Mayor Cavalier Johnson and Police Chief Jeffery Norman held a press conference this evening detailing three new ordinances being put in place to curb the increasing violence plaguing Milwaukee; a city that has seen about 30 gun-related deaths since Friday: the implementation of a city-wide curfew, the relocation of food trucks that attract loitering and upscaling police presence downtown and in neighborhoods where violence is escalating.
The curfew that was put in place after Friday’s mass shooting at Deer District that left 17 wounded is here to stay for now. Those under 17 years old need to be off of the streets by 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. on weekends. Johnson said the police will strengthen their enforcement of the curfew.
“At my direction, the police will perform enhanced enforcement of the curfew that we already on the books,” Johnson said. “So we’re putting up signage to make it clear and we’re enforcing the curfew in Milwaukee.”
He made it clear that downtown is not the only location in need of upped supervision. He said while downtown is the heart of the city, crime is all over it and it needs to be mellowed.
“More police will be deployed to downtown as the situation warrants,” Johnson said. “We will reconfigure the location of food trucks where folks have been congregating and participating in this poor activity. There will be other approaches that we’re considering as well and we will implement if crowd violence continues, not just downtown but other places as well. This is not a strategy strictly for downtown.”
Norman highlighted three separate shootings that took place on Friday, May 13: the triple homicide that occurred at 9:10 p.m. north of M.L.K Dr., a single-victim shooting that happened at 10:30 p.m. near Water St and the aforementioned shooting that transpired at 11:09 p.m. near Fiserv Forum.
In all, there were 11 guns recovered of which nine of them were fired, 11 arrests were made; 10 from the Deer District shooting and one from the triple homicide, all aged between 19-30.
