The low numbers come despite the chief and mayor promising to step up curfew enforcement in the city and with violence downtown.
The Milwaukee Police Department has issued just 34 curfew tickets to juveniles this year through July 29, and only eight of those tickets were issued in “Code Red,” the special enforcement area designed to protect the city’s downtown area entertainment district, Wisconsin Right Now has learned through an open records request.
Another 11 of the 34 tickets were issued in district 1 downtown, MPD revealed to WRN.
That’s despite the fact that Mayor Cavalier Johnson and Police Chief Jeffrey Norman promised police were stepping up curfew enforcement as far back as 2022.
In fact, Norman guaranteed it.
“I do not want one citation issued,” Norman said then. “I don’t want one child to be taken into our possession, but if it means that we have to step up and do it because someone else is not, guarantee it. I expect it and it shall be done.”
The 2025 numbers to date represent an increase from the same time frame in 2024 and 2023, when 19 and 31 tickets were issued in the same time period.
For the entire year, 62 curfew tickets were issued to juveniles in 2024 and 60 in 2023. Only nine of the 2024 tickets were issued in the Code Red area, and 0 in 2023.
The number of curfew tickets issued to “responsible adults” is even lower.
Three such tickets were issued this year through July 29 overall and 0 in the Code Red area. That compares to three and four in 2024 and 2023. Only nine such tickets were issued in all of 2024, and 11 in 2023.
At the Common Council committee hearing where aldermen pressed top brass with the Milwaukee Police Department on plans to tackle downtown violence, they asked for the number of curfew citations issued.
Some of the violence is exacerbated by youth who hang out downtown, especially around the food trucks, police said. At the hearing, Inspector Sheronda Grant told aldermen she wasn’t sure the number of curfew tickets handed out this year or the number of tickets given to parents of curfew violators. However, she promised to get the numbers.
The violence first erupted on Water Street several years ago. However, recently, there have been nine shootings, three deaths, and two serious injuries from a vehicle driving through police barricades.
On the heels of that, Wisconsin Right Now filed an open records request for the numbers. On Aug. 4, the MPD provided the numbers.
