Community Task Force MKE Demands Answers About Milwaukee House At Center Of Trafficking Uproar

The Milwaukee community activist group Community Task Force MKE says Milwaukee police aren’t doing enough when kids go missing on Milwaukee’s west side.

The group held a press conference Friday afternoon with Selcy Perkins, the mother of one of the Milwaukee girls who went missing on Sunday, June 21, and returned home on Tuesday. The girl was reported missing and possibly seen at a house in the 2100 block of North 40th Street, where people gathered Tuesday to demand police investigate her and others’ disappearances.

Perkins said police drove by her daughter 10 times without recognizing her or bringing her in. She said one officer from District 5, the same district where she reported her daughter missing, stopped and talked to the girl, who was in the same clothes Perkins had described when reporting her missing, and didn’t bring her in. She thanked community members who looked for her daughter.

“Had it not been for Facebook, and people putting in real footwork, she would not have been found,” Perkins said. “What I am saying is if your kids are out here missing, Milwaukee Police Department is only going to put them in the computer as missing.”

Sgt. Sheronda Grant, public information officer for the Milwaukee Police Department, said in an email that the investigation into the events in the 2100 block of North 40th Street is still ongoing.

“Our members investigate several missing persons calls each day and work safely to locate all children,” she said. “We take those calls seriously.”

The house was set on fire Tuesday night after police searched it several times without turning up the missing girls or arresting anyone in the house, to the frustration of the gathered crowd.

Vaun Mayes, with Community Task Force MKE, said he and others at the scene put out several fires before the one that eventually caught the house. He said he was frustrated police didn’t do more to stop it, or contain it once it started.

“If I was the leader, I would not have told the officers to stand aside while the house burned up. That should’ve never happened in their presence,” he said. “That’d be like them stepping aside and letting one person shoot another person.”

Corey Kirkwood, another community organizer at the press conference, said whatever evidence was in the house should not have been in a position to be destroyed in the first place.

“Police had every opportunity to collect all the evidence,” he said. “When we say ‘they burnt all the evidence,’ police allowed them to burn all the evidence.”

Grant, with the Milwaukee Police Department, said several officers were injured by the crowd — two, according to a Wednesday morning statement, as well as a firefighter and three members of the crowd. She called the events of Tuesday night and the damage “reprehensible.”

“Burning down the home is unreasonable, unacceptable and causes unnecessary trauma to the individuals who live in that neighborhood,” she said in an email.

Mayes, though, said he’s heard from neighbors that the house has long been a problem spot, and many are relieved it’s gone.

“People have driven past, neighbors have come out and said, ‘Dude, it’s so peaceful over here, a weight has been lifted off this community because this house is not here anymore,’” he said.

Mayes and other gathered members of the Community Task Force said there are other houses in the area that have been cause for concern. MPD did not answer a question about whether they have other houses in the neighborhood on their radar because of repeated calls like the ones they got about the now-burned house.

Mayes said if police had talked to neighbors in the area before the events of Tuesday night, they would have heard many of the same stories he, Kirkwood and others had heard — that they were worried about activities in that house. He also said he and others looked around the house and saw signs that kids had been there, and sleeping in cars on the property.

“That day, all those hours before the house burned up, people were telling them there was evidence,” he said. “Search the house, actually do an investigation, and you will find what they’re talking about.”

He added that there are some reasons people might not come to police with those stories, though he emphasized that many have come forward and told police their kids are missing or that they were worried about activities at the house. He said kids may have been warned not to reveal what happened there for fear of retribution, or they might have stayed quiet to avoid getting in trouble.

In a statement Milwaukee Police released the day after the fire, they said two missing girls had been found and were with their families, but varying accounts from community leaders and activists have said there were up to seven other missing children believed to be trafficked. Mayes said it’s hard to say how many kids are missing now — several have returned to their families, but at least one ran away again, while others have gone missing in the meantime.

Police records, meanwhile, showed that police had visited the house more than 27 times over the last four years for everything from welfare checks to reports of shots being fired.

Residents of the area said MPD’s handling of the reports of missing girls reflected the community’s long-standing frustration that law enforcement doesn’t do enough when children from the area go missing.

Grant, with MPD, said in her email, “We are in this together and we are here to protect and serve everyone in our community.”

Both Mayes and Kirkwood critiqued the media’s coverage of the missing girls and the frustration that led into Tuesday night’s events, as well as general coverage of the police department. Mayes said police have put too much of the blame for the fire and throwing objects on protesters, when he said those actions were prompted by police officers’ own treatment of the protesters and their failure to take the missing kids’ cases seriously.

“The media has to do a better job, other than taking what (the police) say as gold,” Mayes said. “Because a lot of times, it is not.”