Murder in Milwaukee Louis Theroux

Have you ever had to fire that one in a situation?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, somebody threw a tricycle through

my front window in a confrontation with one of my kids.

I went out there with this, and I...

I shot the car, and by the time I got done, walking back to the house,

the SWAT team had me surrounded.

And I went to jail. I went to jail.

I was in the north side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin,

an area afflicted by sky-high levels of gun violence.

Stop! Police!

The past few years have seen a surge in homicides here...

-REPORTER:

-Chants of "This is our city" can be heard as police try

to block off...

..and a mounting distrust of the police.

Man, look, I'm going to tell you right now how I feel about the police.

-BLEEP

-the police. That's how I feel about it.

I was here to find out what was behind the killing,

and what hope there was for one of America's

most desperate communities.

This is not part of God's plan.

God does not deal in death, God deals in life.

This programme contains very strong language and scenes which some viewers may find disturbing.

-RADIO:

-It's all over to you right now.

I've got a black vehicle behind the car here.

I was with the police,

in pursuit of a car full of suspected armed robbers.

Holy shit, this is smoking!

Keep walking that way.

Nobody cares, just get out of here!

-Back off.

-Get everybody back!

The pursuit had ended in a crash.

Officers were attempting to control the scene.

If that thing blows, get across the street.

-RADIO:

-There's a gas leak, with a car that is smoking.

Is he OK? What happened to him?

-He was part of the car crash.

-They were in the car that fled.

He's injured, so we've got to get medical in here.

So he got hurt in a car crash?

Yeah, this red one here was taken in an armed robbery.

-Did he try to run?

-That was the car that was fleeing,

when we were on the radio.

How would you gauge the mood around here right now?

It felt quite tense. When we rolled up, it felt a little bit tense.

Yeah, that's because all this police are here.

We have individuals in handcuffs, and given the mood of late,

they're not too happy about that.

It felt like the police were slightly outnumbered, for a moment.

Yeah, I mean, initially, probably.

But, you know, we don't have any control of the scene yet,

cos it's so fresh. You can see we have tape up now.

We have kind of control of this immediate area.

When we first get here, none of this is up,

everyone's just right on top of us.

These few square miles in the north of Milwaukee

are among America's worst for violent crime.

Any shootings out here?

Yeah, I know, you guys are always chilling out here.

The rate of incarceration here is one of the nation's highest.

Stop! Police!

He's got a gun, he's got a gun! Don't fucking move your arm!

Don't fucking move your arm! He's still moving.

Guns are pervasive.

You guys got IDs on you? I'm going to have you step out of

the car quick, and I'll explain why we're stopping you, OK?

-No guns on you, right?

-Do you have any guns on you, man?

Just keep your hands up for me, man.

For police, it is not always friendly terrain.

Did you hear the shots fired out here about an hour ago?

-No, nothing?

-I was working inside.

-Nothing?

-I'm not allowed to come out.

-Hello.

-Oh, you all doing a documentary?

Yeah. You know, there's a lot of gun crime,

and there are a lot of homicides here for a city its size?

-Yeah, I heard a lot on the news.

-Yeah, what's that all about?

I mean, honestly, I don't know.

I guess the police, they fail to protect our community.

That's what it's about.

-That's why we wear our Black Lives Matter shirts...

-Mm-hm.

..because we do matter.

They don't care how our neighbourhood looks.

But I think they're here now because they're trying to reduce

the crime.

I mean...

I don't think that's true.

Ma'am, here's the thing, we've got a report of a shooting over here.

-Do you know what happened?

-I don't think they're trying

to reduce the crime. I think they're trying to escalate the crime.

Why would they do that?

I don't know, baby, there goes one right there, ask him.

Y'all have a good day!

While she said that, I'm looking for casings involved

in this shooting, so...

We still haven't found any yet,

but we should be able to find out eventually what has happened.

-What's happening?

-We're going to sit in the truck.

We're a little vulnerable standing out here.

-Really?

-I do, yeah, someone take a pot shot from over there,

or over there. It wouldn't surprise me.

-So where are we going now?

-A homicide.

Shooting, 2525 North Hubbard Street.

Car, six people, and a van, shot a man in the face.

Gunshot wound to the head, PNB, which means pulses, not breathing.

We've got a body on the street, and we don't have any eyewitnesses yet.

You know his name?

Yeah, he had a picture ID in his pocket.

-Antonio Ewing is what's on his ID.

-How old?

Born in '85.

-Born in '85? So that would make him 31?

-Yes.

Do you have a description of a shooter?

Nothing. We have nobody that's claiming they saw anything yet.

We've got a couple of people that heard gunshots,

that's all I have to go on.

What are the plausible scenarios in a case like this?

-One would be a robbery.

-Mm-hm.

Another would be some kind of a drug deal gone bad.

Unfortunately, that's very common.

The third is just some type of grudge.

A lot of our homicides are because of things said

or done on social media.

SCREAMING AND SHOUTING

Families get very emotional.

Many times there's disorder, and they can get very violent.

-Mm-hm.

-That's why I'm just keeping you here for now.

-OK.

Having the body here is also a thing.

We need the body here for evidentiary reasons, but yet,

they'll come time where we just have to move the body

to help with the tensions in the neighbourhood.

WOMAN SOBS

So did you know the victim?

Your cousin?

