As the mayor of Milwaukee signed a resolution Monday to help curb reckless driving incidents, Police Chief Jeffrey Norman stood behind him at the news conference.
Norman implored Milwaukee residents to drive safely and legally, adding that the police department was addressing the issue but couldn’t “do this work alone.”
But shortly after Norman left the news conference, a dump truck crashed into his SUV, according to local media reports. The driver of the truck rear-ended Norman’s vehicle when trying to switch lanes at a red light, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
The crash happening right after the reckless driving conference was “cruelly coincidental,” Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said in a statement Monday. Norman and another officer who was in the car were treated for non-life-threatening injuries, police said. Officials did not provide further details on the crash but said the driver of the other vehicle was cooperating with the ongoing investigation.
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“We did not need this type of reminder that all drivers need to slow down and increase caution on our roadways,” Johnson said in the statement.
Milwaukee officials have been working to address reckless driving for years. The issue was a cornerstone of Johnson’s mayoral campaign, and when he took office in 2021, he released a plan to tackle it through road improvements and increased police traffic enforcement, among other changes. That year, more than 60 people died in reckless-driving incidents in Milwaukee, according to Johnson’s memo.
Monday’s resolution urged Wisconsin state lawmakers to pass legislation that would expand penalties for reckless driving. Before signing the resolution around 9:30 a.m., Johnson said the city needed to “change the daily behavior” of dangerous drivers.
“We cannot and we will not accept the current frequency of reckless driving that we’re seeing in our community,” he said.
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Norman applauded the mayor’s attention to a citywide problem the police department has tried to address. He also urged the community to stay vigilant when driving.
Share this articleShare“I call upon all of us to stop reckless driving,” Norman said.
Norman and a 56-year-old officer who was with him were injured in the crash around 10:10 a.m., police said. CBS 58 reporter Bryant McCray, who was one block away from the crash site, said in a live Facebook video that he heard the crash after leaving the news conference. Officers immediately rushed to the intersection, McCray said. Norman and the other officer were taken to a hospital for treatment.
Monday’s news conference was held three days after police said a speeding driver crashed into another car last week, killing three people, WTMJ-TV reported. In a Facebook post Friday, Johnson wrote that the fatal crash “should not have happened.”
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“We are making physical changes to our roadways to increase safety, but, clearly, drivers must also follow the law,” Johnson wrote.
The Journal Sentinel reported that the collision was the fifth fatal crash in less than one week. On Monday, Joyce Smith, a witness to the crash that injured Norman, told the paper that Friday’s fatalities were still on her mind when she saw the chief’s vehicle get rear-ended by the dump truck.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Smith said. “People need to learn how to drive.”
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