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Felicia Noble and her daughter Kerrisa Riser both lost children to gun violence.

Sometimes, when the enormity of loss presses in on her heart, nurse Felicia Noble sits up late in her North Side Milwaukee home and simply cries. Her tears fall for her only son, Damond Harris. She weeps for Damond’s son, Sir Lawrence Harris. She cries for her daughter’s son, Dasjon Riser. 

Her son and grandsons have all been victims of a spate of gun violence: Damond Harris was murdered in Chicago just a few weeks before his 34th birthday, Sir Lawrence Harris was killed in Milwaukee in 2019 at the age of 19, and Dasjon Riser, just 15, was shot in Milwaukee in 2020. 

Noble does not know why her son, Damond, was targeted for murder. She talked on the phone with him every few days and says she had no indication that anything was wrong. But on April 20, 2010, her phone began to light up. People were calling to let her know that Damond had been shot. 

“I frantically drove to Chicago only to get there and find out that he had already passed,” she recalls. To this day, the reason her son was murdered in broad daylight remains a mystery. “My son did not have a weapon,” she says. “He never mentioned that he had one.” 

She knows Damond was looking for a larger apartment, and on that day, he was called away from breakfast by somebody who told him he had a house for him to look at. When Damond left the breakfast table and approached a waiting car, he was met with a burst of gunfire. 

Nobody was ever arrested for the crime. About two years ago, a Chicago detective called to tell Noble that the suspected murderer of her son had been found dead. She didn’t ask a lot of questions about the facts of the case and decided just to accept the news as the truth and move on.

“In order for one to heal, there’s certain doors we just have to try and close, so to speak,” Noble explains. “Life comes with many challenges. It’s hard to complete the next challenge in life if you’re stuck in the one that’s behind you.” 

And more challenges were lurking ahead.

Many Cases, Many Causes

In 2010, the year Damond Harris was murdered in Chicago, Milwaukee recorded 68 gun-related homicides. That was an uptick from the 52 firearm homicides in Milwaukee in 2009, according to a Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission report.

In 2020, after several years of experiencing homicides in the 70- to 85-per-year range, Milwaukee saw its numbers rocket to 167 gun-related murders, and as the COVID-19 pandemic continued, officials began talking about a “shadow pandemic.” The homicide rate increase put Milwaukee among the top five highest in the country.

The upward trend continued in 2021, with 162 firearm homicides already recorded by the end of October, per the Milwaukee Mothers Against Gun Violence, which lists Milwaukee homicides by year. There were also 39 suicides by firearm in Milwaukee County in 2021 by the end of October, according to Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office records.

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Milwaukee Acting Police Chief Jeff Norman

Another 752 nonfatal shootings were recorded in 2020, compared with 444 in 2019. Through October of 2021, there were another 731 nonfatal shootings. About 70 percent of the victims were between the ages of 18 and 39; 82 percent were male and 88 percent were Black.

Increasing gun violence likely has many causes, says Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman, including accessibility of firearms and more individuals reaching for guns as a method of settling their differences. Arguments are the primary cause of shootings in Milwaukee, according to an analysis by the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission.

“The conflicts are not different than anything in the past,” Norman says. “It’s how we’re resolving it.”

With young people, especially children, tragedy occurs when weapons are not secured, which is “an extremely unfortunate and preventable situation,” the chief says. “We’re also seeing teenagers and young adults engaging in violence utilizing firearms, which is another level of concern.” Norman says Milwaukee is seeing a general increase in serious and reckless behavior, which is also evident in the escalating incidents of dangerous driving in the city.

National Rifle Association spokesman Lars Dalseide points to the justice system when considering why gun violence is on the rise in Milwaukee. “Enforcing laws and prosecuting the criminals who are breaking them will result in getting those responsible for Milwaukee’s violence off the streets,” Dalseide says. “Perhaps the reason for the city’s increasing homicides is that neither is being implemented.”

