council president H thank you CH let me first start out by saying I I commend the outstanding work and efforts that go on on the police department our strong support behind the police officers the men and women in blue and appreciate again the outstanding job that they do with the leadership of Chief Flynn uh we all know that that when I get a chance to speak with the residents I think we all know that neighborhoods are only as safe as the willingness of residents to get involved and it's clearly evident by the reflections of these numbers that while police officers and uh men and women in blue are doing an outstanding job they're partnering with others to help them reduce crimes in our neighborhoods in our communities I'm doing so with the churches as was mentioned by the mayor with the community based organizations um and many others to help reduce crime while we're dealing with the reality of crime we're also dealing with the perception of crime and I can say during the course of the summer while these numbers are looking exceptionally great people are also beginning to believe in the perception of crime and are back out on their porches out on the streets out um in their yards playing because they too not only recognize that the numbers are down but the perception and what they feel the safety and the security in their neighborhood and feeling more empowered and so that's a great thing as well again I stand here to show my support to the chief to the men and women in blue and do so on behalf of the city of Milwaukee common Council who was firmly supportive of the outstanding job they do and with that I'd like to bring um the chairman of finance and Personnel Alman Murphy uh thank you president Hines when you consider these numbers in context of the fact that we've had a really we're in a Great Recession uh where we see many cities where you have high unemployment numbers you see an increasing level of crime in this case we see the opposite in the city of Milwaukee which is tanon to my belief that we have such great cooperation with the community with our law enforcement and under the strong leadership of our chief chief Flynn um I'm very proud to say that Milwaukee is going in the right direction and we should be talking about this more to our residents and letting the business Community know that this is a safe place to do your business in in a safe place to have a family and raise your children and I'm grateful for the men and women behind me who have put themselves on the line to make these numbers come to reality we need to continue working forward to keeping these crime numbers going down in the right direction but I want again want to say thank you to the whole Community for working together to put this into the place and of course I want to say thank you to Chief Flynn who's really shown great leadership in making these numbers come to reality thank you I must truly say that such a report as we are receiving today is inevitable we are seeing a change in our community and I truly believe that is going to last we have great leadership in this city and people who are working together to make changes we are happy to participate in this review showing a decrease across the board for some during the first six months of this year we thank Chief Flynn for his fine leadership and commitment to his job we thank the brave men and women who continue to risk their lives in doing this needed work we sincerely wish a speedy recovery for the officers who have been injured in D Duty our prayers go out to their families we send commendations to the three citizens who came out to the aid of the officers we appreciate the positive response from citizens of this community who are making it possible for improvements in the welfare of all citizens citizens please continue to work to take control of our communities our citizens deserve to be protected let us all enjoy a peaceful summer [Applause] uh obviously crime prevention works well the more Partners you have as alderan Hines noted we've seen uh increasing cooperation from neighborhoods indeed uh when two of our officers were wounded in the line of duty it was members of that Community who stepped forward to assist them and help out in the investigation uh recently when Sergeant Walsh off duty ran from his house to chase an armed suspect there was a member of the neighborhood that lent him a cell phone to call for assistance as he was chasing the uh chasing the suspects and I sincerely believe that one Bell weather about whether or not our neighborhoods are getting well is the extent to which people in those neighborhoods feel safe enough to cooperate with the police department to work with them to make their neighborhood safe and I think we're seeing progress there now certainly one important partnership for us is the semi- TRU industry one important uh uh partnership for us is our partnership with the federal government U our work with the United States attorney's office the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms the FBI has been critical in our ongoing efforts to control gang violence and Drug crime in the city of Milwaukee uh indeed our most successful investigations longterm have absolutely been because our federal Partners they have been intrinsic to them um we're joined today by Miles Burton from the FBI Rich froling from the United States attorney's office and our ATF Partners Lori Dyer and John Schmidt I thank them for joining us here and I thank them for all the assistance they've rendered the Milwaukee Police Department in keeping this a safe City I also have with me Dr mallerie O'Brien who's the executive director of the homicide review commission she's here and she'll be available to speak behind the numbers in terms of what some of the numbers mean um she is uh highly qualified to do so uh I also have in back of me a great number of people some of whom will have to know the answer to some of the questions you'll ask and many of them will be available afterwards if you want to talk to them individually I'd like to take a moment to recognize Tony Anderson Tony here hi all right well Tony Anderson is from the Elize Avenue neighborhood Development Association and she's been a very important partner with the police department in making her neighborhood safe we also have Micah [Applause] we have Mike berer from the amaran bakery Mike okay all right Mike say hi uh they'll certainly be available for one-on ones after we're done now we've got plenty of work to do and before the story becomes why did Chief Flynn have all these police officers at the press conference instead of protecting us um we'll take a few minutes for questions and then we'll let every body get back to work well I think it's an issue that needs to be addressed I've had some conversations with the mayor about it and uh obviously uh as we move forward trying to come up with a legislative agenda to deal with gun crime there's going to be a number of recommendations that we're going to be uh discussing and we're going to forward our final recommendations to the legislature for a special session I don't know if you want to talk about the special session okay yes there has been a 67% decrease in domestic violence related uh homicides uh it's an issue of concern for us our sense is really there's been a lot of discussion about the impact of the economy on crime I don't think the average person who suddenly finds himself without a job becomes a burglar or a robber but what I think can happen is that families that are economically stressed in the first place when they're even more stressed by an economy such as ours all too often that stress is uh is U oper aized in the family unit and I think that may be some uh some part of the variable that's driving the spike in domestic homicides I'm having discussions with some Chiefs from other parts of the country to see if this is a trend or just a phenomenon of our first few months but it's a it's an issue of concern to us what is the message you want to send to those well I think the message really to friends and family and neighbors is if you see a family in crisis please step up Step Up number one to talk to them and see if you can render some help but step two is contact us or contact Social Services um you know we're not looking to make preemptive domestic violence arrests but if we can get the right array of services into a troubled family we might prevent that shaken baby or that domestic assault that ends up being a violence a homicide well you know yeah there's no time for a halftime locker room pep talk here there's no time to uh you know rest on laurels what we do is we track the numbers um almost an evitably you know the numbers the uh the crime dots if you will get a little bit ahead of us somewhere do we notice the pattern can we can uh adjust our deployments to that pattern but we're committed to a certain strategy the strategy emphasizes Partnerships with our federal Partners as well as with the community the strategy emphasizes engagement with neighborhoods it it emphasizes problem solving it emphasizes data and it emphasizes being very flexible uh with how we deploy our Resources with an emphasis on prevention so we've got our fundamental strategy in place