Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office Community Partnership with Safe & Sound and Pearls for Teen Girls
Jan 16th, 2009
Written by Lt. Sylvia Rodriguez, Milwaukee County Sheriff’s DepartmentOn October 7 & 9, 2008, Deputy Leslie Wachowiak and I went to the Business Economics Academy of Milwaukee to educate two groups of young girls on how to teach Senior Safety Awareness (crime prevention measures and personal safety information), at the request of Safe & Sound Community Partner Talibah Mateen-Hooper. The group is part of Pearls for Teen Girls, which is funded in part by Safe & Sound. The topic of senior safety was chosen as their Safe & Sound Crime Strategy Initiative by one of the girls. This choice was due in part to her grandmother becoming a victim of elder abuse in the form of financial exploitation by one of her own family members. After hearing the story, the rest of the girls quickly agreed senior safety was the choice for their initiative.
After meeting the girls, we suggested to them that we work as partners. Either we could set up the date and location for the presentation or they could. We would bring our equipment and together we would give the presentation, building a relationship between older adults (seniors), teens and law enforcement.
After much preparation, Dep. Wachowiak and the girls were ready for their initial appearance on November 20th at the Dr. Wesley Scott Senior Center, 2800 W. Wright Street. Dep. Wachowiak met the girls at 4:00 p.m. to set up and began at 4:30. She was greeted by five of the young girls, Denearia, Tatiana, Marissa, Rachel, and Cristina. Initially the girls were hesitant to mingle with the residents, staying close to one another. As soon as Deputy Wachowiak began to assemble her equipment things quickly changed. All the girls were excited to get started! They assembled the residents in a common area, and then they introduced and told a little bit about themselves and what the purpose of our visit was. The girls did an excellent job, all taking turns speaking about general safety tips, telemarketing fraud, and financial exploitation.
After the presentation, the girls spent some one-on-one time with the residents. Everyone was having a great time and it was difficult to get the girls to say goodbye. The residents were anxious for them to set another date to come back, offering to bake them cookies if they could come back soon! The girls were so proud of their accomplishment, that they already had their next project in mind, before they left the residence. The girls wanted to have a senior safety fair for their grandparents. The date was set for December 23rd at the Carver Community Center at 650 W. Reserve. December 23rd greeted them with a very cold wintery mix, but they decided to go forward. Deputy Wachowiak arrived at 9:30a.m., and to her surprise had six girls outside assisting their teacher Michelle unload the food from her truck. The weather became increasingly worse by the minute as they waited for their audience. Unfortunately nobody came, so they decided to have a practice session for the girls to present to each other.
Due to the terrible snowstorm and no audience, they had a large amount of food left over which they decided to donate to the homeless shelter Repairers of the Breach on 13th and Vliet.
We are now planning to build a partnership with TRIAD, a group formed of the three sectors of a community that partner to keep seniors safe from crime: public safety, criminal justice, and the senior community. Triad has two objectives, to reduce crime against seniors, and to reduce the unwarranted fear of crime that the elderly often experience. The next TRIAD meeting will be Monday, January 26, 2009, 10:30 a.m. at Clinton Rose Community Center, 3045 N. Martin Luther King Dr. The plan is to eventually visit every senior center in Milwaukee County along with Pearls for Teen Girls to present Senior Safety.