Theodore S. Lentz, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Dept. of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, agrees with Norman that there are many reasons for the recent increase in gun violence. 

The city’s poverty rate, unemployment, segregated neighborhoods, shortage of affordable housing, and “things like that are all conditions that lead to violence,” Lentz says. 

In 2020 and 2021, COVID-19 put additional strains on communities that were already under pressure and, as people began to re-emerge from isolation during the summer months, incidents of violence increased, he says. Social unrest has created a wedge between police and the community, Lentz adds, “and that has to do with the perception that the police weren’t really protecting them so that the community was protecting themselves.”

Lentz, who specializes in spatial analysis as it relates to crime, points out that gun violence is concentrated in a few high-risk areas and not spread evenly across the city: “Even within the neighborhoods considered high-risk, there are places within the neighborhoods where the violence is concentrated,” he explains.

Further, Lentz adds, most people who live in high-violence neighborhoods are not involved in that violence: “It’s concentrated in a small group of people.” That, he says, is a fact that has informed a number of violence prevention programs now in place across the country.

Blueprint For Peace

At the urging of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Milwaukee’s Blueprint for Peace was developed in 2017 through the auspices of the Milwaukee Health Department’s Office of Violence Prevention and its then-director, Reggie Moore, with support from city, county and school district leadership. Consolidating input from more than 1,500 community members, the blueprint is a framework for the city to develop a public health approach as a method of preventing many forms of violence, including gun violence.

The blueprint identifies several contributing causes of violence in the city: limited employment and economic opportunities, lack of access to resources, lack of social networks and cohesion between residents and institutions (disconnectedness), limited community-government trust, lack of quality housing, neighborhood disinvestment, a culture where fear and hopelessness are pervasive and normalized, adverse childhood experiences and trauma, density of bars and alcohol outlets in high-risk neighborhoods and availability of illegal guns.

Ten neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by poverty and violence are identified in the blueprint as the focus for violence prevention efforts: Old North Milwaukee, Harambee, Franklin Heights, Silver Spring, North Division, Historic Mitchell, Sherman Park, Lincoln Village, Amani and Midtown.

Losing Sir Lawrence

If anything helped to ease the pain of losing her son, says Felicia Noble, it was spending time with her grandson, Sir Lawrence Harris. Although they were not in touch during his childhood, they became closer as he grew into a young man. He would mow her lawn, she helped him work toward his driver’s license and a friend gave him a job.

“He looked almost identical to my son, acted like my son, could put the charm on like my son,” she remembers. “I felt so loved by him and I hope he felt the same way.”

Noble was shopping with a friend when she got the news that Sir Lawrence had been shot and killed. He had been out with two of his friends until very early in the morning, and was shot in the head multiple times, execution style, as he sat in the passenger side of a vehicle near North Richards and 30th streets. His murderer has been convicted and is now serving time.

“I was waiting to see [Sir Lawrence] get older so that I could somehow see what I was cheated on seeing — what my son would have looked like as he got older,” Noble says. “That all got taken from me and it’s very painful.”

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Dr. Stephen Hargarten, ER Physician at Froedtert

Working to prevent more pain

Stephen Hargarten, MD, MPH, an emergency room physician who practiced for 37 years and professor of emergency medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, is keenly aware of the pain caused by gun violence. He treated hundreds of gunshot victims during his career at Froedtert’s Adult Level 1 Trauma Center. 

Hargarten has long been an advocate of approaching gun violence as a public health issue — a disease that has biological, psychological and social aspects, all of which need to be addressed. He’s the founding director of the Medical College of Wisconsin Comprehensive Injury Center, aimed at creating a safer, healthier city through research, education and outreach. 

“It’s multiple sciences coming to bear to see how we can truly make a difference in our communities,” he says. “It’s critical that medical schools get involved and stay involved in a way that’s critical for the communities that they serve.”

