Original subtitles

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 shot the car. 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! Get in!

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

The chance 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.

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.

I was

with the police.

in pursuit of a car full of suspected armed robbers.

The

pursuit

had ended in a crash.

Officers were attempting to control the scene.

Is he okay?

What happened to him?

He was probably part of the car crash. They're in the car that fled. Yeah, he's

injured, so we've got to get medical in here. So he got hurt in the car crash?

Yeah, this red one here was taken in an armed robbery. Did he try to run?

That was the car that was playing when they 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 the 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. It's still fresh.

Now you can see we have tape up now. We have kind of control of the immediate

area. When we first get here, none of this is up. Everyone's just right on top

of you.

These few square miles in the north of Milwaukee.

are among America's worst for violent crime.

You hear them shooting 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

ahead. Go ahead.

Guns are pervasive.

You guys got IDs on you? Yeah.

All right, I'm going to have you step out of the car real quick, and I'll

explain why we're stopping you, okay? No guns anywhere, right? Do you have any

guns anywhere?

Okay, step out of the car. Keep your hands up for me, man.

For police, it is not always friendly terrain.

Did you hear the shot fired out here about an hour ago? No, nothing?

I'm working inside.

Nothing's happening?

Hello.

Oh, you're doing a documentary?

Yeah, you know there's a lot of gun crime, and there are a lot of homicides

for a city its size?

Yeah, I heard a lot on the news.

Yeah, what's that all about?

Honestly, I don't know. I guess the police, they fail to protect our

That's what it's about.

That's why we wear our Black Lives Matter shirt, because we do matter.

They don't care how our neighborhood looks.

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

I mean...

think that's true. Well, yeah, ma 'am. Here's the thing. We got a report of a

shooting over here. Do you know what happened? I don't think they're trying

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

Why would they do that?

I don't know, baby. There go one right there. Ask him.

Y 'all have a good day.

Well, she said that I'm looking for cases involved in this shooting, so.

We haven't found any yet, but we should be able to find out eventually where

this happened.

What's happening?

We're a little vulnerable standing out here.

Really? I do, yeah. Someone take a pot shot from over there, over there.

Wouldn't surprise me.

So where are we going now?

Got homicide.

Shooting 2525 North Hubbard Street.

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

Gunshot wound to the head.

PNB, which means pulseless, not breathing.

We've got a body on the street. 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, sir. Do you have a description of a shooter?

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

We've got a couple 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.

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

Unfortunately, that's very common.

Third is just some type of grudge. A lot of our homicides are...

because of things said or done on social media.

Families get very emotional many times with this disorder, and they can get

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

Having the body here is also a thing.

We need the body here for evidentiary reasons, but yet it'll come time where

just have to move the body to help with the tensions in the neighborhood.

That's my cousin.

It's my cousin, family, real blood family.

Do you know anything about what happened to you? I don't know, but I know it's

my family.

And then everybody else is thinking it's just addiction down here.

It's bad.

I'm ready to leave Milwaukee.

I'm ready to pack my stuff and go.

That's his mother. That's my auntie. That's the mother of the victim?

Yes.

And they won't let us go back over there and see him until the coroner come and

do whatever they got to do.

I don't know what happened. I was at home in the bed.

My daughter -in -law came and woke me up and told me that Tony was dead.

You know, I don't know. I don't know what happened.

Milwaukee's homicide rate spiked unexpectedly two years ago for reasons

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

usual.

Two weeks earlier, an officer had shot and killed 23 -year -old Seville Smith

circumstances that were still disputed.

Tensions boil over on the streets of Milwaukee Saturday night.

Two nights of unrest had followed.

A chaotic scene near Sherman and Hour as a gas station goes up in flames.

We're not supposed to do anything at all. We're just supposed to sit there

take it.

Man, enough is enough, man. The man in this video was Seville's brother, Sadan.

I'd arranged to meet him at a shrine to Seville, close to where the shooting had

taken place.

Louie, you Sadan?

Yeah. Louie, how you doing? I'm good.

Tell me about what we've got here. Is this a T -shirt with Seville on it? This

is one of the T -shirts with my little brother on it. Say, Rez, bro, we got you

five ever.

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

We both was named after cars. We always been close together.

Named after cars? Yeah, Cadillacs. My name's Sudan, his name's Seville. We

named after cars.

