Here & Now

Noon Wednesday: Milwaukee's Historic Pandemic Violence

Marisa Wojcik:

Welcome to “Noon Wednesday,” I’m Marisa Wojcik, multimedia journalist with “Here & Now” on PBS Wisconsin. Today is October 13. Across the country, large cities are seeing higher rates of violent crime and homicide, and Milwaukee might be seeing some of the worst as murders and gun violence approach a historic level in 2021. Joining us to talk about their work in the Milwaukee Health Department’s Office of Violence Prevention is Kweku Teangelo Cargile Jr., and Jamaal Smith, thank you all so much for being here.

Kweku Teangelo Cargile Jr:

Thank you for having us.

Jamaal Smith:

Thank you for having us.

Marisa Wojcik:

I want to start, with as we mentioned, nationwide cities report higher rates of violence and particularly homicide. For the two of you as people who work very closely in this, what does this look like in Milwaukee, and Jamaal, we start with you.

Jamaal Smith:

Yeah. Thank you. So, essentially, what we are seeing is really the exacerbation of pain through the pandemic. We really realized the impact of not only physical trauma that COVID-19 has caused, but the psychological and mental trauma as well, right? And so when you couple that with the fact that there were already increasing disparities within the city of Milwaukee, whether that’s in housing, the lack of quality housing for people of color, lack of quality healthcare for people of color, education inequities, unemployment and underemployment, which are major issues within the city of Milwaukee, and then you see a pandemic come along to exacerbate disparities, then what you produce is a lot of despair, desolation, pain, anger and isolation, increases the risky behaviors leading to violence. Its really understanding the fact there is a societal issue, a societal dilemma we have that is leading to a lot of the engagement in the violence that we see, so we have to look at root cause instead of saying from a symptom focus and looking at the people who are, you know, we have to look at the people who are committing these heinous crimes or unfortunate crimes, but also the other part of this, why are they doing that? What’s happening? What are the experiences that they have been exposed that is leading them to make these decisions, and what are the ills that have been really brought to the forefront on a macro level by COVID-19? How do we address those as well?

Marisa Wojcik:

And, Kweku Teangelo, you work specifically with youth. What’s this look like with you specifically on the ground?

Kweku Teangelo Cargile Jr:

Thank you for asking, and Jamaal really laid a strong foundation to a lot of what we are seeing. When we talk about from the youth perspective, we have to be very conscious of the variety opportunities for young people that’s been directly severed due to the pandemic. When we think about youth development and all of the various opportunities that are available to young people and that access to information for those young people about the agencies have been directly impacted. You know, if you think about it, you think about ourselves when we were in youth development, we got a lot of access to opportunities through our schools. You would have organizations come into our schools, table, and share a variety of resources about what they had for us to get interested in a variety of careers that really can impact our passion and what our future’s going to look like. The reality is, due to the pandemic, due to schools, transitioning to virtual, and due to out of school programming, directly be impacted and switching to virtual as well. You have young people who are doing virtual programming in school and virtual programming for the after school programming. It did not mesh well. We recognized throughout the pandemic that youth development piece was oftentimes void from the conversation. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss how youth development directly impacts a lot of our young people and lack of accessibility due to the pandemic for safety reasons while a lot of resources for them were taken away.

Marisa Wojcik:

Jamaal, why exactly is this so much worse during the pandemic with 2021 set to reach historic levels of homicide? How exactly do we get from a pandemic to homicide? What are all of the linkages in between?

Jamaal Smith:

