Halfway through 2020, on top of a deadly pandemic and rising tensions between police and the public, Milwaukee has been tormented by a homicide rate not seen in this city since the crack epidemic of the 1990s.
As of the July Fourth holiday, 86 people have been killed in homicides in Milwaukee in 2020, which is double the number of victims at the same time in 2019, according to police.
Should that number again double to 172 victims over the next six months, Milwaukee will face a homicide reckoning it hasn’t seen in recent memory. It would top the 165 lives lost in 1991, during the height of the troubled 1990s in which more than 100 people were killed every year and more than 120 were killed in nine out of 10 years.
The set-up for the next six months comes after another tragic rash of violence in which five people were shot and killed, including a 16-year-old girl, over a 20-hour period between June 30 and July 1. The numbers are so alarming that Mayor Tom Barrett publicly pleaded for peace over the long and hot holiday weekend on Friday.
"I am very troubled by what I'm seeing in Milwaukee this year," he said.
And it’s all happening at a time when multiple forces — all inter-related —are destroying any semblance of normalcy: the coronavirus pandemic; the economic downturn; the heightened levels of racial tension, particularly involving police; and several bouts of civil unrest.
“Our hope is that this is an anomaly year just given all the different crises that we’re dealing with this year,” said Reggie Moore, director of the city’s Office of Violence Prevention. And it’s all happening at a time when multiple forces — all inter-related —are destroying any semblance of normalcy: the coronavirus pandemic; the economic downturn; the heightened levels of racial tension, particularly involving police; and several bouts of civil unrest.
Read more: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/07/06/milwaukee-homicide-rate-soars-bullets-flying-everywhere/5377337002/
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