now during the month of November 2009 through January of 2010 of this year a pattern emerged of elderly women being robbed on the northwest side of the city of Milwaukee many of them were robbed outside their homes some of them were even pushed into their homes and robbed obviously a great fear inducing crime wave as well as a serious crime on its own rights of District Seven officers and Detective from CIB uh were under pressure to form a plan to stop this particular chain of crimes and they did so today I want to specifically recognize detectives Dale Borman and Scott Schmidt schmidtz along with police officers Kieran Sawyer yes sir okay and Darcy trunkle now officer trunko looks a little bit different today but I want to show you a picture of her this is what she look like in her senior prom nope no that's not her senior prom picture this is what she looked like when she became the elderly victim of a an attack by a career criminal uh we put her out there uh we put an officer inside the grocery store to work as a Bag Boy and she became our victim for the northwest side now one thing I would like our criminal Community to know is that every senior citizen you see walking slowly around down the street is probably a Milwaukee Police Officer and you shouldn't mugged them but in the meantime in this case it definitely was a Milwaukee Police Officer so the detectives and the officers identifi the crime pattern these elderly people were being followed home from the grocery store officer Sawyer conducted the surveillance and he's the one that went undercover at the grocery store as the Bag Boy and he's young enough I think you'll understand why he was able pull that pull that uh feed off and officer trunkle posed as our Shopper and the suspect struck we had set up in a house that was not occupied and sure enough as she was trying to go into that house she was attacked when the suspect kicked in the door of the house that she had just entered and uh officers were able to swoop in U Wendell Evans was charged with nine counts of robbery as well as bir Y and theft and I want to commend district 7 Captain Jessup for organizing this plan and to setting these officers and detectives on the path to having a a successful outcome so just remember once again if you're a criminal and you see a senior citizen they're a cop okay the same time this is going on we had another criminal crew working the northwest side this time it was robberies of Walgreens at gunpoint they hit several drugstores in January terrorizing employees at gunpoint now good intuitive police work put detectives Eric Donaldson Eric there you go uh Brett hust Houston and police officer Brian brusso at the right place at the right time near the freeway where they figured our Desperados would flee the three saw the suspect vehicle and pursued it into a fast food parking lot but here good police work also has to give way to the care and concern for the surrounding Community worried that a gunfight might ensue because these individuals were reported armed they did not immediately attempt to engage them but first blocked them in with their with their vehicle they then pulled them out of the vehicle locked them up and also recovered evidence that linked them to this particular crime later detective Patrick padet detective pageant there we are okay he's the kind of guy you would want to tell the truth to uh detective Patrick p obtained a confession that led to the case going to the DA for review now we're still looking for one more suspect in this case his name is Michael Irvin you have his wanted poster which I hope he'll display uh but we do want to say that uh having this kind of work done by our officers we hope to have him in custody soon and we would urge any members of the community who would like to see his career in drugstore robberies and to please give us a call um I now would like to spend a moment and introduce Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisum who gets to have the fun of Prosecuting these individuals thanks Chief there you are okay thank you thank you very much Chief I I also wish to commend the outstanding work of the Milwaukee Police Department on both of these cases I think what is evident in the count complaint that was issued against Mr Evans uh first and foremost that he is facing a significant penalty for for this action but most importantly uh what it demonstrates is that one individual that is bent on committing a serious crime can cause a huge disproportionate impact on a particular neighborhood and what we've learned is that we have to work very closely together to identify uh those individuals that are are bent on causing that kind of A disruption and and that sense of fear in a neighborhood nothing works better in our experience than the teams that are developed right at the district level and what I'm proud to announce today is that uh thanks to Federal funding we have been able to reintroduce a community prosec into District number s Nicole Sheldon is present she worked very closely with the district 7 team and identifying um this particular problem and she personally drafted the complaint and we'll make sure that it is uh properly supervised as it proceeds through the criminal justice system there's of course a presumption of innocence until until the final adjudication in this matter um secondly I just want to uh point out that again with respect to uh the Walgreens cases what we're increasingly dependent dependent upon is the cooperation of other agencies the the work that the Milwaukee Police Department has done in both of these cases uh is going to have a beneficial effect not just for the City of Milwaukee but it is going to benefit the citizens throughout this entire County um because we are convinced that individuals like the two that are represented in these cases uh commit their crimes in in more more locations than just one um and this type ofo particularly praying on elderly people caus es a great amount of concern and we're going to put whatever resources needed to hold those people accountable so again congratulations um to all the officers detectives and to the administration for our focus on this and you're going to see more of it in the future thank you uh thank you Mr TI attorney um I'm also going to introduce uh Steve okono he's from the Milwaukee block watch Council he's also done a lot of work in the Sherman Park neighborhood he's a terrific Community partner I mean you know we can talk all we want about proactive police work datadriven policing problem solving efforts uh but the community- based pece means we have to have uh practical and working relationships with groups of citizens in their own protection uh the first line of defense and Crime Control is informal social control and engaged neighborhoods our job as a police department is to create neighborhoods that can do that uh but one neighborhood that can and has done that is the Sherman Park area where Steve ell has lived and worked for quite some time and it's that model that we really want to see replicated in other parts of the city through effective block watches so I'd like Steve to have a few words to say please good afternoon I'm the blockwatch captain in the 3800 block of North 56 and 55th Street and I've been the blockwatch captain almost 23 years over there in that neighborhood one of the things that's always been important to me is our monthly uh crime and safety meetings and at the last meeting we had an elderly woman who came to the meeting and we were going going through the meeting and and I could hear someone kind of crying behind me and I turned around and it was one of our older adults and she had been a victim of one of these robberies and as soon as the meeting was over the captain was right there to talk to her and to take her statement and I think that's important when older adults can come to these meetings and Trust the captain that something's going to get done more often than not they'll come to meetings and we hear a lot of these concerns and it takes a a while before the police step into action and follow up but this time right there on the spot she had a chance to tell her story and right away the Seventh District went to action went into action to try to arrest the person the second thing that I have come to realize neighborhoods are built on stable residents the stable residents in the Sherman Park neighborhood are generally older adults they own their home they've lived there all the these years and they relish that time in their neighborhood protecting them I think is essential they are the Bedrock of communities children grow up they come back and visit their grandparents in these neighborhoods and if they get a good sense of that neighborhood when they have children they're going to think about moving into a stable stable neighborhood like Sherman Park and so taking care of older adults going the extra mile I think is is is commendable and to arrest somebody Chief you are to be commended because that is the type of thing that our residents need to know that the police are going to be proactive and Captain Jessup I can't tell you how important it is that you come to the next meeting and our residents know that this individual's been arrested and that action's been taken and that's just the end of this week so I think this will be a real important message to our adults very good thank you um thank you Steve and uh we