Well, great question. And let’s just provide a little context. There was an epidemic of gun violence even before the pandemic hit, right? Gun violence has always been a discussion. Violence as a whole has always been a discussion. Strategies about prevention has always been a discussion as well. Not to the level that we would like to see as working in prevention, but it has been there so then when you bring about a pandemic that actually, you know, to Teangelo’s point essentially changes the way of life, there was a lot of things switched, a lot of things ended, you know, a lot of things that people had direct access to prior to the pandemic were taken away in addition to the fact that people, you know, lost jobs, lost income, you know, desperation increased, right? And even looking at Milwaukee, already, the black median income in the city of Milwaukee was $36,000 prior to the pandemic. So, when you look at what that could be now, based on the pandemic, right, and how many people lost income because of it, that is what then increases the likelihood for the anger and frustration that comes along with the engagement and violence. You then also have to take into account the fact that, you know, trauma is a really big issue that is not discussed on a grand level. Right? The levels of trauma that exist. A lot of people who engage in gun violence have been victims directly or indirectly of gun violence, right? Whether that’s you’ve seen it happen or it happened to you, right? So, you know, understanding the generational aspect of trauma that a lot of individuals experience, plus the impact of community trauma, and talking about the lack that is existing within these communities that are highly impacted by that gun violence, right, and so, you know, it is just seeing this is a complex way woven, however, we have to acknowledge the complexity is there. Right? And it is going to take a high level of engagement from, like, multidisciplinary engagement in order for this to really be addressed. Right? This can’t just come from one entity. This has to be multidisciplinary approach.

Marisa Wojcik:

And Kweku Teangelo, why are more and more tragedies happening to young people? Particularly those under the age of 18?

Kweku Teangelo Cargile Jr:

Such a difficult question to answer. As we recognize young people are not a monolithic people. There’s not just one reason why any one person any one person makes a decision they make. There are a variety of reasons that when we talk about our young people and what’s happening to them, what’s not happening for them, and Jamaal just gave so much context to a lot of issues that are happening right now. When we talk about our young people, specifically, it is just truly, like, in my vision of this, there’s a lack of opportunity. A lack of access due to the pandemic. When we think about the safety of our young people, we recognize that them engaging in large groups gives them the opportunity to be exposed to COVID, and so we recognize that small groups are ideal, but then when you think about a step further back, when you think about our agencies that are oftentimes required to track numbers and they are only allowed to have, you know, a certain point in the pandemic, less than 10 people in a room, as Jamaal talked about earlier, you know, jobs, so we can no longer sustain multiple staff for an organization due to those stipulations for our safety, and that directly impacted our young people’s access to resources and safety because not only do we have to think about young people and those that serve them, but think about those they have to go home to, children they have to keep safe, elderly they have to keep safe, and so everyone is thinking about not only their safety, but individuals they have to go home to. So, when you factor in all of these various things, and you take steps back, it is very clear that we’re talking about an access issue. We’re talking about a resource issue for our young people. And we recognize that idle time is there’s more opportunity for reckless decisions to be made, and due to the pandemic, there’s been a lot of idle time for our young people, and they have been making more risky decisions during that time, and if we think about it, a lot of these young people probably would have been in youth serving agencies, probably would have been in after school programming that would have better directed them, better supported them, better resourced them, and the reality is, due to the severity of the pandemic we’re still in now, a lot of these issues is going to be really difficult for us to transition out of unless we really start to think outside of the box. We really have to think about the large spaces that we have that we can safely bring in groups of individuals, particularly young people, to engage with each other in a safe way. If you think about it, that level of investment has not occurred for our young people. When we talk about, oh, our young people are doing this, our young people are doing that, we also have to factor in what are we not doing for our young people? The reality is that there’s a lot we’re not doing.

Marisa Wojcik:

And Kweku Teangelo, what’s the conversations you have with young people? What are they telling you? What are you hearing instead of, you know, what people are just kind of assuming, like, you said, our young people are not doing this or are doing that.

Kweku Teangelo Cargile Jr:

