Crime strikes crime-prevention job

Published: August 19, 2009
Tags: berm, crime, Johnsons Park, Milwaukee, theft

Sean Ryan
sean.ryan@dailyreporter.com

Someone broke into a Henry R. Marohl Inc. truck on the first day crew members were at Milwaukee’s Johnsons Park for a project to curb neighborhood crime.

Milwaukee County hired the Wauwatosa-based earthmover to level berms, the tallest of which is 14 feet, around the park because the berms block views from the street and promote crime.

Jim Heinemann, a Marohl laborer and truck driver, and Jeff Thompson, the company’s operator and foreman, visited Johnsons Park on Tuesday and were about 50 feet from their truck installing silt fencing around the berm, said John Loberg, estimator for the contractor.

“That’s when it happened,” he said. “The truck was locked, but it didn’t make any difference.”

When the two workers returned to the truck, they noticed that a window was broken. Inside the vehicle, they discovered that someone had stolen a lunchbox and cell phone. They did not see the crime occur, Loberg said.

Neighborhood residents avoid Johnsons Park because the mounds make people feel isolated and vulnerable, said Willie Hines, Milwaukee alderman who represents the area. He said the purloined lunchbox is a good example of the crime in the area, and he said the project should alleviate the problem.

“That’s what it does,” he said of the series of mounds, “and no one can see it. And for a criminal, a criminal understands that.”

The berms were around before Milwaukee County created the 13-acre park in the mid-1980s. Contractors formed the mounds in the early 1970s when they demolished homes on the land for a freeway project. Rather than paying to place the debris in landfill, the companies piled it up and covered it with topsoil. The freeway was never built.

The county’s project to level the berms will have a psychological effect on people in the neighborhood and will contribute to a safer park by bringing more people to the area, said Thomas Dunbar, executive director of the Center for Resilient Cities, which organizes events in the park for students at the nearby Brown Street Academy.

“The whole safety factor in parks — safety and security both — is based in seeing people,” he said.

Loberg said Marohl has been the victim of theft before on projects. On another Milwaukee project, he said, someone stole some equipment from the back of a truck while workers were standing in front of the vehicle.

The company puts shields on its heavy equipment to prevent windows from being broken, Loberg said. On some Milwaukee demolition projects, crews remove equipment from the site at the end of each day to avoid leaving equipment outside overnight, he said.

Loberg said Heinemann and Thompson called police after discovering the break-in Tuesday, and officers investigated the site, taking fingerprints from the truck. Marohl on Wednesday began taking down the tallest mound at Johnsons Park. Police had not yet arrested anyone tied to the theft.

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