Yeah.

Family.

Do you know anything about what happened?

It's bad.

Do you know who this is?

That's his mother. That's my auntie.

-That's the mother of the victim?

-Yes.

You know? I don't know.

I don't know what happened.

Milwaukee's homicide rate spiked unexpectedly two years ago

for reasons that remain obscure.

Some blame new laws making it easier to carry a gun.

Like other Rust Belt cities, Milwaukee is plagued

by unemployment, poor schools and rampant crime.

By some measures, it is the most segregated place in America.

Relations between police and the community had become

even more fraught than usual.

Two weeks earlier, an officer had shot and killed

23-year-old Sylville Smith,

in circumstances that were still disputed.

SIREN BLARES

-REPORTER:

-Tensions boil over on the streets of Milwaukee

Saturday night.

Two nights of unrest had followed.

A chaotic scene near Sherman and Auer

as a gas station goes up in flames.

We're not supposed to do anything at all.

We're just supposed to sit there and take it.

Man, enough is enough, man.

The man in this video was Sylville's brother, Sedan.

I'd arranged to meet him at a shrine to Sylville,

close to where the shooting had taken place.

-Louis, are you Sedan?

-Yeah.

-Louis, how you doing?

-Hi, man.

Tell me about what we've got here.

Is this a T-shirt with Sylville on it?

This is one of the T-shirts with my little brother on it.

It says, "Rest, Bro. We got you 5ver."

People come every day and put their own stuff on here.

We both was named after cars, so we've always been close together.

-You know what I'm saying?

-Named after cars?

Yeah, Cadillacs. My name's Sedan, his name's Sylville,

we both named after cars.

What was the story, what happened to Sylville?

Basically, he was in a car...

-..that was perceived to be suspicious by the police.

-Mm-hm.

Which was their reason for stopping the car.

He allegedly got out of the car and ran.

And the news said he allegedly pulled a gun.

-Pulled a gun?

-Yeah.

But then on the autopsy report, it shows he was shot

in the back of his car, fleeing.

And he was also shot under his armpit, meaning his arms was up.

Given the narrative you describe,

why'd you think Sylville wouldn't have dropped the gun?

-See...

-Why did he run? is the other question.

In that situation...

Being in situations where you hear what the police do to black men

-in the community, carrying a gun and having one...

-Mm-hm.

..the way he thought was fear.

So if I'm fearing something, my first instinct is

to get away from that.

But now the police are out here.

That's all I can see. They don't like me.

But this is how they come after we come.

They come like that, they profile the tree.

They do that to cause intimidation, you know what I mean?

When they see me out here, especially,

they want me to stop doing this. That's my brother,

I ain't never going to stop.

The officer who shot and killed Sylville

-was himself African-American.

-Yeah.

Now, you could argue that it suggests that maybe it wasn't,

-at least, a racist act?

-No.

-No, no, no, no.

We don't turn it into what it's not. You feel me?

At the end of the day, it's not a race war.

You see the police right here, right now?

It's them against us.

It's not a white on black.

It's a blue on black.

Are they not concerned...

Because there's been a track record of civic unrest, right?

-There's been incidents and uprisings...

-Right now...

I think their concern is to de-escalate anything...

-If y'all listen right now.

-..before it happens.

Listen, listen. If these cameras weren't here right now,

if y'all want to go duck off in your cars, and see how it really is.

Me and him, right now, we'd be standing here, not making no noises,

we could be talking to each other, they will pull up and tell us

keep our feet moving, we loitering.

It was reported that in the 24 hours leading up

to Sylville's death, right, there was something like five or six

fatal shootings, right?

Five fatal shootings in that 24-hour period,

which says that there's this deeper situation to do

with out-of-control homicides in the African-American community.

This is a state where there is a lot of trash that needs to be cleared up

in the first place. There is a war on drugs going on here since 2006,

you know what I mean? And now there's guns in it.

They giving us the right to carry the guns,

without cleaning up the drugs.

Do you both have guns?

I have Smith & Wesson's. Both my guns are Smith & Wesson's.

I have a nine millimetre and I have a 380.

-Those are handguns?

-Yes.

-Handguns.

Man, you can get your hands on any gun, you've got the

right to buy them, you know?

What have you got, Sedan?

I ain't going to say.

-You're not going to say?

-I can't say.

-Why?

-OK?

-Why can't you say?

-Because my momma took my guns.

Your momma did? Yeah. Why did she take your guns?

Cos she found out what happened to my brother,

and she knows how I am, so she took them.

With police viewed with suspicion, many on the North Side

prefer to find their own solutions to crime.

-Hi, Shonda, how are you doing?

-All right, all right.

One is community activist Shonda Payne.

Shonda grew up in the Vice Lords gang,

had a baby at 13, and committed murder at 15,

before turning her life around and founding Unity In The Community,

an anti-violence group.

She was now raising her children on one of the most

lawless blocks in Milwaukee.

So what happened last night?

I'm not sure. Just a lot of shooting, a lot of...

..blood, people running and screaming and hollering.

-Was anyone killed?

-No-one killed, but definitely people injured.

Last week, we had...

..a newborn baby, five-day-old baby come, and that's when the house,

my house, got shot with the bullets and all that,

and a lot of the rest of these houses right here.