Yeah. Another great question. I remember speaking to a young person, man, I was probably about 6 or 7 months back, I had a youth serving agency reach out to me that was directly trying to serve those young people who were making those reckless decisions. She brought one of those young people on the screen, and we were having a conversation, and I asked her, like, asked her, as bold as you asked me, what do you need? Like, what do you need for you and your peers to make less riskier decisions? She said, we need all the stuff that we had before back. That’s what she said. I want to go to the movies. I want to be able to go bowling. Like, these things that we took for granted, and the pandemic really severed for, again, for safety reasons, while we couldn’t do some of these things in larger capacities, and we know young people love to socialize and love the opportunity to see their peers and engage with their peers, and due to the pandemic, a lot of those things that they were able to do for free, they didn’t have to think about, you know, that unnecessary oversight. They were already strategically things in place to oversee them. Like when you go to the movies, there’s staff and security there already, there’s things that we don’t even think about because we take it for granted that young people can clearly go to and feel safe. As Jamaal stated earlier, a lot of things that are happening in our city right now have impacted a lot of our community, in ways in which they don’t feel safe. So, when we think about young people, we have to think about ways they can go in to spaces safely, feel secure, feel safe, scene when we can create and identify those spaces, we’ll be able to for them to in larger spaces come back, and there are some organizations who are doing that well. There’s some organizations who are slowly trying to figure out what those hybrid approaches look like. In a lot of those conversations were happening through collective impact coalition called Beyond the Doubt, and it is our goal to really uplift the work of youth development. When we uplift the work of youth development, we directly are serving our young people, and when we continue to invest in youth development, looking at what does it mean for organizations, staff, young people to feel safe and secure in space, when we really start to have the deeper discussions, we’ll slowly start to see ourselves coming out of some of these issues, and my young people that feel bad are supported, then they are supported. That’s what we really need and talk about. How can we better support our young people in the way they can transition slowly, but surely, as we very much recognize we’re still in the pandemic, but as we create spaces, that are safer for them to be successful, a lot of these issues will slowly, but surely start to fade away.

Marisa Wojcik:

And, Jamaal, speaking of the broader impact on the community, not only are we seeing just the direct impacts of this violence on the community, but we also have the impacts of COVID deaths that are particularly impacting black and minority communities in Milwaukee, and then on top of that, we went through a police reform movement last year, and when some people think of public safety and ways to combat violence, think of police, but others think of police as not necessarily helping the problem. How do all of these things impact ways in which we can see ways forward out of this pandemic and violent epidemic?

Jamaal Smith:

I think it — great question — I think it provides an opportunity to truly have a dialogue about what public safety actually means and reimagining public safety. You know, there’s been conversations about, you know, divest, reinvest, you know, defund, and, you know, a lot of that has been centered through a lot of the, you know, protests that have been global. Not even just nationwide, but global, but the conversation has to be how do we begin to look at in a more innovative way to invest in public safety? Right? It is not just a conversation about we have to depend on one entity to solve the issues in all of our major — in all of our cities, especially our major urban cities. For example, there’s a little over 1700 ranking file officers in the city of Milwaukee, and the population is nearly 600,000. You are asking a lot for the police to be the only entity looked at for public safety. That’s a lot for them. That’s a huge burden on city itself. Versus being there are conversations about how do we also include efforts that are happening on ground, grassroot organizations, grass tops organizes, community based organizations, areas like the Office of Violence and Prevention and others that are doing work and looking at violence from a public health lens to figure out the best ways to elevate opportunities around social determinants of health and other preventive measures. We look at violence as a disease, and if it is a disease, it is preventable. If it is preventable, we need preventative strategies put in place in order for it to end, so when we have these types of dialogues, right, it is — it’s imperative that people really understand exactly what prevention is, what’s violence prevention, the complexities of violence because there’s always conversations about interpersonal violence, community violence, but rarely systemic violence and rarely do we talk about the ways policies and practices have been intentionally harming marginalized, disenfranchised communities, right? We talk about the ways in which they have been divested from, and that also leads into the impact of the erosion of those neighborhoods which leads to, again, engagement of violence through risky behaviors because of the desolation, trauma, and distress. It is looking at all of those various levels and being able to — and layers — and having conversations, and we got to be truthful about this. You know, is it going to be uncomfortable? Absolutely. This is not an easy discussion. This is not something that needs to be where people’s — everyone’s feelings are going to be considered because there are going to be sometimes where there’s accountability that’s going to be a part of that, right? So, you know, even with the conversation about, you know, police reform, conversation about discussing the levels of employment or, you know, what opportunities has access to opportunities as Kweku Teangelo referenced. We have to be honest in recognizing there have been intentional strategies to keep those opportunities from particular communities. Right? For example, when we talk about how there have been occupations or vocations in which we’ve seen applications or resums for black potential perspective applicants being discarded at a higher rate just because of their name. Right? That’s a systemic issue. Right? That has nothing to do with community. That’s also violence. That’s an intended harm which is the very definition of violence. When we talk about violence, having a systems approach to issues that systems perpetuate is counterproductive. There’s got to be other innovative ways in addition to what we discuss within systemic reform in order to really change the landscape of what violence looks like.

