good afternoon everybody thank you for uh coming to this afternoon I appreciate it um we've got some great news to report today the Milwaukee Police Department has a number of our Command officers here that will um speak to you regarding some significant arrests that we've made in the city of Milwaukee relative to robbery Crews that have been operating over the past couple of weeks we're also fortunate to be joined by Chief uh Deputy da Kent L as well this afternoon who's instrumental in working with the Milwaukee Police Department in ensuring the prosecution of these individuals we take into custody uh behind me there's a map here of the city of Milwaukee and you'll see that map is shaded in three colors on August 22nd of this year the Milwaukee Police Department embarked upon a major reorganization of our criminal investigation Bureau what we did is we aligned our detected divisions based on geography versus the former functional design of our detective Bureau instead of having divisions based on crime type like robbery or burglary our divisions now focus on neighborhoods geography within the city of Milwaukee and I had present with me today the commanders the detective commanders over these three areas which correspond with District stations in the city of Milwaukee um I would first like to um introduce Captain ker and yeris who is the commander of our South investigations division which is the blue shaded area which covers districts one two and six good afternoon everyone um I'd like to talk about uh an incident that occurred last night uh this occurred about 9:10 p.m. it occurred in the 6900 block of West Cleveland a Avenue um last night there was an individual who was uh pulling her vehicle into the driveway dropping off a family member when she was uh approached by uh two armed suspects at gunpoint they uh pulled her out of her vehicle um in a very violent act they uh struck her in the face several times and they ended up uh carjacking her and taking her vehicle um a short time later within less than 10 minutes uh officers from the district 6 station uh saw the vehicle they uh initiated a Pursuit they pursued the vehicle and uh the individuals in the vehicle bailed out in the 2200 block of uh South 18th Street um officers pursued on foot on foot looking for the individuals uh one of the suspects that they were pursuing did have a gun and did point the gun at one of the officers uh on more than one occasion the officer did discharge his weapon but did not strike the suspect um these uh suspects were arrested three of them and we were looking at them for um several armed robberies that have occurred on the south side and the investigation obviously this just occurred last night so this investigation is continuing um the arrest of these three suspects is one of several arrests that have been made uh within the city within the last uh week or so uh that have been cleared dozens of violent crimes uh all over the city regarding uh armed robberies so what I would like to do is uh turn this over to uh one of my CIB counterparts here uh Captain Gary gasich of the north investigations division good afternoon again thank you for being here just like to brief you on a series of eight related armed robberies that occurred over a 3-day period on the northwest side of the city of Milwaukee between uh November 21st and November 23rd uh these are six Street robberies and two very violent home invasion robberies a total of six people have been taken into custody five adults and one 17-year-old due to good oldfashioned police work now the two adults have been charged with misdemeanor offenses however three of these adults three of the five adults have been charged with a total of 33 separate felonies now the 17-year-old's involvement is being reviewed at the District Attorney's office as I speak and he's facing upwards of four separate felony charges now these suspects became increasingly bold and violent in each successive incident in several of these inci incidents the suspects fired shots at or near the victims two victims were shot in separate robberies and then another a local clergy member was shot at multiple times it's obvious that these individuals presented a clear and present danger to the North Side neighborhoods that they targeted and it's these neighborhoods that are now much safer as a result of these violent criminals being taken into custody and off the street the success that we've had in bringing these offenders to account is due to the outstanding work by District officers from districts 4 and 7 assistance from the neighborhood task force and the Relentless investigation from detectives in the north investigations Division and the Metropolitan investigations and of course as always assistance from District Attorney chism's office in uh securing prosecutions thank you Captain DUIs good afternoon I'm captain Michael dubis I supervise the central investigations division which as you look on the map is the yellow section it's districts three and five um as well as the other two divisions um we've had a very busy Thanksgiving uh holiday time and uh as a result of good police work uh great observations by the officers on the street uh We've made arrests of seven different people uh connected to three different groups of robbery suspects two of them were in the River West area and I'd like to uh report that most of the robberies that have occurred down there have all been cleared by the arrests of these individuals and also uh two people that were arrested in the area of 18th and Olive that had committed a number of uh R robberies up there all three of these groups are currently being reviewed in the district attorney's office so I don't have the specific charges or names to be released today U but I can say that um they were Cooperative they did make statements and we were going forward with prosecution on all three of those rings and again I would uh tip my hat to the officers in the street because they're the ones that are making the observations taking the descriptions and making the arrests out there thank you thank you Mike thank you this criminal complaint filed earlier this week by the District Attorney's Office uh reflects a great deal of hard work by the men and women of the Milwaukee Police Department as well as uh hard work by in particular assistant district attorney Michael lonsky who spent the majority of his holiday weekend in the office drafting the documents charging three individuals with a total of 33 felony counts uh we have another individual related to this crime spr on the northwest side uh who is being reviewed this afternoon by our office and I would expect uh additional charges to uh possibly be filed as early as uh tomorrow and this really is illustrative of the close relationship that this department and the DA's office has had with regard to combating violent crime both in our office when cases are brought into us but also on the street level through our community prosecution program and I can assure you that uh as um as these violent crimes occur uh the community can be assured of a close working relationship to bring offenders to Justice thank you um I'd just like to ask now uh for the help of the public um there are uh still obviously um robberies and things of that nature that are being committed there is still uh robbery crew that is operating on the South Side um of Milwaukee and also in two of our uh Suburban Southside uh areas um we really would like people to know that during this season especially during the holiday season to uh look out for yourself to look out for your neighbors um to just be um a little more V uh Vigilant when you are getting out of your vehicles when you're visiting businesses things along that line um one of the things that we've done uh Citywide especially over on the south side is um drop Flyers stop into businesses let people know what's going on um we have done that um so if you are a business owner and an officer stops in and gives you a flyer that's just to let you know you know keep your eyes open that there are things still going on we're working on them we're uh very diligently investigating these crimes um if you see something going on please call us thank you thanks K and um if I could just wrap up uh Annie just want to just follow up just a bit on on the reason I focused on the geography when we first began this uh this um press conference the geographic deployments of police resources is extremely critical to the success we've achieved here uh the reason we've aligned our resources GE geographically is so that detectives and police officers are working together in the neighborhoods most impacted by crime focusing on individuals who are most likely to be repeat offenders in those areas that we see prolific criminal activity we mentioned today 18 people arrested in over 20 offenses and a host of felony and misdemeanor charges against them the work of the Milwaukee police officers in our detectives and District Attorney's office has made Milwaukee a safer place and I just have this to say for those individuals who think about committing robbery in the city of Milwaukee we will get you you will be arrested and you will be prosecuted thank you