MILWAUKEE — New crime statistic dashboards were presented to the Community Justice Council during a meeting Wednesday.
One dashboard is theMilwaukee County District Attorney's Crime Statistics Dashboard, and the other is theMilwaukee Homicide Review Commissions Fatal and Nonfatal Shootings dashboard.
Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm hopes the new dashboards will help the community provide more input while developing strategies to curb the alarming violent crime trends reported in Milwaukee County this year.
The District Attorney pointed to the fact that the county is on pace to break the all-time record for homicides, has doubled the number of non-fatal shootings this year, and has seen concerning trends in family violence, substance abuse, and suicide.
He hopes the new dashboards will enable community members and organizations to help take crime-fighting beyond the criminal justice system in Milwaukee County.
"There’s a time and a place for us, but I think moving forward that we want our strategies to be guided by the community as well," said Chisholm during the Community Justice Council Meeting.
The dashboards offer information to the public, who can in-turn offer suggestions and strategies to advance solutions to the crime issues being reported.
More specifically, the dashboards offer metrics on race, gender, location, and offer key indicators on how the justice system functions. Metrics are released monthly and everything from referral and arrest to sentencing is shared.
For example, the Milwaukee County DA's dashboard shows that the number of African American's that were charged and sentenced in 2019 is roughly double the number of white suspects charged and sentenced.
Reggie Moore, Director of the City of Milwaukee Health Department's Office of Violence Prevention says that type of data is crucial for the community to have when fighting both racism as a public health issue and crime in general.
"When we look at what's happening in Milwaukee and at cities around the country who have been hit with unprecedented levels of violence, we understand that the more empowered the community can be in address violence, the better. And so, having this data publicly accessible is a matter of not only transparency but also putting power in the hands in the community to understand and respond," said Moore.
Moore points out that under the City of Milwaukee's Blueprint for Peace, the city's violence prevention plan, there are strategies including "use of timely, comprehensive data to prioritize prevention efforts," that can help identify trends and prevent further violence.
These dashboards aim to provide that data in a timely manner.