Marisa Wojcik:

And, Jamaal, as you are speaking about this, is the very fact that this is a public health approach, is that novel and innovative in and of itself? You speak of it as a disease, and when we think of health, you know, violence is sometimes physical harm, but is it also mental harm? Is it these structural determinants of health, social determinants of health, are all of these new ways of looking at what you said is this very long-standing problem as a way to reframe and potentially see new solutions?

Jamaal Smith:

I won’t say they are new, but I will say that it is an opportunity to look at different solutions, to your point. There’s been conversations, I believe, even from the center for disease control and prevention. You have organizations like the prevention institute in Oakland, California. They have been having these types of discussions and then leading at the forefront of prevention efforts for some years now. The issue is, to your point earlier, every time somebody talks about public safety, it automatically goes toward law enforcement, right? So, the conversations have been minimal and have not been as public in terms of addressing violence from a public health lens. Now we are starting to see the increase in that, and we can say here in Milwaukee there’s been a strong effort around getting people to understand violence from a public health lens, and with our blueprint for peace, which is a community driven strategic plan around violence prevention that was released here in Milwaukee in 2017, it was the voice of the community that said, we want to look at violence from a different lens, and public health is the lens to look at it from. So now people are beginning to understand more so of what that means from a public health lens, and then that’s what brings about those innovative strategies that can begin to address violence in various forms.

Marisa Wojcik:

And, Kweku Teangelo, when we think of interruption or intervention, are we thinking about the immediate interpretation and intervention, as you mentioned, some young people just want to go to the movies, want to go bowling, or are we also thinking about these longer term generational trauma or generational violence that people have experienced over and over. Does one take priority over the other? Are these both a part of what your office works on with young people?

Kweku Teangelo Cargile Jr:

It is definitely a yes/and. Some folks are experiencing one form of violence more than another. Sometimes that can take precedent in your situation. So, it is such a difficult question to answer because again, it is individual based. When we think about the public health approach, we think about the community. What ways that we can heal the community? So when we talk about restorative practices, healing practices, interventions that do not require public safety to come in to a space, but that’s mediated by community members, by family members, and creating spaces where we can teach each other about the various forms that we can support each other is very important, and it is vital, especially in this time that we’re talking about, and Jamaal referenced the amount of public safety we have versus the community we have at large. We recognize that there needs to be an additional layer of support we can provide for ourselves and provide for our community. Our community could be various things. Our community can be our home. Our community could be our family. Our community could be or school. Our community could be where we work. So when we talk about community, even the community, and there’s spaces, like schools in particular, there’s great organizations and programs like violence free zones that have staff within spaces where you don’t have to call public safety, which is really set up to do more emergency based violence. When we talk about things, what we need for young people when they are having disputes with each other within schools. We need spaces within schools like violence free zone to come into the spaces, mediate for the young people, and create spaces of healing. Those spaces are vital. We need that approach to be given to our entire city. Our state even in our nation, and in a stronger, more impactful way. We have to think about as Jamaal said, out of the box approaches, that are not new. These are restorative practices that are not new. These are old practices, practices that our indigenous people taught us, and we continue to teach to our families and our young people in our community at large. We need to expand that work so that everyone has the ability to safely mediate a conversation between friends and family. Again, we’re not talking about situations that are involving guns where there should be an additional layer of training, additional layer of support, credible messages that have gone through due to county, and there are unique levels of training that are needed for those higher risk situations, but when we are talking about mediation, we should be able to talk to each other, and we should have the tools and the skills to be able to do that. We should not go in a situation where I cant talk to that person, I’m going to go get my gun. We need to be working towards healing practices that make it safer for us to figure out things internally versus taking such drastic action.

