MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Calling for change after the shooting death of a Milwaukee city housing inspector last week allegedly at the hands of a teenager during an attempted carjacking, a Republican state senator said Wednesday that “enough is enough” as she spoke at a public hearing on anti-crime bills.
“There are violent repeat offenders that are terrorizing neighborhoods,” Sen. Leah Vukmir said at the hearing before the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee. “We are doing a poor job of separating those offenders who should be afforded opportunities for rehabilitation from those who do not belong on our streets.”
The Milwaukee teen and two other people charged in the killing of 64-year-old Greg “Ziggy” Zyszkiewicz all have records for previous crimes.
The anti-crime package has eight proposals. It includes measures that would impose harsher penalties on youth who commit crimes, increase mandatory minimum sentences for repeat offenders of serious crimes, increase penalties for carjacking and require the Wisconsin Department of Corrections to recommend the revocation of parole of individuals charged with a crime.
“Sometimes, in some people’s lives, the only way we’re going to change their behavior in society is to remove them from society,” Republican Sen. Duey Stroebel, of Saukville, said by phone at the hearing.
Democratic Sen. Lena Taylor of Milwaukee agreed. “As a victim who has been robbed and raped in my life, I understand,” Taylor said.
But she argued that many of the anti-crime proposals from committee vice chair Vukmir, who lives in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield, and Republican Rep. Joe Sanfelippo of New Berlin, which is also in suburban Milwaukee, are misguided attempts to increase public safety.
Taylor said legislators could have more of an impact if they address programming shortages in the Department of Corrections, reduce the caseload of probation agents and consider criminal justice reforms that have worked in other states.
Among the bills are two that could land more children in Wisconsin’s troubled youth prison system for a wider range of crimes and keep them there longer. The Milwaukee Police Association supports these measures, while the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of Women Voters oppose them.
The state’s Lincoln Hills youth prison facility is the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation and several former and current inmates filed a lawsuit in January alleging overuse of solitary confinement and pepper spray.
Two of the package’s proposals have bipartisan support on the committee: Taylor is a co-sponsor on a bill that would allow courts to wait to designate a nonviolent crime as a felony or misdemeanor until after a sentence is completed, and Democratic Sen. Fred Risser of Madison is a co-sponsor on a bill that would change the process for expunging offenses committed before age 25.
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