I had to, kind of, fall to the floor with the baby in my hands,

and then prepare my weapons and also secure my little ones

-at the same time.

-It's sad that you have to do that.

It's sad, but it's kind of, like, what's going on.

I can babysit, shoot a gun, and cook at the same damn time.

This is where I make more babies every morning.

Because we live where we live, I kind of sleep...

on the ready. She's always right here next to my bed.

-What is that?

-It's a Mossberg, it's a 12 gauge.

Mossberg...

..she's the one I trust in anything

cos this is what the police use.

This goes, normally, in my bra.

I just do like this.

Nobody even knows I have it.

And then when I'm in the bathtub, I take this one.

-I'm just going to point that that way.

-Oh, yeah.

-All of them are on safety.

-Are they?

-Yeah. I don't...

I got too many kids.

But this is what I do when I'm in the bath tub, I lay it back here,

cos I lay right here, and I take a towel, and I just do like that,

I throw it over it.

And if my kids want to come in the bathroom, they don't see it.

Around here, you've definitely got to have several places

where you are able to run and you're able to have shelter.

And you keep them all loaded?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Always.

Always. You never want to ever have something that is not ready to go.

That's how you die.

That's how you die.

Shonda had fostered and raised more than 20 children.

One was 16-year-old Kyree.

Do you feel that you're in a sort of

at risk situation with peers of yours,

people your age who you know or you're aware of,

who are doing lawless stuff, running around with guns?

I don't really worry about it cos it's not me.

You know?

Like, it's not really surprising or shocking any more to me.

It's, "Oh, he has a gun, he's 15."

A lot of parents at home right now, when the kids get to be

comparatively bigger than the mother,

cos there's almost always no father at home...

..what do you think somebody that's 5ft 4", 187lb

compared to a 220lb 6ft 1" male

is supposed to do with a child that is defying you?

-You tell me.

-I'll tell you what I had to do a couple of weeks ago

when he told me what he wasn't going to do.

I took a skillet and I took a knife,

and I hit his ass right in the head.

And I told him, "Now, do you feel you want to do what I said now?"

He said like, "Oh, shit, I think I get it."

Did you feel that was reasonable? How did you feel about that?

Not at the moment I didn't feel it was reasonable, but afterwards...

I get it.

-I mean...

-Look how many of them dying out here.

Every night. Look how many dying.

She doing something right because...

-I ain't out there.

-Exactly.

I'm not in stolen cars, I've got my own car.

-He don't do drugs.

-I don't do drugs.

You know, you obviously have weapons for self protection.

-Exactly.

-You said your children do?

Oh, yeah. He knows how to handle every single thing in this house.

-But he doesn't have a weapon now?

-No. He's 16!

So when would he be...?

-18.

-Then he gets one?

18, he can have his own.

He has known since the age of seven years old

how to move with every single weapon, automatic weapons,

semi-automatic weapons, he knows how to load them, he knows how to un...

He knows how to break them down. He knows every single thing.

CHILDREN GIGGLE

How old...? GUNSHOT

Fuck! They so fucking disrespectful!

Why would you shoot in front at all these fucking people, man?

That's the shit I'm talking about.

They don't give a fuck! They shoot and drive off.

What if somebody fucking gets hit?

That's the shit I'm talking about.

The light shines in the darkness...

..and the darkness cannot overcome it.

We gather here...

..to remember, to grieve...

..for the death of Tonio.

I was at a vigil for Antonio Ewing,

the young man whose homicide scene I'd been at

on my first night in Milwaukee.

It doesn't take much to retaliate.

It doesn't take much to return evil for evil.

Anybody can be a conqueror...

..but we are called to be more.

Because we know that the only thing violence brings is more violence.

The only thing that death brings is more death.

So let's not pretend that this was Tonio's time.

-It wasn't!

-It was too early.

Tonio, did you hear that?

PEOPLE WAIL

Did you hear that?

Oh, man!

This is for you, Tonio, wherever you at. This is for you.

I know you can hear us, I know you see us.

This is for you.

This is a homecoming, this is not no going away, it's a homecoming.

You have been reborn.

Amen.

-Donald, can I grab you for just a minute?

-Yes, yes.

-How are you doing? I'm Louis.

-Louis, how you doing?

Tonio, that's my step-son, OK?

He's 30 years old, young man, young man.

He worked with me, I got him a job and he worked with me.

I looked out for him and he stayed with me,

stayed with me and his mother.

He never bothered nobody, never started nothing with nobody.

You know? But he was just hanging out with the wrong crowd.

He was harmless,

and somebody came out here and they killed my cousin.

These streets is vicious.

'I wondered if Antonio's life might help me understand

'what was behind the gun violence in Milwaukee?'

Hi, Karen. How are you?

'Donald asked me back to the house he shared with Antonio's mother, Karen.'

Right now, I don't know what I'm feeling.

I'm just always spaced out.

And it really hasn't kicked in yet,

she having lost someone so close, her son.

Sit down for a minute.

It's crazy.

And, tell you the truth, I've just had some more bad news.

What bad news did you just have?

My niece...

-My friend just got killed.

-A niece of yours or a friend of yours?

Yes, a niece of mine.

-How old?

-Young, young.

My nieces is all of them young, all of them young.

In Milwaukee?

Yes, right here in Milwaukee.

-Today?

-There's so much happening in Milwaukee.