In addition to practitioners in the medical profession, Hargarten says experts in the social and behavioral sciences, law enforcement leaders

and community leaders need to work together to work on issues related to all elements contributing to gun violence.

Terri deRoon Cassini, Ph.D., MS, a trauma psychologist and associate professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin, now serves as director of the Comprehensive Injury Center. Much of the work done there is focused on preventing gun violence, particularly with patients who have survived gun injuries. The Milwaukee Health Department’s Office of Violence Prevention contracts with the center to provide a hospital-based “violence interruption” service under the banner of 414LIFE. 

Nationally, gunshot injury survivors ages 15 to 35 are at a 20 to 40 percent increased risk of being shot again, compared to their peers who have not been shot. Of those who die from gun violence, about 20 percent had been treated for a gun injury within five years prior to their death.

The violence interrupter, says deRoon Cassini, talks with patients who are referred to the program by a social worker. The majority are young men of color under the age of 35 who are at greatest risk of reinjury. If the survivor talks about retaliation, the violence interrupter talks to them about nonviolent means of resolving conflict.

Additional violence interrupters based at the Milwaukee Health Department’s Office of Violence Prevention may also be sent into the community to de-escalate conflicts before they erupt into a tragedy. In 2021, there were 71 community violence interruptions through early November. 

“Whenever we’re doing an interruption or mediation, that situation has a high potential for violence,” says Arnitta Holliman, director of the Office of Violence Prevention. “It may be multiple situations or people. I think every single one of those interventions makes a difference.”

When deRoon Cassini’s team does a geospatial analysis of where the injuries occurred, she says, “we can see that the individuals injured are in the Blueprint for Peace priority neighborhoods. We’re getting individuals in the communities where violence is happening the most and is most likely to happen.”

Another important component of violence prevention is addressing the mental health and behavioral health needs of gunshot survivors. “We know that half of gun violence survivors develop post-traumatic stress disorder and mental health issues,” says deRoon Cassini. “We have a Trauma Quality of Life Clinic, so any survivor that gets discharged from the hospital comes to this clinic and sees a psychologist, a trauma responder. That clinic is meant to provide integrated, coordinated care.”

The Phone Rang. Again.

Noble describes her grandson, Dasjon Riser, as “a good-hearted ‘bad kid.’ He’d mow the grass, he helped me carry things, but he was a teenager.” And, like many teens, he didn’t think his “Mama Felicia” knew much about the real world he had to navigate every day. 

So she was a little surprised when Dasjon asked if he could come along on her trip to Mississippi to visit relatives and friends: “We all went and had a wonderful time, but in one of the photos I can see there was some worry in Dasjon’s face and eyes.” Later, she learned that he’d said, “Someone’s gonna kill me.”

This time the call came from her daughter, Dasjon’s mother, in the middle of the night. She was on her way to the hospital, where Dasjon in surgery for multiple gunshot wounds. Because of COVID-19 protocols, Noble gathered with relatives and friends in the hospital parking lot. Dasjon never regained consciousness.

“My youngest daughter had just lost her son,” Noble says. “Mothers kiss troubles away; mothers encourage you when you can’t see the brightness of the day. And here I am stuck with pain in my heart from all the previous murders, and I want to be the strong one so that everyone else doesn’t fall apart, but I’m crumbled on the inside.”

Moving forward

In October, Gov. Tony Evers announced a statewide $45 million investment in violence prevention efforts and support for crime victims, funded by Federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars. About $25 million is allotted for violence prevention efforts, with $20 million designated for victim support services.

“This is another public health crisis that needs our attention and action, and like any public health issue, it starts with prevention. Violence and its effects on kids, families, and communities are not inevitable,” Evers said in a new release announcing the initiative. “We have to focus on the root causes and invest in interventions and community-based solutions, and we have to make sure the trusted folks and organizations who are already doing this work are at the center of this process.” 

