The Watchman (right) with Blackbird in Bay View
The Watchman has gotten responses from at least a couple people from Riverwest, wondering how they might be able to offer assistance. If you'd like to read more about The Watchman and Riverwest, I blogged about it quite a bit, and a good starting point is HERE. What Watchman is suggesting is perfectly legal, unarmed citizen foot patrols.
This is not a new concept to Riverwest. You can read two brief articles at the Riverwest Currents HERE. The first is written by the Currents editor and is on a group called the Riverwest Walkers. I’m not sure if they’re still active, but I’ll find out.
The second article is written by yours truly and is on a group I was part of, started by my awesome tough girl roller derby friends, the Brew City Bruisers. The Bruisers are no less than a team of superheroes in my opinion.
Watchman would like to see people walk with him or in separate groups that will stay in contact with him (or possibly patrol by car or bike).
A second way people could participate is by hanging out on their porch(with the nice weather and all) and offering a “checkpoint.” Meaning you can be the watchman(or woman) of your block, and the foot patrols will swing by periodically to say “hi” and see what’s going on.
Lastly, people can help out by e-mailing The Watchman (or myself) with suggestions, ideas, or simply to talk about what is going on in the neighborhood.
The Watchman: wi.watchman@gmail.com
Tea Krulos: teakrulos@gmail.com
Here is some words from The Watchman himself:
“In discussing what we'd like to accomplish in Riverwest, I've brought up talking to people in the community. We want to speak with these people, and if people want to meet with me to find out what I'm all about and discuss what we can do together to better the community, I'm all for it.
There are a lot of things everyone can do to help. We are still in planning stages of how we want to take this on, and part of that is figuring who will be involved and to what capacity. To begin figuring out just what it is you could help with, I'd like to know a little more about you and what you might be interested in doing.
We then can figure out what would be best for you to do and coordinate that with the big picture. Tea and I have discussed meeting with people who are interested in helping and coming up with better ideas on how to proceed. We have not yet set a time, date, or place for such a meeting, but it will likely be an upcoming Saturday afternoon/evening in Riverwest.
Some general ideas range from just watching out for your neighbors and calling police if you see any type of criminal activity to doing coordinated patrols with us. Another idea being passed around is to have people providing checkpoints for us on patrols.
Any suggestions are welcome. We are very much open to hearing other people's ideas.”
I've just had a couple people tell me that there was a shooting outside of Quarters (900 E. Center Street) last night with one person dead, one injured.
ReplyDeleteIt's sad that the Milwaukee police department is so ineffective that we need to do this. I understand that it's good to watch your neighborhood, but how many times have I called the police to get no response, blown off, or an extremely slow response?
ReplyDeleteHey anonymous1, we always need to "do this." Watch. Report. Care. And followup, don't accept it if you don't get a response. If you persist and others do as well, you will get a response. I can also say that I have had amazing responses sometimes, virtually instantly. Or else when we've fed the PD all the info they need to lie in wait and nail a toad with a car full of guns, drugs, and money, they have.
ReplyDeleteIt's not really accurate to say MPD is ineffective, as a blanket statement. They are very big and complex. They are good and effective at a lot of things. Certain chunks and bits and individuals in the PD are stellar. There are some things having to do with communications and long-term cooperation/organizing with residents that are relatively new and underdeveloped with MPD and many PDs. But in cases like this, I don't think you can blame them.
Here is what seems to have happened: lots of people have been muttering for a couple of years at most, definitely in the last year, about this club getting to be problematic. (Same for Timbuktu lately.)
Not a lot seems to be specified in these rumblings and I'd guess not many calls to police have been made. You can look at SpotCrime.com and from june 09 onward, all that data is mostly based on 911 or the main local emergency line. It is the calls logged between the dispatch and regular uniformed squads.
I am guessing nobody had chats about the club with the police at their community meetings, no block watch interventions, no sitdowns with the owners. This is all stuff that BIDs, community organizers, and neighbor groups do in other neighborhoods. It is proactive and preventative.
Failing to do this stuff means a problem bar gets to be comfortable for some thugs and surprise surprise, eventually bullets fly.
Do you really expect MPD to somehow anticipate that and get there to stop it from happening? It won't happen when residents and business owners help nip the problems in the bud, and then no bullets.
The police always have encouraged legal, organized walks and these other types of organized vigilance so it's not as if you have to do this to compensate for a lack of policing. You do it to support the policing that is happening all the time. Again, look at SpotCrime and see where they are active.
Just wanted to mention that a short blurb about this blog was featured in the "Further Down Stream" column (a collection of odds and ends news pieces) in the print version of our community newspaper, the Riverwest Currents, which has been reporting on neighborhood heroes and villains most of the 2000's.
ReplyDeleteI am gonna laugh when you get shot. get a police degree if you wanna do something, instead of running around fulfilling some movie fantasy. until you realize that good luck not dieing, and move out of your moms house and get some pussy.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't sign my name to a comment that stupid either.
ReplyDeleteTroll score: 0 out of 10.