We're not talking about Chicago, we're talking about Milwaukee.

But A lot of people come from Chicago up here to do...

Donald.

Let me talk.

SHE SOBS

Crime on crime.

You know what? We need to...

No, serious, we need to stop this.

-No, serious. Seriously.

-No.

Seriously.

Oh...

Donald, Donald.

I don't even want to talk, you know.

I'm already messed up in the head right now.

Well, we all are. But like I said...

I want to see him.

-This is Tonio when he was a baby.

-I was 25 when I gave

-birth to him.

-And this is her.

-No way?

-Yeah.

-That's nice.

There you go right there, when he was in school.

Is Tonio in the middle standing up with the cat?

-No, there's Tonio.

-Oh, that's Tonio on the left?

He was a rapper, too.

-And he was good.

-He rapped under the name Blizz Montana?

-Yes, yes.

-And that's Tonio there?

This is his daughter right here. She looks just like him.

May I ask about Tonio's father, his dad?

He's incarcerated.

-Right.

-Incarcerated?

-He's in jail.

-He's in prison?

-Yeah.

-Was the dad able to be a dad to Antonio?

Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, yes.

Yes. He wasn't locked up when Antonio...?

He was an asshole, but he was...

He did for his kids, yeah.

'Outside on the porch, the conversation continued with

'Donald and two of Antonio's cousins, Trish and LaWanda.'

How many children does Antonio have?

-He has four children.

-Four children?

-Yes.

How many mothers?

-Four.

-Three.

-Four.

-Four.

Antonio has four children with four different women.

That's four fatherless children?

Absolutely.

We're two days in now,

do you know if they're making headway with the case?

Have they made progress in terms of finding

the culprit?

We haven't heard nothing.

We haven't heard a word yet.

But the detective did tell us what Antonio had on him when he died.

They did say he had some money, he had keys,

he had a title to his car.

That's all he had on him.

No drugs, no nothing.

I'm hurt right now. My heart is...

I don't know where it's going right now.

I don't know who done it,

I don't know why they done it.

But if the police can find out,

the authorities can find out and then let us know something.

Let us know something.

There had been another homicide on Milwaukee's North Side.

One of the side-effects of the high rate of armed robberies

and murders in Milwaukee is that there are also many killings

that are legal and justified as self-defence.

This showed signs of being one of them.

You're the captain?

-Captain Boston Smith.

-I am, sir.

-Yes, nice to meet you.

-Yes.

Do you have a picture of what happened yet?

Basically, two individuals came into the home,

shots were exchanged, and the person that's left deceased does not reside

in the residence.

Two individuals came in the home, who didn't live there?

-Correct. Is what I...

-Shots were exchanged...

..between the two individuals and persons at the house?

Correct. That's the information, the prelim information.

So what is happening right now?

We have some individuals that has come from our

Sensitive Crimes Unit, and they're conducting

their individual interviews of possible witnesses

who may have heard or seen something,

or who was in the house at that time.

So, many times, they would take them from the house

and they will sit them in the car,

so that they can interview them alone without being heard.

Are you getting good cooperation?

-From the individuals in the house?

-Mm-hm.

-At first we was not.

-Why not?

-Um, this is an area that we kind of struggle with

when it comes to the police.

A lot of times they don't like to tell the police anything,

they don't trust us.

There's a perception that if they cooperate with the inquiry,

they are somehow snitches?

Yes, they have a saying out here on the street

that "snitches get stitches."

5'8" east.

2'4" south.

In charge of the scene was a 24-year veteran

of Milwaukee PD, Gust Petropoulos.

Having cleared the house, he and his team were gathering evidence

and he'd allowed me inside.

You'll see a gunshot wound there.

-There's two in the leg too.

-There's one in the neck. OK.

Looks like they tried to put some pressure on the neck there.

That's potentially ballistic damage.

That's likely ballistic damage as well.

This is the initial story I've got so far

and it's from the man of the house.

He's a gentleman named AC Crockett.

He says to me that he was at the neighbour's residence.

Comes back, he sees his son,

Craig Crockett, on the front porch talking to a couple of young men.

He doesn't know what the conversation is,

but he shares with us that his son does tattooing...

..in the house here.

These may be customers, or presumed customers, I don't know.

AC goes upstairs to check on another son of his

and he hears gunshots going off.

He comes downstairs to discover this guy laid out on the floor here,

and his son injured.

And then his son says, "They tried to rob me."

He says, "I'm shot, I've got to take myself to the hospital,"

which he does.

Do we know anything about this guy?

We believe he's Anthony Trice.

He was born on Christmas Day, 1993.

The co-actor with him fled on foot,

but AC thinks he might have been hit as well.

The other thing I noticed was the trajectory of the holes in the floor

over here.

They're relatively dramatic down.

What does that tell us?

It tells us somebody stood over this guy...

..started hitting him like that.

It would be OK to fire enough rounds to stop the threat,

but not to fire directly down?

If the threat is over...

You have to stop?

Yeah. So there's more to this story.

How confident are you of...

..solving the case?

I have no idea.

I don't.

What we know... I think I know who shot him.

It's going to be Craig, right?

I mean, his own dad is telling us that's

who shot this guy, right?

What are the circumstances surrounding how Craig

came about shooting him?

I don't know for sure.

I'm not sure I'm ever going to know the whole story, right?

