Milwaukee teens and city leaders address safety concerns ahead of summer
CBS 58 MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Milwaukee teens stepped up to the microphone Monday night, to ask city leaders what they are doing to make sure this summer is a safe one.
"With all this violence going on with the takeovers, all the bad things we don’t want in the community, as you guys as leaders, what’s the next step?" asked an event attendee.
Teens and Milwaukee leaders started the conversation of safety ahead of summer vacation at the "Real Talk with 414" event.
"When I generally talk about public safety, it’s a two-pronged approach, right?" said Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson. "It’s accountability and it’s prevention."
Several teens say the summer can be a tough time for themselves and their peers.
"A lot of teenagers don’t have safe places to express themselves, and they take out their trauma from home and go out on the streets and express themselves in maybe a violent way," said a teen at the event.
City leaders say teens should lean on positive outlets and community resources to stay busy and out of trouble.
The hot topic of the night, from both teens and city leaders, is the nationwide trend of "teen takeovers."
"During teen takeovers, things can spiral out of control, and situations can get very tense," said a teen at the event. "Which can lead to violence and fatalities, and especially here in Milwaukee, violence is such a common thing that most people don’t realize it when it’s happening everywhere."
"When you get some of those bad actors out there that do bad things, right, they start fights, they intimidate people, they block traffic, you know, sometimes they may fire weapons or things like that," said Mayor Johnson. "That is what causes problems. It puts a stain on the rest of young people in our community"
Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman says it comes down to teens holding each other accountable.
"We want to have a fun summer," said Chief Norman. "We want to make sure that everyone is safe, and everyone can have fun, but we need to make sure we’re not harming each other or harming the community, because that’s not acceptable."
