Every year, students in the Journalism, Advertising and Media Studies program at UWM take an investigative course where they research and complete a project around a specific topic.
In the latest project, Missing in Milwaukee, 12 student journalists reviewed 18 open cases of missing people of color in Milwaukee, and elsewhere in Wisconsin.
The cases from between 1975 and 202 spanned from toddlers to the elderly.
Students spoke with the family and loved ones of the missing people, interviewed experts and sat down with Milwaukee Police.
The reporting is published through Media Milwaukee, a student news source at UWM.
The students recently hosted a panel discussion about the project at UWM. During the panel, Caleb Rose, a senior, explained how they chose their topic.
"Going into the semester, we really noticed that there was a huge discrepancy in how people talked about missing people of color as opposed to white missing people," Rose says. "And how they were covered by the media, how they were investigated by police and all this kind of stuff. We wanted to help be a conversation starter about this broad-ranging issue."
According to the students’ investigation, there are currently more than 500 open cases of missing people in Milwaukee, and only one officer in the police department’s sensitive crimes division is assigned to them.
The students found that people of color, Black men, and men in general who go missing are “systemically underreported by news media.”
Students referenced academic research on a phenomenon called “missing white woman syndrome” as a reason for that. It means the media is more likely to extensively cover cases of missing young white women.
Rose compared coverage he'd recently seen of a missing white woman to cases of missing Black people he'd researched for the project.
"I saw a case just the other day, and it was of a white woman, and I don’t mean to diminish that at all, but there was a long story about her, and I knew every detail about her life. And working through the cases of African American people in Milwaukee, I knew their age, I knew the day they went missing, and that was it," Rose says.
UWM student Charmeka Wells was not part of the project, but she highlighted how the media talks about runaway children. Wells is the vice president of UWM’s Minority Media Association.
"Usually when they post it and they say, like, ‘This child has run away several times,’ then it basically gives people the perspective that, like, ‘Oh, this kid is constantly running away, I’m not gonna look for her.’ And I think we need to do better as journalists to prevent that from happening," Wells says.
She added that the media needs to treat those cases "the exact same way that we treat white children that are missing."
The students’ investigation explains that the Milwaukee Police Department decides whether a missing person case is critical. One of the criteria is that the person has a physical, mental or cognitive disability.
Cael Byrne, another student journalist, talked about the case of 74-year-old Johnnie Patterson, who went missing in June 2020.
"In early 2020, he was diagnosed with dementia, and he would wander off often, but he always knew to ask for help. But on June 9, 2020, he wandered away from his apartment building, and he’s been missing ever since," Byrne says. "Patterson’s disappearance received a smattering of news coverage by local television stations in 2020 and 2021, but not enough to become a household name."
Byrne says the Milwaukee police declined to answer specific questions about Patterson’s case, but they did release the full investigative file to Media Milwaukee.
Police communication — or lack thereof — with the loved ones of the missing is an issue the students found many families encounter.
They heard from families that sometimes police don’t follow up.
Additionally, the Black community, historically, has a strained relationship with police due to racism and negative, sometimes deadly, interactions.
Student journalist Rose talked about how reporting a missing loved one to police can also be a negative experience.
"There are a lot of things that came up where it was like the detective would come, and they would ask, ‘Is your son involved in drugs?’ or ‘Is your son doing this?’ or whatever. They would reject those things, like you have to wait longer, or he’s a grown adult, he can go wherever he pleases.," Rose says. "And so, when people did reach out, when they did try to communicate and advocate for their missing loved one, they felt a lot of pushback."
Students say their hope is that revisiting these missing persons cases will reveal new developments in the search and fill in gaps for the families.