Whether Anthony Trice had been an armed robber

and the killing justified, for now, remained an open question.

But I was struck by the self-perpetuating nature

of the violence -

crime leading to people arming themselves against crime.

SIREN BLARES

Meanwhile, the accomplice of the suspected robber remained at large

and, very probably, armed.

I'd been learning more about Antonio Ewing,

the man murdered on my first night in Milwaukee,

whose family I'd met.

He'd done two years in prison for dealing cocaine and heroin,

but it was also said he had been trying to change his life.

He'd been about to release a CD under his rap name, Blizz Montana.

-Hey, Dougie.

-What's up?

-Can I come in?

-How you doing? Yeah, yeah.

'I'd arranged to meet a handful of his friends.

'They too were musicians.'

-Are you from Milwaukee as well?

-Yeah, I'm from here, man.

Do you have a sense of what's behind the violence

here in Milwaukee?

Man, it's...

It's a sense of hopelessness.

You know, and the atmosphere.

It's like, it's not a lot of jobs here,

like half of the African-American men are locked up.

-OK, you're a music producer, right?

-Mm-hm.

So you're not leading the kind of outlaw life,

the sort of thug lifestyle.

Correct? But do you feel you need to have a weapon to be safe?

-Yeah, I got one right now.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-I've got...

-Right here, right now?

-Right now, yeah.

-Where?

See, it's right over there.

-Show us.

-It's a nice little...

-Show us.

It's a nice little, you know...

Be careful with it.

No, I know how to handle it.

-It's legal, though.

-That's legal?

-It's legal.

-What is that?

-All my weapons are legal. It's an AR-15.

This one we ride around with, man.

-For real?

-And we not starting no trouble.

We don't, you know... This is all for self-defence purposes.

You just went from being like a very plausible high-end music producer

to looking almost like a paramilitary guerrilla...

-Yeah.

-..which was a weird transformation to witness.

I mean, you know, you got to have something if you're

in Milwaukee, man.

If Blizz had a gun on him, he would be right here right now.

Yeah. Y'all wouldn't have been right here even talking to us.

-If Blizz had had a gun...

-If he had had a gun...

-If Blizz had

-a gun, he would still be with us right now.

-He would still be alive.

And he usually got the gun on him every day.

Cos then he would have shot the guy who tried to kill...

-well, who killed him.

-Or the guy would have thought

-twice about doing it.

-He would have thought twice about doing it.

-He wouldn't even have did it.

-If I would have seen him approach

Blizz, I would have told Blizz, "Don't leave, don't leave."

-Know what I'm saying?

-You would have said, "Don't leave."

-Leave where?

-Leave my porch.

So he stepped off your porch?

Yeah. He stepped off my porch, he walked around the corner,

he got shot twice in the head and once in the chest.

Do you know who did it?

-Don't know who did it.

-We don't know who did it.

-For real?

-Yeah.

Would you tell me if you knew?

Um...

Probably not. Probably not, to be honest.

Yeah.

You said Blizz used to hang on your porch quite a bit,

so you got to know him well.

I knew him very, very, very well.

What was he like?

He was quiet. Blizz probably...

The way he looked...

He looked like a grimy person,

like if a person was to just glance on him,

he looks like he'll rob people or, you know, but...

Blizz had the kindest heart.

-You said "grimy," right?

-Yeah.

-People thought he had a -

don't take this the wrong way - but a slightly mean face?

Yeah. That's what I mean, his features.

He looked like he was out here on the streets and he was,

you know, doing this and that. He was nothing like that.

He had some convictions, though, didn't he?

-Yeah, he had some convictions.

-For dealing, I think?

Yeah. You know, but...

Everybody don't deal for the same purpose.

He probably was dealing trying to feed his family.

He had four kids by four baby mamas.

-Right.

-So he...

I mean, he must have had a little bit of an appeal to the ladies.

-He was a ladies' man.

-Yeah.

He was most definitely a ladies' man.

-Yeah.

-Ladies' man, ladies' man!

Four babies by four women - on the one hand,

that's like someone who's got a way with the ladies.

On the other hand, you could say, well,

he was having difficulty maintaining stable relationships.

-Yeah.

-He was just out there having fun.

He never really paid attention... No, he never had no

female problems, he controlled all that.

You know, he had four baby mamas, but he had a hold of all four of the

baby mamas. He never spoke to us about his problems,

you know, any of that.

He always kept his personal business to himself.

You know, so that... That was just...

I don't know. You know what I'm saying?

That shit was just crazy.

I left not much clearer about the causes of Antonio's killing.

It would have been tempting to see it as related to his drug dealing,

but I'd also been told that more deaths came from

petty arguments over almost any kind of issue,

often fuelled by social media.

And, underlying it all, a readiness to use guns to deal with conflict.

What are you drinking?

Vodka and orange juice. You in?

Have you got any?

-Right there.

-I'd like a little one.

'Looking for some answers, I was back with Shonda.'

And there ain't no gunshots, we can chill.

Cheers.

How have you been doing?

Ups, downs.

Has it been quiet on your corner?

Oh, hell, no. The zip code here is just kind of the Mecca for

a lot of the shooting and violence.

Do you feel you've got an insight into what it is that makes someone

shoot and kill someone else?

Uh, in a way.

But things are a tad bit different, you know, these days.

