding is doing good for the community,” she said.

Others weigh in

Gregory Barachy, who’s worked for the Milwaukee Fire Department for 29 years, said he thinks that being a police officer is probably less desirable now because of the danger and the lack of accountability for those who commit crimes.

“Crime is insane here, car theft is an epidemic along with the driving that goes with it,” Barachy said. “And then if you happen to arrest someone, they are released without penalty to do it again. Why would someone want to risk their lives for that?”

Barachy, who recently began a position with the Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative, said the fire department has also experienced a huge reduction in applicants.

“We only had a list of 250 this time, while 20 years ago the list was 10,000,” he said.

Carla Jones, whose partner was mistaken as a suspect and arrested by Brookfield police in November 2023, said she believes fewer people want to become police officers because of a lack of support they receive.

“Some of the main reasons people are joining law enforcement less and less is the lack of morale or real support officers are given,” Jones said. “They’re not doing that because they’re working on a reactive mentality.” 

A call to disinvest

Devin Anderson is membership and campaign director for the African American Roundtable, which launched the Liberate MKE campaign in 2019 to push for divestment in law enforcement and more investment in community programming.

“In order to build a more just Milwaukee, we have to be moving money away from police and policing,” Anderson said. “We’d rather see fully funded libraries.”

Anderson said that residents want more safety and that some view policing as the only way to achieve that. But, he said, creating a safer city requires addressing root causes of crime, which the police department doesn’t do.

“They respond after something happens,” Anderson said. “What people actually want is more investments in their neighborhood.”

Testing a challenge

Two years ago, Eddie Juarez-Perez saw an ad seeking new cadets for the Milwaukee Police Department.

“I decided to answer the call for service,” he said.

Juarez-Perez applied and passed the background check and written and physical exam. But he failed a psychological exam taken by all potential recruits.

“They said I was deemed not suitable for the position,” Juarez-Perez said.

He isn’t giving up.

“I look at being a police officer as being a public servant,” Juarez-Perez said. “I love my city and want to help people have a good quality of life here.”

Rodriguez said she’s been working to recruit more women involved in law enforcement. But some she said are unable to meet the physical requirements needed to join.

“I think that definitely is a barrier for a lot of women who don’t have upper body strength or have time to train,” she said.

MPD hosts fit camps and other support to help potential cadets meet physical and testing requirements to become an officer.

“We’re trying to give people the best opportunity to prepare and succeed,” Todd said.

For more information

The Fire and Police Commission is recruiting for its next academy cohort.

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.

Help wanted: Can the Milwaukee Police Department fix its hiring problem? 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.