What was the story? What happened to Seville?

Basically, he was in a car that was perceived to be suspicious by the

which was their reason for stopping the car.

He allegedly got out the car and ran.

And the news said he allegedly pointed a gun.

Pulled a gun?

Yeah. But in the autopsy report, it shows he was shot in the back of his

fleeing.

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

Given the narrative you described, why do you think Seville wouldn't have

dropped the gun?

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 and carrying a gun and having one, the way he thought was fear.

So if I'm fearing something, my first thing is to get away from that.

But now the police out here, as y 'all can see, they don't like me.

But this is how they come after we come.

They come like that. They profile the trees. They do that to cause

You know what I mean? When they see me out here especially, you know what I

mean? They want me to stop doing this. That's my brother. I ain't never going

stop. The officer who shot and killed DeVille 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, 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 them 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.

I think their concern is to de -escalate anything before it happens.

Listen, if these cameras wasn't here right now, if y 'all want to go duck off

y 'all cars and see how it really is, me and him right now, we can be standing

here, not making no noises. We can 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 Seville'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 homicide.

in the African -American community.

This is a state where there's a lot of trash that needs to be cleaned up in the

first place.

There was a war on drugs going on here since 2006, you know what I mean? And

there's guns in it. And they're giving us the right to carry the guns without

cleaning up the drugs.

Do you both have guns?

I have Smith & Wesson. Both my guns are Smith & Wesson. I have a 9mm and I have

a .380. Those are handguns? Yeah, handguns. Man, you can get your hands on

gun here.

You've got the right to buy them.

What have you got, Sudan?

You're not going to say.

I can't say what I know.

Why can't you say?

Because my mama took my guns.

Your mama did? Yeah.

Why did she take your guns? Because she found out what happened to my brother

and she knows who I am.

With police viewed with suspicion, many on the north side prefer to find their

own solutions to crime.

Hi, Shaunda. How are you doing? All right, all right.

One is community activist Shaunda Payne. That's the hood shape.

Shaunda 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?

Not sure. Just a lot of shooting, a lot of blood and people running and

screaming and hollering.

Was anyone killed?

No one killed, but definitely people injured.

The last week, we had a newborn baby, five -day -old baby come.

And that's when the house, my house, got shot with the bullet and all that.

A lot of the rest of these houses right here had to kind of fall to the floor

with the baby in my hands and then prepare my weapons and also secure my

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,

cook at the same damn time.

This is where I make more babies if we want them.

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 because 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. All of them are. Yeah. I got too many kids.

But this is what I do when I'm in the bathtub.

I lay it back here because I lay it 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 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.

Shaunda had fostered and raised more than 20 children.

One was 16 -year -old Kyrie.

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 because it's not me, you know?

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

Oh, he has a gun. He's 15.

For a lot of parents at home right now, when the kids get to be comparatively

bigger than the mother, because there's almost always no father at home.

What do you think somebody that's 5 '4", 187 pounds, compared to a 200 -pound

6 '1", male is supposed to do with a child that is defying you?

You tell me.

He'll tell you what I had to do a couple 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's 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's doing something right because I ain't out there.

Exactly.

I'm not installing cars. I got my own car. You 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 know how to handle every single thing in this house. But he

have a weapon now.

No, he's 16.

So when would he be, you know... 18.

Then he gets one? Oh, he has... I mean, 18, he can have his own. And he has

known since the age of 7 years old how to move with every single weapon.

Automatic weapons. Tell my 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.

Fuck.

They so fucking disrespectful.

Why would you shoot 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 get 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 and 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 was too early.

Tony O!

Did you hear that?

Did you hear that?

Oh, man.

This is for you, Tony O.

Wherever you at, this is for you. I know you've been here. I know you feel.

This is for you.

It's a homecoming. It's not going away.

It's a homecoming.

You have been reborn.

Donald, can I grab you for just a minute? How are you doing? I'm Louis.

Louis, how you doing? Tony O, that's my stepson.

Okay? He's 30 -year -old.

Young man. Young man. He worked with me. I'd get him a job. He worked with me.

And I looked out for him. He stayed with me.

Stayed with me and his mother.

He never bothered nobody. Never started nothing with nobody.

You know, but he's 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.

No. You know, he's always spaced out.