Then it was more gang-related, more turf, more, you know, survival.

Almost like a Mafia type of thing?

Yeah, it was pretty much, you know...

If that section had something you needed, you wanted, I mean,

that's what you did. You just, you fought for it, you battled for it.

Whereas, now it's... What is it now?

It can be because, I mean...

Somebody may have rear-ended somebody in a simple car accident,

and somebody gets out, "Oh, you hit my damn car,"

and, it's like, "OK, well, let's just..."

Pow, pow, pow!

And, you know, the guns come out, you know.

In war, which is pretty much what this shit has become,

there's rules of engagement.

And those rules have kind of...

..been tossed out the door, you know, kind of like...

You know, there's no boundaries.

What is the issue, do you think?

-Is it guns?

-A lot of things.

-Is it property, is it values?

It's not just guns. It's the values, the morals, the social...

..injustices. Everybody's always worried about,

"This is mine, mine, mine, mine, mine."

And that shit is just...

It has to stop. You have to start worrying about the house

next to you, you have to start worrying about your neighbour.

Start worrying about, you know, are they OK? Not just if you OK.

And the police?

Do you see them as a big part of the problem, honestly?

Not a big part of the problem,

but they definitely are not a fucking part of the solution either.

The majority of them are worried about the wrong shit.

Like, everybody pretty much is a criminal...

until they strip you of all your clothes,

take your car apart and everything. "Oh, you're not. Sorry."

Oh, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that.

-Don't do that, do not fucking do that.

-What was he doing?

He started filming them. They were about to shoot his ass.

-GUNFIRE

-Oh, fuck.

Well, that car's turning around.

It's time to motherfucking move and grab my shit,

cos these motherfuckers are going to start playing.

-I would suggest y'all get moving with me.

-Why?

Cos you can already tell, that van that just flipped

the corner, people that were right there just stopped,

you know what I'm saying?

And they're going to move

and I think they're about to circle around.

And I'm going to sit next to the weapons of mass destruction,

because motherfuckers is really feeling they're playin'.

Oh, here we go! 2834, North 28th Street.

One round, in the alley.

I was back on patrol with the police in District Five.

-Hey, what's your name?

-Malik.

-Malik? Where do you stay at?

-Williams.

-Just be careful, Malik.

-All right.

-Don't hang around the gas station.

-Be careful out here, all right?

Was he getting gas or not?

-Obviously not.

-What was he doing, then?

Well, that's a great question.

I was beginning to understand the frustration of the community.

I'd come to realise that on the North Side,

anyone who is black and male could be seen as a suspect.

-Those three?

-Those two. They keep looking back.

That's the third time one of them looked back.

These men turned out to be on their way home from catering jobs.

-What's the story? Were you on the bike?

-Yes, sir.

We just were minding our business, going back to his place,

and we just got pulled over.

Have you been stopped before?

-Oh, yeah.

-For what?

For exactly this reason.

Which is?

I fit the description.

It was clear how resentment might build.

You had pulled them over for...?

-The tint.

-For the tint on the windows?

It was too dark?

-What are you filming?

-I'm filming you.

Why did you pick Milwaukee to come film for?

Cos for a city its size, it's got a high rate of homicides.

They got a high rate of police officers

killing the black community. I'm a community activist.

For police, the innocent and the guilty were not always easy

to distinguish.

How old are you?

He looks familiar.

-38.

-THEY LAUGH

-What's your name, man?

-INDISTINCT

We first saw him, he was walking on the sidewalk.

-He was walking, right hand, real stiff.

-Yeah, it was real stiff.

-We looked into his eyes.

-What, the way he was walking was a tip-off?

Yeah, yeah. He just kind of looked...

His hand was completely still and his other hand moving.

Never naive to think that we're going to stop gun violence,

but what we're doing is making a difference for a lot of people

that have to, you know, wake up in these residential houses

around Fourth and Fifth Street.

You've been in this district about 20 years?

-Yeah, just...

-Working it?

-Yeah.

So you must have seen people growing up here.

-I've seen a lot of people...

-Frequent flyers, kind of thing?

Yes, I have arrested, you know, along with all these guys,

I've arrested people three times.

You know, from age, you know, 15 to 18 to 26.

We just had a guy that was killed yesterday in our district,

and I knew him personally because I had dealt with him.

Does it affect you at all, you know, if someone you've seen around

-gets killed?

-You know, not to sound cold or heartless,

you just deal with so many people that

if you cared about every single one that I dealt with,

I think I would go crazy.

Since being in Milwaukee, I still didn't feel I'd got close

to those most involved with the street life.

And so, I was out in one of the most crime prone areas

of the North Side, this time with no community or police protection.

I didn't get a gun, man!

I had a rendezvous with some corner boys.

How are you doing, guys?

All right?

Louis. What's your name?

-My name's Kev.

-Kev, Louis.

-Hello.

-Louis.

-How you doing?

-How y'all doing?

-How's business?

Ha-ha!

It's good, yeah!

'Like so many here, they were recently bereaved.'

We just came from a funeral yesterday.

There was a funeral yesterday? What was the guy's name?

-Tall T.

-Tall T?

-Big bro, yeah.

That was my cousin, too. RIP my cousin, Tall T, man.

Do they know who killed Tall T?

-No.

-I mean, the police, have they got someone in custody?