Marisa Wojcik:

And in the absence of a lot of these physical spaces that you’re speaking of, how much are we seeing the virtual spaces kind of take over as social media is also seen as a part of our mental health and public health? Kweku Teangelo, how much are we seeing some of these things begin on social media, and, therefore, it is difficult, also, for these people who are trying to help young people to intervene on the front end.

Kweku Teangelo Cargile Jr:

We definitely recognize that cyber bullying is probably at its all-time high. In our office, we have recently received a grant to better educate our families, our schools, about how we can mediate some of these cyber bullying situations. That’s one piece. When we talk about that virtual piece, we have a great speaker yesterday that really said something that I hope to incorporate in everything that I do. It is not about always — I’ll speak specifically to young people, but this can be used in a broader brush — if our young people are on social media, we should be comfortable with meeting them on social media. We shouldn’t feel like it always — we have to pull them out of a space that they are comfortable in already and have to create a safe space for them when they were already in one. So when we think about, again, our young people, they are in — their generation is a social media era in a way that even my generation has not even experienced. We have to, again, meet young people where they are at. If that’s a space where you are comfortable and you’re safe, then what indirectly impacts us is we work from home now, and who would have known working from home was safer than going to the office, you know, different things that we experience from home to the office that we can avoid directly by working remote is another layer of discussion that I feel like we need to be talking about in the higher level, and I know some spaces are having those conversations. This is probably the most hybrid-based work area we are going into right now with folks working from the office and also working from home. That gives that individual a level of understanding of what that young person is going through. To make assumptions about what a young person is going through is not fair, but if you are living experiences they are living, it makes it a little bit easier to empathize, a little easier to understand what they are going through, and because we, as adults, we have the ability to push through some of these pandemic barriers that young people do not necessarily have the access to do. We can still go to bars and things of that nature, you know, in the evening time, but young people, they really don’t have — they have a very small opportunity in the evening times for them to socialize with their peers while us, as adults, have a plethora of opportunities. So, when we think about, you know, some of the decision making that’s happening at night, what are some things that we can do to elevate that work? So, like the midnight league is successful. Some of the transitional spaces that we are housing some of our NPS schools have shown great fruit. What does it look like to bring those things to scale as we are still in this pandemic? I think those conversations are what conversations we need to continue having and making action behind. I think it is still difficult for us to do some of those things because it is so outside of our norm, but we’re in a pandemic, everything has changed. We have to be comfortable making changes necessary so that the safety of our young people is a priority.

Marisa Wojcik:

This last question is for both of you, and, Jamaal, starting with you. For people who don’t live with this kind of stress and this kind of trauma, but are listening and want to understand, what are some things you want to make sure aren’t some preconceived notions that are adding to this idea of violence in Milwaukee? What do you want people who don’t live in Milwaukee and who don’t have to understand what it means to try and feel safe when theyre walking around outside when you are doing your work trying to help kind of bring the broader message of safety to people in Milwaukee?

Jamaal Smith:

Great question. The first thing is I would challenge people to step outside of some of the old realities of what they believe happens within urban neighborhoods. Contrary popular opinion, black and brown people are not inherently violent, right? Violence is not based on race. Violence happens because of pain. Violence happens because of trauma. Violence happens because of whatever types of feelings or frustrations or anger that leads to the decision to engage has nothing to do with race. That’s one. Two, let’s do an actual geographic analysis of your neighborhoods versus the neighborhoods that are highly impacted by violence, and then let’s have a more in-depth discussion. Right? There’s — I mean, when you start to really look at some of the areas that have all of the high quality of — the social determinants of health that elevate quality of life, and then you start to look at neighborhoods that do not have that, right, and start to question, well, why is it that this is not an issue in my neighborhood, but this is an issue in your neighborhood? Then you have to be willing to really look at what those issues are.