And I really haven't kicked him yet. I feel he hasn't lost someone so close,

son.

This sounds tremendous.

But it's crazy.

And to tell you the truth, I 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, 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... Dollars.

Let me talk.

Crime on crime.

You know what? We need to... No, serious. We need to stop this. No,

No.

Seriously.

Oh, Donald, Donald.

I don't even want to talk. I'm, you know, I'm already messed up in the head

right now.

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

This is

Tony on Isabella.

This is her.

Yeah.

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

Is Tonyo in the middle, standing up with the cap?

No, this is Tonyo. Oh, that's Tonyo on the left.

He was a rapper too, so, and he good.

He rapped under the name Blizz Montana?

Yes. And that's Tonyo there.

It's his daughter right here, she look just like him.

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

He's incarcerated.

He's incarcerated.

He's in jail.

He's in prison.

Yeah. Was the dad able to be a dad to Antonio?

Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Yes, yes, yes.

He wasn't locked up when Antonio... He was an asshole, but he was my... 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 the police can find out, the authorities can find out, and then let

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 -defense.

This showed signs of being one of them.

You're the captain.

Captain Boston Smith. I am, sir.

Yes, nice to meet you.

Do you have a picture of what happened yet?

Basically, two individuals came into the home, shots were exchanged, and the

person that left the seat does not reside in the residence.

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

Correct. It's what I'm... Shots were exchanged between the two individuals

persons at the house?

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

So what is happening right now?

We have some individuals that have 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 will 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 -hmm.

At first we was not. Why not?

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

snitching. They have a saying out here on the street that snitches get

Five feet, eight inches east.

2 feet 4 inches south.

In charge of the scene was a 24 -year veteran of Milwaukee PD, Gus

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 one in the neck.

Okay, 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 a nickel story I've got so far, and it's from the man of the house. He's

a gentleman named A .C.

Crockett. He says to me that he was at the neighbor's residence, comes back, he

sees his son, Craig Crockett, on the front porch talking to a couple of

young men, and 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

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.

And 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 in 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 okay 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 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.

Meanwhile, the accomplice of the suspected robber remained at large and,

probably, armed.

I'd been learning more about Antonio Ewing, the man murdered on my first

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'd been trying to change his life.

He'd been about to release a CD under his rap name for Liz Montana.

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 the sense of hopelessness, you know, in the atmosphere. It's like it's

not a lot of jobs here, like half of the African -American.

Men are locked up. Okay, you're a music producer, right? So you're not leading

the kind of the outlaw, 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 got... Right here, right now? Right now, yeah.

Where?

It's right over there. It's a nice little... Show it. It's a nice little,

know... Be careful with it.

No, I know how to handle it.

It's legal, though.

That's legal. Legal.

What is that? All my weapons are legal. It's an AR -15.

Yeah, that's what we ride around with, man.

For real?

And we're not starting no trouble.

We don't, you know, this is all for self -defense 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.

I mean, you know, you got to have something if you're in Milwaukee, man.

We'll be right here right now. Y 'all wouldn't have been right here.

Even talking to him. If Blizzard had a gun, he'd still be with us right now.

And he usually got the gun on him every day.

Because then he would have shot the guy who tried to kill him. Well, who killed

him. Or the guy 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. Same thing

happened to y 'all. Y 'all came on the block. You know what I'm saying?

You would have said, don't leave.

Meaning, 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?

We don't know who did it. We don't know who did it. We don't know who did it.

For real?

Yeah. Would you tell me if you knew?

Probably not.

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

Well? I knew him very, very, very well.

What was he like?

He was quiet.

Blizz was probably... The way he looked, he looked like a

grimy person. You know, if a person was to just glance at him, he looks like

he'll rob people. You know, but Blizz had a kindness heart.

Yeah, you said grimy, right? Yeah. People thought he had a, I don't take

the wrong way, but a slightly mean face.

Yeah, that's what I meant, 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. But

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 to try 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 appeal to the ladies. He was about this big.

A ladies' man.

Ladies' man.

Ladies' man.

Four babies by four women.

On the one hand, that's like someone who's got away with the ladies. On the

other hand, you could say, well, he was having difficulty maintaining stable

relationships.

Yeah. He never really paid attention about his, no, he never had no female

problems. He controlled all that. You know, he had four baby mamas, but he had

hold of all four of his baby mamas.