-Shit, I don't think so.

-I don't know.

-But do you know?

I don't know either.

Do you have an idea?

-Are the streets talking?

-The streets talking, yeah.

They talking, but you know what I'm saying,

we're going to keep down on the low cos we don't want to be on

-the documentation.

-So you're conducting an investigation yourselves?

-It's still an open beef.

-Yeah, we doing a street investigation.

We don't want the police to get involved with this cos they,

you know what I'm saying, going to try and lock people up and stuff.

-We're going to keep that on the street.

-Do you consider that you're in a gang together?

-Hell, no!

-It's a brotherhood.

-It's a family.

-It's a family organisation.

-We friends here.

-We all have felons, so we can't get a job,

so all we know is to do what we doing, man.

-You're, literally all of you, are felons?

-I am.

-I am.

-Not all of us.

-You are. What was your name? Kev? Are you Kev?

-No, my name is Foo.

Foo. What are you a felon on?

-They got me on paper right now, for ten months.

-Who's on paper?

Are you on paper?

What was the case?

A little pistol case?

Yeah, they knew he had it on him.

Was it possession, having one when you shouldn't have one type case?

-Yeah, and I threw it.

-And you threw it?

Well, it wasn't my gun. I didn't throw shit.

Somebody, I don't know who threw the damn gun.

They put it on me. I said, "What the fuck?"

But I'm fighting the case, though.

You know what I'm saying? It ain't mine.

-It wasn't my gun.

-It wasn't your gun?

-No.

-You didn't throw it?

-No.

What would you say was stopping you from leading

-a kind of 9 to 5 type of job?

-I'm just stuck in the streets, man.

-I like the street life.

-You do like it?

-I like the fast money.

You know what I'm saying? Flashy cars and shit like that.

Big rings. American dream shit.

Did you feel you had much in the way of positive role models

growing up?

No.

Where's your dad?

Fuck that nigga.

What did... What did you just say?

-Fuck my pops, bro.

-Why?

-Fuck his daddy.

-That nigga don't... You know what I'm saying?

That nigga weren't ever here for a nigga like me.

I do this shit on my own, baby.

-Fuck that nigga.

-Where is he?

Shit, he...

Shit, I don't know. You know what I'm saying?

That is how it is out here with niggas like me.

-You talking about our daddy?

-Yeah.

-My daddy right here.

-Basically!

-You see somebody? You don't see nothing, right?

He's not around any more.

-My mamma's my daddy too.

-My mamma's my daddy.

And that fuck it up for a lot of black men, cos when you a black man

growing up in the hood, you need a male, you need your father

to show you what to do and what not to do out here.

Your mother can't teach you everything.

-Your mother can't teach you how to be a man.

-Not the street.

What do you see yourself doing in ten years?

Ten years? Shit, I just really hope I'll be alive, first of all.

I hope I ain't in jail. I hope I ain't just finishing

a 10-year sentence shit in ten years.

So, shit...

The corner boys struck me as more lost than lawless.

Victims of their absent fathers and of a street code of masculinity

that set no store by raising children.

But also of a system of mass incarceration,

often for nonviolent crimes

which had broken up families and blighted lives.

I'd had a call from Detective Petropoulos.

Craig Crockett, the man who'd killed an alleged home invader,

was in custody at police headquarters and being questioned.

It had become clear that Crockett was not a felon

and his gun had been legally owned.

He basically copped to shooting four or five bullets into a man's back.

-As he's falling.

-Sort of...

Either on the floor or falling towards the floor.

-Right?

-Yeah.

-Incredible.

-Good marksmanship.

-Yeah, it would be, wouldn't it?

-You think that's...

I don't think that's what happened, entirely.

Are you leaning one way or the other at this point?

My sense is that,

based on what he's told us and what we found at the scene,

that more than likely the prosecutor is not going to prosecute him.

Even if it's a matter of, did he go a little too far?

What's too far when you are,

according to Craig, protecting your family?

Now, some of those that are burned up over there...

-Yeah.

-..those are attempts to destroy evidence, right?

So one of those vehicles up there was used

in the commission of a homicide.

At the city car lot, I asked Petropoulos for his thoughts

on Milwaukee's gun crime.

It's my personal belief that people have to have a sense that

if they do something, there are going to be consequences.

And I think sometimes...

..if there isn't that sense, then...

..then they feel free to do what they want.

Is poverty a part of the equation?

What about being poor...

..drives one to kill a child?

What is that? There's no rational reasoning to blame poverty.

I don't see it.

I don't get it.

What about values?

I think that's very much in play here.

If you are of a sense that...

..you have certain rules that you live by,

you generally aren't going to break them.

You know, certainly, we all have lapses and things, but...

if you don't have those strictures, those rules in your life,

then obviously it opens up all kinds of things,

possibilities of things that could hurt other people.

I think that's what it comes down to.

I think we have a very big problem with our values.

But you're asking me, and I don't make decisions on a large scale.

Just me and my family.

Whether the cause was a crisis of values,

or some larger failure of the system,

the result had been the death of 22-year-old Anthony Trice.

And for Craig Crockett and his family, an unspeakable trauma...

..and a future living with the very real fear of reprisals.

Meanwhile police were looking for Trice's accomplice.

His name was Keron Smith, also 22.

He was said to be driving a black Chevy Avalanche.

