A woman was murdered near Water and Michigan Streets after a fight, as the City of Milwaukee continues to fail to get a handle on the dangerous scenes unfolding in its popular entertainment district downtown.
Milwaukee police say a fight broke out in a nightclub on Saturday, July 16, 2021, and the argument continued on the street, resulting in the shooting death of a 24-year-old woman at E. Michigan Street and N. Water Street.
A 30-year-old man is in custody.
The woman, who was not identified, was the third woman shot in or near the popular entertainment district this summer. We were at the scene when one of those women accidentally shot herself after a chaotic fight at Water and Juneau; we also witnessed the aftermath of a second shooting that left a woman wounded and tumbling out of a car at Milwaukee Street just down from Water. Those two shootings were not fatal.
The shooting on Saturday, July 17, 2021, was fatal. It’s the second Water Street area homicide this summer; a 31-year-old man was shot and killed at Water and Knapp around 1:40 a.m. June 12. On July 5, five suspects were accused of injuring two police officers by throwing a pipe bomb at them on Water Street around 12:15 a.m.
We’ve written previously about the city’s inability to get a handle on the chaos and mayhem on Water Street, which started last summer and tends to get worse after midnight as crowds descend on the street blatantly drinking from liquor bottles and smoking marijuana in plain view of police officers. Fights and then shootings have ensued. For weeks, rank-and-file cops, some business owners, and others have desired the ability to have more aggressive intervention. “Several of the city leaders want us to police less. This chaos is the result of less policing,” a law enforcement source told us in mid June.
Since then, the violence has only continued and Saturday that resulted in another life lost.
“There is simply no order,” a frustrated law enforcement source previously told Wisconsin Right Now. The source said officers were told in the past to take a hands-off approach due to fear that activists will riot.
