'Total disregard': Sherman Park residents are fed up with reckless driving. Here's how one resident is trying to stop it.
Sherman Park resident Jordan Morales said that when he bought a home to accommodate his family of five children, he wanted them to feel safe enough to play in the front yard.
Just three years in, however, and he said the idea of them doing that is “terrifying.”
Near their intersection, Morales said two light poles have been knocked down and several trees hit by reckless drivers.
To protect himself, and the other neighbors on the corner of North Grant Boulevard and West Hadley Street who all have small children, Morales used signs and barriers leftover from a lead service line replacement project to construct a makeshift traffic circle. Somewhat similar to a roundabout, the circle forces drivers to slow down because they must turn slightly to pass through the intersection.
Morales’ passion for the subject led him to preside over the Sherman Park Reckless Driving Commission and join the Sherman Park Community Association's board of directors. Morales called his construction of the traffic circle “tactical urbanism,” a term used to describe citizen-led efforts that temporarily change physical structures in a neighborhood for the better.
“I had no intention of being politically active, but the daily impact it was having on my life ... I was like, this is a big reason this neighborhood has so many issues,” he said.
‘Total disregard’
Before putting up the traffic circle, Morales had successfully installed a speed hump along the street he lives on, which he said has “helped wonderfully.” But he still sees people speeding until they get to that hump.
He is not alone in his frustrations.
Reckless driving, which has been a prominent issue in Milwaukee for several years, has seen an uptick since the pandemic. Last year represented the deadliest year for traffic fatalities in Milwaukee County in decades, with 107 people killed, and some community leaders have expressed interest in increasing enforcement and penalties for reckless driving.
Aaron Townsend, whose parents have lived in the Sherman Park neighborhood for over a decade, said it's always been a problem.
Although Townsend is careful to check several times before crossing the street with his 2-year-old black Lab, he said he's more scared to drive around his neighborhood. “People drive crazy,” he said. “People just don't have no respect for the laws anymore.”
He said drivers constantly run red lights and stop signs, and he's disappointed that police are not doing more to stop them.
“There's not enough police to police anymore,” he said. “You've got people driving with no license plates and the police don't even care.”
Dawn Turnipseed, chair of the Friends of Sherman Park organization and recent electee to Sherman Park's community association board, is another person who said she'd like to see more action on reckless driving.
“I'd like to see more police presence and more pulling people over,” she said.
In March, Turnipseed said she was sitting at a stoplight when someone plowed into her from behind, totaling her car. The woman who hit her had no insurance and an expired registration. Turnipseed was forced to sell her car and, she said, it's not the first time she's been rear-ended in that area.
“They pass on the bike line,” she said of reckless drivers, pointing to the busy North Sherman Boulevard street just one block over from where Morales erected his traffic circle.
“They're weaving in and around people through traffic, blowing through stop signs — they run red lights all the time. It's just total disregard,” Turnipseed said, shaking her head. “Total disregard.”
Traffic deaths are down from last year but still raising concern
So far, 85 fatalities have occurred this year due to reckless driving, according to the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office.
RELATED: Motorist speeding on Fond du Lac Avenue dies in crash, injures two women
The figure is lower than it was last year, but addressing reckless driving is still a top-of-mind issue for many neighborhood residents, such as those living in Sherman Park.
In February, then-interim Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman deployed a task force called the Traffic Safety Unit to address the issue. One of the strategies included saturation patrols in known high-traffic areas.
According to statistics from the Traffic Safety Unit, there have been 18,586 traffic citations handed out since the task force began and more than 10,000 of those citations have been speeding-related. Among police districts, District 7 has the most recorded citations for speeding (3,107) and accidents (325).
The Sherman Park neighborhood is located within Districts 3 and 7.
Morales wrote an op-ed in September, calling the issue of reckless driving “a drawn-out mass casualty attack occurring in our city streets.”
He said that next year, he is hoping to see speed humps installed in the 2700 block of Grant Boulevard, and a more official traffic circle constructed in place of what's there now.
Focusing on traffic, he said, “is a good way to start making the neighborhood attractive.”
More: Milwaukee Bucks help fashion a 'Dream Court' for Sherman Park neighborhood
Morales said that he's hoping media attention and support from Ald. Russell Stamper III will lead to more infrastructure and law enforcement being used to make the streets safer from reckless drivers in 2022.
“My vision," he said, "is to create a pedestrian- and bicycle-safe corridor from Sherman Park to Washington Park."
You can report incidents of reckless driving on the Milwaukee Police Department's Traffic Safety Unit website: https://mpdtsu.org/.
Talis Shelbourne is an investigative solutions reporter covering the issues of affordable housing and lead poisoning. Have a tip? You can reach Talis at (414) 403-6651 or tshelbourn@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @talisseer and message her on Facebook at @talisseer.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Sherman Park resident fights reckless driving with ‘tactical urbanism’