You know, 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 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 death 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?

Have you got any?

I'd like a little one.

Looking for some answers. I was back with Shaunda.

And it ain't no gunshots or nothing. We could chill.

Cheers.

How have you been doing?

Up, down.

Has it been quiet on your corner?

Oh, hell no. This zip code here is just kind of the...

Mecca for a lot of shooting and violence.

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

kill someone else?

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 or

you wanted, I mean, that's what you did. You just, you fought for it, you

battled for it. Whereas now, what is it now? It can be because, I mean, somebody

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

you hit my damn car, and like, okay, well, let's just pal, pal, pal.

you know the guns come out you know in war which is pretty much what this shit

has become is rules of engagement and those rules have kind of kind of been

tossed out the door you know kind of like you know they it's no boundary what

the issue do you think is it is it is it guns is it poverty is it values is it

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 neighbor. Start

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

And the police, do you see them as a big part of the problem?

Not a big part of the problem, but they definitely not a fucking part of the

solution either.

Majority of them are worried about the wrong shit.

everybody pretty much is a criminal until they strip you of all your

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

Oh, fuck.

Well, that car is turning around. It's time to motherfucking move. Grab my shit

because these motherfuckers are going to start playing.

I would suggest y 'all get to moving with me. Why?

Because you can already tell that van that just left the corner of people that

were right there just stopped, you know what I'm saying?

And they little 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 are really finna get to playing.

Here we go.

2834 North 28th Street. One round.

In the alley.

I was back on patrol with the police in District 5.

Hey, what's your name?

Malik. Malik? Where do you stay at?

Williams. Be careful, Malik. All right. Yeah, 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.

They'd come to realize that on the north side, anyone who was black and male

could be seen as a suspect.

All three? Those two. They keep looking back.

That's the third time one of them was 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. We're going back to this place

we just got pulled over.

Have you been stopped before?

Oh, yeah.

For what?

But 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? Because for a city inside, it's got

a high rate of homicide.

They got a high rate of police officers killing.

For police, the innocent and the guilty were not always easy to distinguish.

His walking right hand was real stiff. Yeah, it was real stiff.

The way he was walking was a tip -off. Yeah, his hand was completely still with

his other hand moving.

I'm never naive to think that we're going to stop gun violence.

What we are doing is making a difference for a lot of the people that have to,

you know, wake up in these residential houses over on 4th and 5th Street.

You've been in this district about... 20 years? Yeah. Working it? Yep. So you

must have seen people growing up.

I've seen a lot of people. Frequent flyers? Yes. I've arrested, you know,

with all these guys, I've arrested people three times, you know, from age,

know, 15 to 18 to 26.

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

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, I just deal with so many

if I 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 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 had a rendezvous with some corner boys.

How are you doing, guys?

All right?

Louie, what's your name? My name's Kev. Kev, Louie.

Louie, how are you doing? How's business?

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. So that was my cousin,

too. RIP my cousin, Tall T, man.

Do they know who killed Tall T? No.

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

Shit, I don't think so. I don't know.

But do you know?

No, I don't know either.

Do you have an idea?

Are the streets talking?

Yeah, they talking, but you know what I'm saying? We're going to keep that on

the low because we don't want to be on the documentary. So you're conducting an

investigation? Yeah, we're doing a street investigation.

We don't want the police to get involved with this because they're going to try

to lock people up and stuff.

We're going to keep that in 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 organization.

We are felons, so we can't get a job. So all we know is to do what we're doing.

You're all, literally all of you are felons? I am. I am.

You are. What was your name, Kev? Are you Kev? No, I'm Kev.

What are you a felon on? As a juvenile felon for two counts of armed robbery

possession of a dangerous weapon by a child, and as an adult, all minor weed

cases. I just did a year for 0 .5, one bag of weed. Tell me your papers right

now.

Who's on paper? Are you on paper?

What was the case?

A little pistol case.

A little pistol case.

Yeah, man, you know he had it on him. Was it a possession of having one when

shouldn't have one type case? Yeah, and I threw it.

And you threw it. Well, it wasn't my gun. I ain't throw shit.

Somebody, I don't know who threw the damn gun. They put it on me. I said,

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.

Even though it said they got me on camera and shit, they lied.