My last night with the police, and unbelievably,

within minutes of coming on shift, there was a sighting of the car.

-There it is!

-The black Avalanche.

Holy fuck!

-Where?

-Where is it?

-It's up there! It's up there on the house!

-Oh, yeah.

CAR CRASHES, SIRENS BLARE

Hey! Hey!

5465.

Send medical, at least two ambulances.

I'd arrived seconds after the pursued car had crashed

into the side of a house.

Was there somebody in there?

-The car's on fire!

-Hey, back off the car, it's on fire!

-You guys back away!

-Mike! Mike! Mike!

Mike, just come off!

An injured man was on the scene, and a dazed looking woman,

Keron Smith's passenger, who was later released without charge.

You need to answer this question real truthfully.

Other than you and him, was there anybody else in the vehicle?

No...

OK, OK.

The injured man turned out to be an innocent driver

of a separate car that had been hit.

Keron Smith had fled on foot.

The driver has dreads, white T-shirt, black pants.

Unknown where he is.

-Fuck!

-He can't have gotten far.

He had to be fucked up, too.

All efforts were now focused on finding him.

I doubt he made it far.

Then word came.

Ended up finding him, Sarge.

Wonderful job. All right, let's get him up.

-Where is he at?

-LAUGHTER

Oh, my God! Amazing! Woo!

Did he have a weapon on him?

At the scene, no.

They haven't searched the vehicle or anything yet.

Preserve evidence and stuff.

What do we conclude about this?

I'm not too philosophical, really.

As long as I get the bad guy, that's all that matters.

As Smith was stretchered off, I caught up

with Inspector of Police, Stephen Basting.

Life is a video game for some.

Just fleeing from the police and this out-of-control driving.

Often this is the result, this is what'll happen.

Nationwide, homicides are trending down as well as up

-in specific localities, right?

-Mm-hm.

So why do you think Milwaukee is bearing such a heavy load?

The lack of quality education, jobs.

Let's start with that.

Idle hands are the devil's workshop. There's not enough for people to do.

You don't see it changing any time soon?

To be honest with you, I don't.

The community, I don't think, is to that point where everybody

has enough and stands up to make long-term changes.

I just... I see it from this level, every night.

It's very disappointing, disheartening.

I'd come to see the police as being in an almost impossible position.

Working in an area suffering from decades of neglect,

they were lightning rods for failings far outside

their ability to fix.

Then, just days before I was due to leave Milwaukee,

there came a bizarre piece of news.

-REPORTER:

-A Milwaukee police officer now sits on the other side

of the law, trading in a uniform for a jail suicide vest.

The officer whose shooting of Sylville Smith had sparked

days of unrest had been charged with two counts of sexual assault

on men he'd allegedly drugged.

It's extraordinarily disappointing and grave,

and we're treating it as such.

But with regard to the shooting of Sylville,

police still hadn't released their footage,

and there was no word on whether a case would be brought.

As for Antonio Ewing, aka Blizz Montana, the young rapper,

drug dealer and father who'd been killed on my first night,

the case had gone quiet.

With my time in the North Side nearly up,

I paid a visit to his cousin, Trish, and her son TJ.

How are you doing?

I'm... I'm OK.

We have kept in touch with the detective,

and every time it's the same thing.

"We don't have anybody yet.

"There's no new information, but keep calling."

Do they even have a suspect?

Is there someone they're trying to bring in, but they can't...

they can't catch him?

As far as I know, there is...

they don't have anyone that they're trying to bring in.

It's been a lot of tips, a lot of phone calls to the police station,

and a lot of things that they were saying on social media.

I think people know what they saw,

but people are afraid to step forward,

and I can't fault them for that.

How optimistic are you that they will...

..solve the murder?

I'm not optimistic at all.

Not at all.

I believe that they're going to let people retaliate.

They'd rather let it be handled in the streets.

And if someone ends up getting arrested out of the deal,

then great.

But otherwise...

..Antonio being dead, in my opinion, is just another black man down.

You know, it's black people killing black people, or whatever.

"Let them kill each other."

-You think that's the attitude?

-I do.

I think there is a sense that our people have lost sight of the

-value of life.

-Absolutely.

And I think that permeates, um...

all different levels of society, and the community as well.

And the community. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I don't think people have a great deal of respect for life any more.

Shh.

What do you remember about Antonio, TJ?

TJ, I'm not crying.

He was nice, he cared about me, and I will always love him.

My last night in Milwaukee, and another vigil,

this time for a cousin of Shonda's.

Everybody here knows that this was not deserved.

This was a woman that just had a baby.

This was a woman that ain't out here on the streets,

ain't out here thugging, ain't out here doing none of that.

You already crossed the barriers of being a coward when you continue to

hurt women, continue to hurt children out here.

I reflected on how many of those living and dying here

have been set up to fail.

Born into an area of underperforming schools,

few jobs and out-of-control crime.

Their killings, over often trivial matters,

could scarcely be more senseless.

Look at the word.

-B-U-G-S.

-Bug.

But I'd also seen people, and especially mothers,

fighting to break the cycle...

..in a fractured community, attempting to rebuild hope.

-Frog.

-OK.

Everything's in the same what?

-Pond, p-p-pond.

-Pond.

-Pond.

Yeah. All the animals in one pond.

The end.