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A house burned Tuesday night has a lengthy history of visits from the Milwaukee Police Department. According to its dispatch log, officers have visited the home at least 27 times in the past four years. The house was burned last night by a crowd after members of the group charged that criminals were using the home and others nearby for sex trafficking
“We have responded to that house and that location multiple times in the last few days,” said Police Chief Alfonso Morales in a press conference late Tuesday night. The department was there twice on Monday, once for “trouble with subject” according to the city dispatch log and another time for a “threat.” It was called on Tuesday morning for “shots fired.”
Officers ended up spending much of the day in the area, including time in riot gear, as tense interactions with a crowd seeking help finding two missing teenage girls and up to seven other children ultimately resulted in multiple fires being set by unidentified individuals and gas and non-lethal force being used by the police department.
“Before we came out here, there were nine kids missing, after we came out here four kids were returned,” said community organizer Frank Nitty, narrating a live video on Facebook from the scene around 7:00 p.m. But the number of kids returned might only be two, as Morales later reported one of the teenage girls wasn’t found and Nitty said another child ran away.
Data going back to October 2016 shows the department has logged at least 27 calls for service at the triplex at 2120 N. 40th St. The data, originally published on the city’s Dispatched Calls for Service dashboard, has been collected and stored by an aggregation application built by software development firm RokkinCat.
The calls, most of which took place in 2019, including everything from “family trouble” and “welfare check” to “shots fired” and “battery – domestic violence.” Other calls were for property damage, a stolen vehicle, two traffic stops in front of the home and a truancy check.