Of the $25 million, the city of Milwaukee has been allotted $8 million for its Office of Violence Prevention. Holliman notes that the money will be used to increase the number of neighborhoods that are receiving violence prevention services. The funding will also go toward “some crisis response work and some mental health healing aligned with other work we’re already doing,” she says. Some of the allocation will be distributed through grants to local organizations devoted to youth violence prevention, addressing domestic violence and combating human trafficking.

About $6.6 million in American Rescue Plan monies are allocated to the Medical College of Wisconsin’s (MCW) Violence Prevention Project, housed in the Comprehensive Injury Center. These funds will be used to support research, data collection, education, and community engagement efforts around violence prevention as a public health issue. 

Reason For Hope

Despite the rise in gun violence in the past two years, Holliman sees hope on the horizon. 

“We saw four years of steady decline in violence in the four years prior to 2020,” she explains. “I absolutely believe we can see the numbers decline. It’s a heavy lift, but we are working diligently to prevent further violence. But we can’t do it alone. We have to do it with the community and with our partners who are working toward the same end.”

As an example of working together, she points to the distribution of more than 90,000 gun locks in the community in 2021, aimed at preventing accidental shootings, especially among children. That project is a collaboration between Milwaukee firefighters, police, Health Department clinics and the Office of Violence Prevention.

“Working with the county, Medical College of Wisconsin and many more, we’ve been able to collaborate in ways that haven’t been done in the past, and we’re working to strengthen those collaborations,” Holliman says. “When we’re coordinating services for the community, there is less potential for additional violence and it gives people the resources they need to heal.” 

Chief Norman says he would like to see a “better, robust community-based policing-resident relationship.” That relationship could result in a higher level of trust when sworn officers need to intervene in volatile situations “rather than taking the law into your own hands. I’d hope to have a more robust dialogue as to where we fit in the public safety picture. We have partners that may have more credibility; that’s where collaboration comes in.”

Hargarten also thinks collaboration is a key factor in stemming the tide of gun violence in Milwaukee. “We have a problem — I’m not suggesting we don’t — but we need to tackle it like we do other problems,” he explains. “In this case, it’s imperative that we are publicly aligned in doing so. We’ve

got some good advantages compared to other cities, like the Blueprint for Peace and the Office of Violence Prevention. 

“It’s hard, but I’m very optimistic that we can make a turn here and align the entire city and all of its sectors toward a goal of Milwaukee being the safest and healthiest city it can be.”

After all her losses, Felicia Noble has written a book. “The Cry of Another Mother” is aimed at helping mothers whose children have been the victims of violence. You can do everything “right,” she believes, and still get that wrenching phone call telling you that your child is gone forever.

“We need to figure out what’s catching the eye of our children, and why — as a community and a society — we can’t turn the eyes of the children to something more positive so that they can live longer and we can live in peace.” MKE


MKE’s Mayoral Candidates On Gun Violence

How will Milwaukee’s next mayor address the city’s increase in gun violence? MKE Lifestyle asked those who have an expressed an interest in running in the next mayoral election to se their ideas:

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Sheila Conley-Patterson

Sheila Conley-Patterson: On stemming the rise in gun violence in Milwaukee, Sheila Conley-Patterson, an MPS geometry teacher, says, “For starters, we as a community need to recognize the needs of our city and create strategies to meet the needs of our children, youth and adults.”

She also believes the community must “truly engage with the culture of mental health in the city.”

Conley-Patterson also proposes to organize an operational task force “to encounter the age level of the social media.” She says young people should also pay for social media use.

“This will stem some of the immediate access to crowds of children starting and scheduling gun violence in locations around the city,” she adds.

She wants to see stiffer laws dealing with use of opioids and a host of violent crimes that she believes are precursors to gun violence: “This is how justice can be served.”

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Marina Dimitrijevic

Marina Dimitrijevic: Representing the South Side’s District 14, Ald. Dimitrijevic chairs the Milwaukee Common Council’s Public Safety and Health Committee. She says there’s been an increase in all types of violence recently, and that appears to be a national trend. 

