MILWAUKEE -- Milwaukee Police on Thursday briefed the city’s Public Safety Committee on a recent spike in car thefts.
Police said there were 7,370 cars stolen in 2015, compared to 6,642 in 2014. Police also said the 2014 number was a big increase from 2013 – when 4,387 vehicles were stolen.
But police said before the increase in recent years, there had been a downward trend in car thefts for roughly two decades.
Speaking to the Public Safety Committee, Asst. Chief William Jessup said the number of cars stolen in 2015 was still about half the number stolen in many years in the late 1990s, when auto thefts peaked.
Jessup also said that many of the thefts recently have been committed by juveniles.
He said 334 juveniles were arrested for car thefts in 2015, compared to 283 last year and just 127 in 2011.
Also on Thursday, police presented the committee with numbers regarding the department’s 2015 report on homicides and non-fatal shootings.
Jessup said there were 145 homicides in Milwaukee in 2015 – the highest number reported since 1993 and a 69 percent increase from 2014.
Jessup said Council District 7, on Milwaukee’s Near North Side, led the city with 40 homicides.
According to police, the bulk of 2015’s homicides (49 in total) stemmed from “unknown” incidents, in which a lack of information was available to determine the cause of the violence.
