Kids are killing kids here in Milwaukee.
On October 14, Mallory Muenzenberger was found shot to death in the back yard of a home in Milwaukee. Authorities had difficulty identifying her and notifying her family because she was from Onalaska, WI, just outside LaCrosse. But when they finally did reach family members, they discovered that Mallory's three-year-old son, Major Harris, was missing. This prompted an Amber Alert and the entire city of Milwaukee came together in a municipal-wide hunt for the boy.
One week later, the hunt came to a tragic end. The remains of Major Harris were found in a storage bin off 35th Street, one block north of Villard Ave. The boy had been shot in the head.
Officers had quickly developed a suspect in Jaheem Clark. But as police approached his home on N. 41st and Custer Ave., he committed suicide. That was Sunday, October 17th.
Other suspects were arrested in the case, but Jaheem Clark appears (for now) to have been the ringleader, and the oldest among the suspects.
Not even legal drinking age.
Another tragedy took place in Wauwatosa on October 15th. Four juveniles, aged between 13 and 15, jacked a car in front of the Holiday Inn on North Ave. and Mayfair Road. The busted a window on a vehicle, but were scared off. Sunita Balogun, a 47 year-old Nigerian woman from Oshkosh, informed security at the hotel. Later, she spotted the kids from inside her Jeep. She caught up with the group, got out of the vehicle and confronted them, but the youngest of them, a 13-year-old identified as Jayden Adams, got past Balogun, hopped into the driver's seat of her Jeep, punched her in the face, then kicked the door into her. She fell, he hit the gas and ran her down. He then picked up his friends and they took off.
Sherwin Hughes reported that the kids later went shopping with Balogun's stolen credit cards.
When the stolen Jeep was recovered, it was found that the kids were in the process of repainting it. They were going to keep the vehicle!
The driver who struck her was only 13. He is being charged as an adult, and is facing 115 years in jail.
He was born in 2008.
He will never graduate from 8th grade.
These are just a few stories from the police blotter of the City of Milwaukee as of late. And one pattern becomes clear: Our criminals are KIDS!
Right now, there is a plague of car thefts on top of a plague of reckless driving. Often, the reckless drivers are the thieves themselves.
And they are KIDS! Not even old enough to drive, anyway.
Marshall High School has become an epicenter of this. Kids there are introduced to car theft before they're even old enough to take drivers' ed.
Part of this is the system. Kids steal cars, they joyride, they ditch the car afterwards. Even if the police catch them, they are usually let go. Only 2% of car thefts are ever prosecuted, much less convicted.
But the more crucial part is that the schools have failed. People often complain, "Where are the parents?" But when parents are forced to take on two minimum wage jobs to make ends meet, they simply can't raise a teenager responsibly. Nobody can.
This is where good schools are supposed to make up the difference. But in Milwaukee, schools are subjected to the School Choice Program - a positively Darwinian approach which leaves MPS utterly bereft of the resources it needs to teach kids properly.
But do charter schools work better? The numbers seem to say yes. But that's because charter schools bump out the most problematic kids after only three weeks. This boosts their academic numbers and allows them to brag about what a fine job they're doing with education. They also get to keep the school voucher money! But those kids who get booted have no choice but to return to MPS - which then has even less money to deal with. Zero vouchers for those who need them most.
In other words, the very kids who need the most remedial education, the very ones who need the most time, effort, and - yes, I'll say it - money, are the ones most left out in the cold.
Do Republicans really believe that has zero consequences?
Now, suppose you were thrown into that meat grinder as a teenager. Suppose the system failed you that utterly. You know damned well there's no future for you. You know damned well nobody will help you. You also know your best shot at a GED is from inside a jail cell.
Wouldn't you lash out? Wouldn't you steal cars just for kicks, too? Hell, you're headed straight for jail, anyway. Might as well have some fun before you go.
If you have been in favor of school choice, you have been in favor of exactly this. You have been in favor of letting public schools fail. But what you ignored was that when a school fails, all the kids in that school fail also. That comes back to us in the form of crime, crime, and more crime, and all it takes is one abandoned kid to make a troublemaker out to make our streets unsafe. Multiply that times the hundreds upon hundreds of kids whom MPS is forced to let down, and you get the hideous situation on the city's north and northwest sides.
If you backed school choice, you have some of Major Harris' blood on your hands. You have some of Sunita Balogun's blood on your hands. You have some of the blood of the 167 Milwaukee homicides on your hands.
You should have known this would inevitably happen. Fuck you.
It's absolutely clear what the solution is: FUND THE SHIT OUT OF OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS!
You want to end crime? Are you "tough" on crime? Then give kids a reason to believe they can make it without going to jail! That means FUNDING THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS!
You want reparations? Or at least, the beginnings of reparations? FUND THE ABSOLUTE SHIT OUT OF OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS!
You want to end segregation in Milwaukee? FUND THE UTMOST SHIT OUT OF OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS! You'll be amazed how quickly quality education brings white people back into the city!
And if Republicans say, "But that's too expensive," the only proper response is that it got that way because YOU refused to pay the piper before. And now the interest on that account has grown!
It's time to pay the piper. And if I had it my way, I would seize Scott Walker's assets as a down payment. But barring that, I'll settle for the willingness of city officials to pony up, and white people generally shutting the hell up about the price tag.
It is not just the solution, it is the only solution.
Eric
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