What would you say was stopping you from leading a kind of 9 -to -5 title?

I'm just stuck in the streets, man. I like the street life. You do like it? I

like the fast money.

Fast cars and shit like that. Big rings.

American dreams.

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

No.

Tupac, my role model. My brother's shit. I ain't got no daddy or nothing.

I just sit on the porch and shit. Just watch around.

Where's your dad? I never seen my daddy. I never seen a picture.

Fuck my daddy. Fuck that nigga.

What did you just say?

Fuck my pops, bro. Why? Fuck his daddy. That nigga don't, you know what I'm

saying? I don't know that nigga.

That nigga was never here for a nigga like me, my nigga. I do this shit on my

own, baby.

Fuck that nigga.

Shit, I don't know.

You know what I'm saying? That's how it is out here with niggas like me. He's my

daddy. My daddy right here.

Basically. You don't see nothing, right? He's not around anymore.

I'm a my daddy.

I'm a my daddy. I'm a my daddy too, man. I'm a my daddy. And that's fucking up

on a lot of black men because when you're a black man growing up in the

you need a male. You need your father to show you what to do and what not to do

out here. And your mother can't teach you everything.

Your mother can't teach you how to be a man. What do you see yourself doing in

10 years?

I'm going to be running a rap game in 10 years, hands down.

In 10 years, should I just really hope I be alive? I'm going to be running a rap

game. Hope I ain't in jail. Hoping I ain't just finished in a ten -year spin

shit in ten years.

Oh, 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 non -violent crimes which had broken up families and blighted lives.

I'd had a call from Detective Petropolis.

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. He's falling.

Sort of either on the floor or falling towards the floor, right?

Yeah, it's incredible.

Good marksmanship.

Yeah, it would be, wouldn't it? You think that?

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's 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're, according to Craig, protecting your family?

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

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.

As my personal belief is 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 value?

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.

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 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 Caron 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

shift, There was the sighting of the car.

There it is. The black avalanche.

Holy.

The black avalanche.

Are you guys going to call? Where?

Where is this? It's up there. It's up there on the house. Oh, yeah.

Hey.

Hey.

5465.

I'd arrived seconds after the pursued car had crashed into the side of a

An

injured

man was on the scene, and a dazed -looking woman, Caron Smith's passenger,

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, it wasn't.

My friend, that's not him.

Do you respond to Ashley a little bit?

OK, OK.

The injured man turned out to be an innocent driver of a separate car that

been hit.

Caron Smith had fled on foot.

The driver has dreads, white T -shirt, black pants. Unknown where he is.

Fuck!

Well, then 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.

He's the dog.

Then word came.

Ended up finding him, Sarge. Wonderful job.

All right, let's get him up. He was hiding behind these bushes right here on

ground. Oh, my God, amazing.

Did he have a weapon on him?

At the scene.

No, they haven't searched the vehicle or anything yet, preserved 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 stretched off, I caught up with Inspector of Police Stephen

Basting.

Life is a video game for some.

It's linked on the police and it's out of control driving.

Often the result is what will happen.

Nationwide, homicides are trending down as well as up in specific localities,

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

The lack of quality education, jobs.

Let's start with that.

The idle hands of 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 it's to that point where everybody has enough

stands up to make long -term changes.

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

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

for failings far outside their ability to fix.

Then, just days before I was due to leave Milwaukee, there came a bizarre

of news.

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 Seville Smith had sparked days of unrest had

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 Seville, police still hadn't released

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

As for Antonio Ewing, a .k .a. Blizz Montana, the young rapper, drug dealer

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 okay.

We have kept in touch with the detective, and every time it's the same

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 catch him?

As far as I know, 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 we're seeing 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 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 all different levels of

and the community as well. And the community, absolutely.

Absolutely. I don't think people have a great deal of respect for life anymore.

What do you remember about Antonio, TJ?

I'm not crying.

He's nice, he cares about me, and I will always love him.

My last night in Milwaukee and another vigil, this time for a cousin of

Shaunders.

Everybody here knows that this was not deserved.

This is a woman that just had a baby. This is a woman that ain't out here in

these 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.

But I'd also seen people, and

especially mothers, fighting to break the cycle.

In a fractured community, attempting to rebuild hope.

Everything's in the same what? Pond.

Yep, all the animals in one pond.

And the end.