“As the mother of a 5- and 3-year-old, I think about it every day,” she says. “I think about every single child in Milwaukee. I’m heartbroken to hear what’s going on — people resorting to gun violence to settle arguments, guns not being safely secured, and too many guns on the street.”

Dimitrijevic emphasizes prevention and addressing the root causes of violence, because “that’s the best return on investment we can see,” she says. As an example, she authored an initiative to use $16.8 million in the city’s American Rescue Plan Act funding to go to the city’s Office of Violence Prevention, which was meshed with $8 million from the State’s American Rescue Plan funds. Investments in the Office of Violence Prevention can disrupt the cycle of violence, she says, because of its 414LIFE program, which sends violence interrupters to households and neighborhoods that are at risk of gun violence. 

“These are methods I believe in, combined with a well-run police force. We have victims of crime and violence who are afraid to talk with police,” she says. “And we have a new police chief. I’m excited to work with him.”

Dimitrijevic says it is more difficult to attack root causes of violence “when the state Republicans cut our resources over and over again. We’re struggling in the city of Milwaukee to provide basic city services. It has an impact, a negative one. We need help from the State of Wisconsin. That’s why I appreciate Gov. Evers’ $8 million in violence prevention. We have to roll up our sleeves and get to the root causes.”

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Bob Donovan

Bob Donovan: Donovan, former South Side District 8 alderman, notes that police manpower has been reduced over the past 20 years, largely by fiscal challenges, especially in the past two years.

“This is coupled with the fact that over the last few years, there’s been an increase in the anti-police movement, from demonstrations to outright riots fueled by Ferguson and the death of George Floyd,” Donovan says. “This anti-police movement has led to more and more officers either retiring or leaving the force for other jobs.”

The Milwaukee Police Department has also gone through a period of flux, with no permanent chief until recently. 

All of these factors, Donovan says, resulted in plummeting morale, and “at the same time, crime, violence and calls for police service have skyrocketed.”

Donovan describes the city as being in the midst of “a perfect storm” of a “marginalized police department, lack of funding to improve the situation, and a huge increase in crime and disorder. Milwaukee is in a mess, and the impact of COVID has only added to the growing problems.” He points to staff shortages due to budget cuts and COVID-19 as reasons for a backup in the court system and “individuals arrested for serious crimes are out on the street, oftentimes, committing more crimes.”

Short staffing results in delays in response times, fueling mistrust “and even hatred of the police,” Donovan says. Cuts in the detective bureau have “left Milwaukee in a situation where a criminal has a 50/50 chance of getting away with murder.”

If elected mayor, Donovan plans to convene a criminal justice commission to address these challenges. The commission would include current and former law enforcement professionals, judges, district attorneys, corrections officials, community stakeholders and the faith community, with a cge to report back with recommendations within 100 days. Donovan says he would partner with the State to accomplish those objectives, and with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to prosecute gun crimes, with a zero-tolerance policy for felons cged with gun possession. 

He points to other cities, like Boston, that have lowered crime rates as examples that Milwaukee should emulate. He says he would partner with the faith community to help restore stability and order to neighborhoods.

A new and expanded juvenile corrections center is also on Donovan’s agenda, with rehabilitation services for young offenders paired with social services for the youth and their families: “We need to intervene with troubled youth early on so that the child and the family are equipped with the tools they need to get the child back on the right path.”

Donovan says he would also restore Community Prosecution Units to address nuisance properties and partner with local colleges and universities to study criminal activity and make ongoing recommendations for police policies and procedures.

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Cavalier Johnson

Cavalier Johnson: Milwaukee Common Council President and 2nd District Ald. Cavalier Johnson calls the increasing crime in the city “unacceptable” and says staffing the police department is a crucial element in improving public safety.

In November, Johnson proposed an amendment to the city budget that created three new police recruit classes of 65 each, which will add 195 new police officers in 2022. The classes are funded with Federal dollars, and the amendment was adopted by the Common Council.

