SUPER MOON PATROL

The super moon- as photographed by The Watchman in the woods of Riverwest

Note from Tea Krulos: On Saturday, the night of the "super moon," local Milwaukee RLSHs The Watchman and Blackbird hit the streets in two neighborhoods- Riverwest and Bay View. Since I couldn't join them because of a prior engagement, I asked The Watchman to share an account of the night, which is pasted below.

Here is my summary of the patrol Blackbird and I did Saturday night:

Blackbird and I met up in Bay View around 9:30pm and went over our plans for the night. We wanted to patrol Riverwest on foot to make sure people there still knew we were around since the last couple times out there we had stuck mainly to rolling patrols and wore plain clothes while on foot. We also wanted to spend some time in Bay View because there have been recent reports of shootings and unprovoked beat downs in the area. We decided to do a short rolling patrol through Bay View before visiting the homeless camp in Riverwest.

The Watchman

The first problem of the night was an obstruction in the road. Somebody had used a large branch to prop up a wood pallet right in the middle of the road for no other apparent reason than for the sake of blocking traffic. Blackbird pulled to the side of the road and I jumped out and removed the obstruction, placing the pallet and branch up on the curb and out of the way.

From there, we went to pick up a couple bundles of firewood and headed off to the homeless camp. As we walked down the trail leading to the camp, we could hear loud voices coming from across the river, which we determined was from some young people partying in the woods. We agreed that we would go around to the other side of the river to make sure the people were being safe after stopping at the camp. Using night vision at the camp, we were able to see a few of the partiers moving around across the river, but were not able to see well enough to get a count or descriptions. By the time we checked on the homeless folks and dropped off the firewood and some water, the party broke up and left.

Blackbird

Since there was no longer anything to check out in the woods, we covered some more ground by vehicle before beginning a foot patrol up and down Center Street and surrounding areas in Riverwest. Though not real late, traffic through there had slowed down quite a bit, but the overall attitude of those who remained seemed positive. We talked to some people, allowed some of them to take pictures with us, and even saw some familiar faces. Among them were the gentleman who once repeatedly referred to Blackbird as "Blackberry" (something we still joke about) and another who once could not recall my name while being interviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Both apologized for their previous errors. Afterward, we spent some time watching a couple suspicious looking characters who seemed to be scoping for lone people walking to their cars, but that went nowhere.

After that, we headed back to Bay View where we spent the remainder of the night walking around looking for signs of the types of problems reported there lately. Thankfully, it was a quiet night despite the full moon, or perhaps thanks to the "super" moon.

-The Watchman