Of all police shootings a black officer shooting an armed black man doesn't seem like it would be one to set people off. Article below is written by a long time resident of Milwaukee talking about what's happened over the past several decades in his neighborhood. Kind of depressing read actually.
Causey: Neighborhood caught in downward spiral
Why did this happen? That's the question many are asking in the aftermath of the fury that erupted in the Sherman Park area Saturday night.
Why did this happen? That's the question many are asking in the aftermath of the fury that erupted in the Sherman Park area Saturday night.
As a person who lives less than one mile from where the BP gas station was torched to the ground late Saturday, I can tell you that the neighborhood — once the place in Milwaukee for upwardly mobile, middle-class African Americans — has been balancing on the tipping point for years.
The fatal police shooting of an armed black man around 3:30 p.m. Saturday may have provided the spark, but the neighborhood has been on high simmer, with the temperature rising each year since the Great Recession, as the longed-for recovery never arrives.
The shooting occurred after a traffic stop of two men in a car led to a foot chase. Sylville Smith, 23, armed with a handgun, was fatally shot by a police officer.
I've lived near Sherman Blvd. and Capitol Drive for nearly four decades. The majority of people living in the area are hard-working individuals who just want to keep their neighborhood and families safe. However, in recent years many have become thankful just to make it home at night because of the violence and recklessness of some of their neighbors.
I have been a witness over the years as the loss of family-sustaining jobs, the breakdown of families, and the sense of despair about a better future have cast an ever-expanding cloud over the neighborhood.
Dramatic changes
Things have changed drastically in Milwaukee since the 1970s when my parents purchased their first home. Manufacturing jobs were plentiful and provided a livable wage to workers with a high school diploma. Those jobs, at places like Master Lock and Jay's Potato Chips, helped black families achieve their dream of home ownership in and around Sherman Park, where they hoped to build the foundation for a better future for their families.
Nearby, at the corner of Capitol Drive and Hopkins Street, are the former Tower Automotive and A.O. Smith sites that employed thousands of workers who welded the frames used by America's car manufacturers. The city has built Century City there to lure businesses back. Century City is a pretty building, but it's empty.
I'm not making excuses for anybody. There is no excuse for burning down businesses, setting cars on fire, shooting at squad cars, attacking reporters trying to do their jobs and turning a neighborhood into a war zone. There is no excuse for the rash of car thefts and car jackings, the property destruction, the violence that causes businesses to stay away from Century City when they recently filled the rejuvenated Menomonee Valley.
I'm describing what I've seen, a cycle of one thing leading to another, how the loss of jobs breaks some people and families, how self-destructive behavior multiplies, how drug use and crime proliferate — how the negative cycle feeds on itself, becoming a whirlpool, sucking a community downward, taking the innocent as well as the guilty.
Mayor Tom Barrett said during a midnight news conference that this is not the Milwaukee he knows. It's not the Milwaukee I knew either. It's definitely not the Milwaukee my parents tried to give to me.
Milwaukee had 145 homicide victims last year, a 69% increase from 2014. The city has counted more than 80 homicides so far this year, with five of those occurring between Friday and Saturday.
Barrett asked every resident of the neighborhood to help the police restore order. Ald. Russell Stamper II stated during the news conference that people are hurting and in pain, and he pledged to find funding to address the needs of the community. We've heard all this before. It's going to take a lot more.
Yes, it's going to take a more active and engaged mayor and common council willing to do whatever they can to help neighborhoods where many law-abiding residents feel long-ignored. Yes, it's going to take a more active and engaged criminal justice system that doesn't slap violent young offenders on the wrist.
It's also going to take a more active and engaged governor willing to sit at the table with local leaders and help create solutions for the city. Wisconsin can't be "Open for Business" everywhere except Milwaukee's poor neighborhoods — they remain a vital part of this state, even if mostly Democrats live there.
It's going to take more than government leaders. It's going to take a long-term commitment by people inside and outside Milwaukee, most of whom aren't government officials, to find more ways to connect family supporting jobs to people who desperately need them; to prepare people for their jobs even if they have lived through traumatic childhoods; to start building a cycle where one upward step leads to another.
I saw one of those steps taken Sunday morning, when dozens of people showed up outside the burned-out BP gas station with plastic bags and tools to clean up their neighborhood. The people of goodwill who live in this neighborhood have not lost hope. They are willing to do the hard work it will take to clean up this mess.
How many of us are willing to join them?
http://www.jsonline.com/story/opini...neighborhood-caught-downward-spiral/88728760/
