we're here today to announce the final numbers for 2008 we've closed the books on the overall crime numbers earlier he shared with you the homicide numbers clearly they were available sooner and more quick more accurately but we've had a chance to Crunch the numbers for all our other major crimes they are in front of you we want to make the point today is that Partnerships and problem solving and data analysis save lives they reduce crime we're seeing reductions in crime across the board all our serious crimes declined by over six percent last year and that translates into 3 000 fewer victims of crime in Milwaukee in 2008 than in 2007. that's significant by any standard we also want to call your attention to a 10 overall decrease in violent crime that's homicides robberies aggravated assaults and rapes declined by 10 percent in the city of Milwaukee last year now we believe this is due to Relentless focus and high quality Partnerships we have a pledge to be a data driven police department and every single day of the week we have a senior command staff meeting attended by everybody at the rank of Captain and above in investigations as well as the assistant Chiefs looking over the last 24 hours of crime number and how those patterns and Trends compared to Prior years and prior months on a conference call we have all seven district commanders every single day we analyze the numbers every single day we're prepared to adjust our deployments in response to those numbers as you know that this has been a strong effort by our district commanders our our uh our investigators our neighborhood task force have all played a significant role we've also had some very good success stories and I'm going to share a couple of examples with you today just to give you an idea of what quality police work looks like and what quality Partnerships can can accomplish officers Chad boyak and Nathan fager were near Hopkins and Chambers an area known to both officers for high drug trafficking robberies and other offenses at approximately 17 20 Chambers they saw a subject walking in the street with an object cupped in his hand when he saw the officers get out of their squad the 32 year old suspect threw a 25 caliber handgun to the ground the suspect a convicted felon already on probation for burglary was arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm carrying a concealed weapon for possession of marijuana and three City warrants now that's not just a high quality arrest that's an act of crime prevention when somebody is a high rate offender and one of their specialty offenses is burglary getting them off the street prevents the future victimization there's an example of how Partnerships work officer Stephen Witkowski Scott lesniewski and James McNichol who happen to be behind me you'll probably recognize them because they're probably turning Crimson right now um they're all they were working with District three probation and parole agents and they conducted what's called a rope visit which is a repeat offender prevention enforcement visit of an individual suspected of selling heroin in District 3. he was found during this visit because of course if you go with probation and parole they get to check on anybody and then nose around a little bit he was found to be in possession of several bindles of heroin and was arrested he gave up another person who sells heroin in the Avenues West historic Concordia part of District 3 which you may recall last February was one of the first of our anti-crime initiatives that we launched with the new uh with the new strategy we arrested that subject at home and found 15 biddles of heroin package for sale in his house he then turned around and gave officers information about his suppliers and we're now investigating whether those involved are linked to robberies and burglaries in District 3. now the co-location of Probation and Parole agents and they're working relationships with our officers has resulted in a partnership that is helping us prevent crime another significant intervention has been the uh has been the uh existence of the community prosecutions unit under district attorney Chisholm now in a Shameless Act of sucking up I noticed that public radio is here and this morning they did a story about how Eric Holder invented community-based prosecutions in Washington D.C and they interviewed several of those community-based prosecutors now it was asserted in that article that this program has been widely replicated across the country you couldn't prove that by me I've worked in several States in a number of jurisdictions and I have not seen another district attorney's office that practices community-based prosecutions anywhere near the extent that Milwaukee County does under district attorney Chisholm so I don't know what other people say they're doing I know a lot of people claim the do community policing years ago but I think it was mainly to get grant money uh here it's the real deal every District Station House has a prosecutor those prosecutors are very much connected to the life of that District they recognize different types of cases you may have a serious offender with a not particularly serious charge we need to treat that person differently because of the negative impact they have on their neighborhoods and with this uh with this uh initiative we've had some significant impact by again disrupting the criminal environment in which some people flourish in anonymity and take advantage of lack of cooperation in the criminal justice system you'll note that burglaries are up slightly in 2008 compared to 2007 they're up by two percent uh but spinning good news out of bad you'll recall that at the end of the first six months of last year burglaries were up by nine percent we made a major initiative in the second half of the year to address that problem and although we weren't able to reduce it over the course of the entire year compared to the preceding year the second six months of burglaries were less than the first six months and the resulted in that increase although theft number reduction is quite remarkable that's 15 percent and I think it's important for people to realize that when we make a major effort to reduce auto theft it's not simply a question of our reducing an inconvenience to people who are deprived of their use of their car in communities that are challenged by economic circumstance that car is a job that car gets them to an interview that job gets them to their place of business and a lot of the people employed Milwaukee are employed in the kinds of jobs and which there's very little margin for error if they don't show up for work they're going to get fired and somebody else is going to get hired and we see reducing the number of stolen cars as much as anything is protecting people's opportunities to make an income and support their families as well as reducing the amount of specific crime we believe the work we're doing is making a difference cops count and we believe that a data-driven community-based problem-oriented policing strategy pays dividends particularly when we recognize that the essence of problem solving is high quality Partnerships with other members of the criminal justice system with our federal Partners as well as with an active and engaged citizenry