Root cause issues. This is a great analogy I use often, lets say you have 30 kids are at a party with a pinata, and they bust it open, and three pieces of candy come out. What happens with the 30 kids? They attack each other for the three pieces of candy. Everyone’s trying to get to the candy. That’s the same thing we have to look at in terms of resources. When it comes to a lack of resources in neighborhoods that have also been systemically divested from and there is limited resources, and there’s some form of it in those neighborhoods, immediately, people are going to figure out the more desperate ways to get to those resources, to sustain, right, not just to — this is for survival. So, when we are really look at what violence is, we have to be able to say, what are some of the things that are causing this? What are actually those underlying issues that are not discussed enough that need to be discussed, right? So, you know, Teangelo even talked earlier about young people, and we always talk about engagement of young people and gun violence, and what most people don’t know is the average age of homicide victims is 30. That’s not young people. Right? That means that there is a level of gun violence that exists on all age levels. This is not a youth gun violence issue were having. This is gun violence issue we’re having, but then also we have to couple that and start looking at systemic accountability. Why? Because of easy access to guns. Right? That’s another issue that we have. In 2020, 40 million guns were sold nationwide. That’s over 10 million guns more than in 2019. Here we are in 2021, still that same easy access, and we are still dealing with the pandemic that is physically and mentally impacting people on great levels. So, it is — it is an all encompassing effort in order to really address prevention. It cannot just be us looking and saying these people are criminal. We need to address them from a punishment lens. What are we doing in order to treat the impact of violence? We have to look at violence as preventable and treatable because it is a disease, right? We’ve been viewing the ways in which we address public safety from a very narrow lens, right? We’ve incarcerated people for substance abuse. Incarcerated people for homelessness, incarcerated people for mental health. They needed help. They didn’t need incarceration, right? There has to be investment in those areas that service people who are dealing with those social ills in order for them to get — then provide access and opportunity to resources that allows for them to live their best lives to thrive, not just survive, to thrive. That’s what’s happening in neighborhoods that are not being impacted by violence, and they — if this is a country where people always talks about the land of the free, home of the brave, you know, bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, it is about life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, laissez-faire, if this is all about justice, equity, equality, freedom, then people from neighborhoods that are not impacted by violence should be advocating for people that are they deserve the opportunity and resources that I received, right? That is a grand advocacy piece to ensure that every person in this country has the access to the resources necessary for themselves to thrive and for their families. When we see that happen, that’s what violence prevention looks like.

Marisa Wojcik:

Kweku Teangelo, same question to you. What do you want people to understand about this issue as someone who works very deeply in it?

Kweku Teangelo Cargile Jr:

I want everyone to recognize that we are all violence prevention. We all have a role in preventing violence. If you take the opportunity to look at our movement for peace, we have six goals, stop the shooting, stop the violence, promote healing and restorative justice, support children, youth, and families, promote economic opportunity, foster safe neighborhoods, and strengthen capacity and coordination of violence prevention efforts. All of us have an opportunity to fall into one of these goals and can do multiple of these strategies. Even if you just do violence prevention for your family, for your direct community, for the children that you see, you are having an impact. You are having a real impact. If you see yourself as violent prevention and exude that through your life, you will see a greater quality of happiness, greater quality of life, and these are just at the small levels right, smaller levels, we all have the opportunity to bring happiness and joy to another person, and if we continue to live in that space, to realize that we have the ability to make a difference, to make a change, we will continue to see the shifts that we want to see. That’s how Jamaal and I are. We recognize and know the great things happening in our city. We see how violence prevention is working, and it is not promoted in the same capacity as some of our violent acts we see throughout the city are, but it keeps Jamaal and I optimistic because we know what’s working. We see it. We live it. We recognize that it needs to be brought to scale, and when we continue to have these discussions, so, again, thank you for creating this space for us, to continue to have these conversations, we will continue to uplift the violence — excuse me, we’ll continue to uplift the need for violence prevention and the impact of violence prevention.

Marisa Wojcik:

All right. We leave it there. Jamaal Smith and Kweku Teangelo of the Office of Violence Prevention, thank you all very much for joining us today.

Kweku Teangelo Cargile Jr:

Thank you.

Jamaal Smith:

Thank you, thank you for having us.

Marisa Wojcik:

For more from “Here & Now” and PBS Wisconsin, visit pbswisconsin.org/news, and thank you so much for joining us on “Noon Wednesday.”