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Arresting Developments

How and why arrests and citizen contacts are declining in Milwaukee

December 2024

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In August 2023, the Wisconsin Policy Forum published Under Pressure, a report that explored how the pandemic had impacted the justice system in Milwaukee County and the extent to which the system had recovered to its pre-pandemic functioning. The report found a number of key impacts, including a drop in district attorney charge rates, a rise in case dismissals, and a growing felony backlog in the courts.

The finding that stood out the most, however, was a striking decline in arrests made by the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). We found that from 2018 to 2022, “arrests for [more serious] Part I and [less serious] Part II crimes decreased by 36.8% and 61.0% respectively” in Wisconsin’s largest city. We also noted that the sharp decline had preceded the pandemic and that, unlike some other justice system disruptions, had continued even as the pandemic’s impacts waned.

Subsequently, in our annual report prepared for the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission on citizen complaints, we discovered in November 2023 that police-citizen contacts in Milwaukee for field interviews and traffic stops also had dropped sharply, falling 41.0% from 2021 to 2022.

These precipitous declines in police interactions with citizens clearly merit careful consideration by police officials and policymakers. As we pointed out in Under Pressure, a confluence of factors may be contributing to these changes, including a reduction in sworn officers at MPD and increasing numbers of emergency calls for service, the combined impacts of which have diminished the capacity of police officers to conduct investigations and proactive policing activities.

The declines also have taken place in the wake of a 2018 legal settlement that requires MPD officers to take additional steps to document the facts related to frisks, traffic stops, and other encounters with citizens after plaintiffs argued that MPD was unconstitutionally stopping and frisking citizens without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. They also follow the 2020 murder of George Floyd, which prompted a national conversation about policing tactics in U.S. cities and prompted officials in Milwaukee and many other cities nationwide to explore various reform efforts. Additionally, 2018 marked the transition from longtime police chief Edward Flynn to Alfonso Morales; over the course of 2020 and 2021, Jeffrey Norman assumed departmental leadership.

In this report, supported by the Greater Milwaukee Committee (GMC) and Argosy Foundation, we seek to dig deeper into the notable change in policing in the city of Milwaukee and provide further insight into the following questions:

  • What factors are causing the reductions in arrests and citizen contacts and why did arrests begin to plummet even before the pandemic and George Floyd-inspired protests?
  • What impacts – both positive and negative – might these reduced interactions be having on public safety, city residents, and police-community relations in Milwaukee?
  • What types of policy and procedural changes, if any, should be considered to respond to these recent trends?

Overall, we seek to convey an updated and more complete understanding of these trends so that policymakers and citizens can determine whether corrective actions are needed and what such actions might entail.