Halfway through 2020, on top of a deadly pandemic and rising tensions between police and the public, Milwaukee has been tormented by a homicide rate not seen since the crack epidemic of the 1990s, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. As of July 4, there have been 86 homicides, double the number of victims at the same time in 2019. Should that number again double over the next six months, Milwaukee will face a homicide reckoning it hasn’t seen in recent memory. It would top the 165 lives lost in 1991, during a troubled period in which more than 120 were killed in nine out of 10 years.
In a tragic rash of violence, five people were shot and killed, including a 16-year-old girl, over a 20-hour period between June 30 and July 1. Tom Barrett said, “I am very troubled by what I’m seeing in Milwaukee this year.” Reggie Moore of the city’s Office of Violence Prevention said, “Our hope is that this is an anomaly year just given all the different crises that we’re dealing with.” The spike in violence comes after a four-year decline in homicides after 147 killings in 2015. In 2019, the city saw 97 homicides, down from 99 the year prior and 119 in 2017. In February, a gunman killed five co-workers and himself at the Molson Coors complex. Two months later, another gunman killed four teens and one woman inside a home. Those were two of the worst mass shootings in Wisconsin since 2004. As of June 4, 35 percent of homicides were blamed on family and intimate partner violence, which typically account for a much smaller proportion of killings. Much of that likely comes from increased tensions and stress during the coronavirus pandemic, Moore said.