Crime is ravaging Milwaukee. In a twenty-four hour period this past weekend, twenty-three people were injured in shootings with four dead, one of them a seventeen-year-old girl. This past spring a report found that Milwaukee ranks in the top three for largest cities with the highest violent crime rate. Milwaukee police department has had a shortage of officers for several years, with significant drops beginning in twenty twenty and peaking between twenty twenty-one and twenty twenty-two.
The people of Milwaukee deserve better. Government, community, business, and religious leaders must come together to do more than talk about this issue. Police shortage is part of the problem, but so is the utter breakdown of the family unit over decades. Children growing up without fathers are much more likely to commit crimes or be the victim of crime.
