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Local NewsCrackdown On CruisingBy Melanie Stout
MILWAUKEE - As the temperature gets warmer, more cruisers are out. Over the weekend they crowded the streets near 27th and Capitol. They blast their stereos, hang out of moving cars and even urinate in yards. Neighbors are fed up.
"You know it makes it kind of hard when you have kids of your own and your trying to bring them up in this manner," said Lothario Austin.
His family is awakened in the middle of the night with the cruisers.
Milwaukee Police take this problem very seriously. They have a plan to break it up quickly if they start cruising. They send squads out to saturate the area, tow cars, hand out tickets and even make arrests.
"They've gotten the message loud and clear now that we're taking it serious," Milwaukee Captain Patrick Mitchell explained. "The citizens of Milwaukee are fed up with it and we've had very good results," Mitchell said.
In fact, this weekend they broke the cruisers up within 5 minutes.
"I feel sorry for the people that live in these particular areas especially on the side streets and quiet residential neighborhoods," Captain Mitchell said. "What we've seen over the last few years is that the cruising has been contained to the main streets which is still an issue but far preferable as opposed to being on side streets and impacting residents. That's why we deem this to be a very important issue and we have dedicated a lot of manpower to the issue and try to resolve it."
Neighbors say since police have stepped up patrols over the past few years the cruising problem has improved.
"The luck that we've had in the past if we aggressively show up in large number of squad cars most cruisers leave immediately."
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