Milwaukee Common Council President Ashanti Hamilton and all but three city aldermen announced a multi-pronged approach to curbing violence in Milwaukee over the summer. Though the effort will include the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD), Hamilton said it will focus on fighting crime by starting at the community level.
“This is an effort to take a holistic approach to what the quality of life should be in [the] communities that we all represent,” he said.
Aldermen Michael Murphy, Bob Bauman and Nik Kovac, who represent the far West Side, downtown and East Side, respectively, did not attend.
Milwaukee saw 153 homicides in 2015; 125 of those were gun deaths. In 2009, fewer than 45 percent of black males in Milwaukee were employed, according to a report by UW-Milwaukee professor Marc Levine. Milwaukee’s poverty rate is almost twice the national average, and more than 40 percent of Milwaukee children live in poverty.
The initiative will engage community members, churches and pastors in Milwaukee’s most challenged neighborhoods, with the goal of identifying at least 500 fathers to positively influence their families and communities.
Read more about the initiative from Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.