Johnson also says he added $3 million in funding for the city’s Office of Violence Prevention to support the expansion of 414LIFE on the city’s South Side and sponsored a resolution to approve Milwaukee’s participation in the Gun Safety Consortium, which works on methods of securing guns to keep them from being stolen or accessed by unauthorized users, including children. 

Johnson says he will continue to support efforts to stem violence in the city, and he looks forward to working with Police Chief Jeffrey Norman and the community to ensure a safe Milwaukee for all.

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Earnell Lucas

Earnell Lucas:  As someone who has been in law enforcement and public safety for more than four decades, Milwaukee County Sheriff Earnell Lucas says “We know that for the problem of crime, there’s just not one answer. We, as a community, need to take a multifaceted approach to crime.” 

Lucas emphasizes that everyone has a role in making a safer community, including law enforcement, businesses, health care providers, the faith community and people in every neighborhood in Milwaukee.

“Law enforcement must step up by being more strategic and intentional in policing our community, particularly in communities of color,” he says, “Our community must stand with law enforcement when they are doing the job we’re asking them to do, and stand by them when their actions fall short to ensure that they are being held accountable and to a higher standard.”

To address gun violence, law enforcement needs to be targeting those areas where crime is occurring and using best practices to intercept guns on our streets, Lucas says. “We need to be able to stop the means by which guns are being transported on our streets, and that’s the automobile. We’ve got to have more law enforcement addressing the problems of unregistered, unlicensed vehicles, vehicles with tinted windows and driving in reckless manners because usually those are the precursors — the signs of something larger, whether its guns, drugs or human trafficking.”

Lucas says he has visited cities like Boston and New York that have had successful approaches to reducing crime, and those efforts involved a wide variety of people from the housing industry, academia, technical colleges and the faith-based community in addition to law enforcement.

“At the end of the day, it’s going to fall on this community to have the will to come together to address the problems of crime and violence in our community. Without it, we’re going to continue to see these troubling spikes increase in time until we all gain the will,” Lucas insists. “It takes having inspirational leaders. Milwaukee has an opportunity with the election of its  next mayor, someone who can inspire people to come together and solve these issues.”

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Nick McVey

Nick McVey: Former candidate for 5th District Alderman in Milwaukee, Nick McVey says increased prosecution for gun violence is needed to address rising gun violence in the city.

“I know that gun violence isn’t being prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” McVey says. 

He points to domestic violence as a factor in many crimes: “I’m out here on the streets, seeing domestic violence and guns coincide, but that goes into a whole other can of worms of the Milwaukee Police Dept. not doing much about it.”

“Straw” gun purchases — cases where individuals buy guns for people who are not eligible to buy guns — also need to be prosecuted, insists McVey.

Juveniles who are holding guns, stealing cars and shooting at people are not being prosecuted as adults, he notes. They should be taken off the streets for five years, rehabilitated and any mental health issues they may have should be addressed, McVey adds.

“Instead of having programs for mental health and stuff of that nature, we’re putting a million dollars into the streetcar,” McVey concludes. “We’re also funding these local 501(c)3s that are supposed to

be doing stuff for the community, but more times than not, these programs aren’t producing any viable results.” 

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Michael Sampson

Michael Sampson: Owner of The Hive working space and founder of Swarmm Events, Sampson thinks the COVID-19 pandemic has “taken a toll on everyone. I think there are a lot of mental health issues that have occurred over the past couple of years that will continue to be addressed and it appears people have lost empathy for others’ lives,” he says, adding the entire city of Milwaukee needs to come together to address the problem and work together to stop it.

Sampson says if federal, state or city funds would be available for use, he believes a buyback program could work well to reduce the number of guns on the streets of the city.

“I would also advocate for sher penalties for individuals found to be carrying that have past felonies, as this seems to be a repeat problem with our judicial system,” he adds.  — Nan Bialek