Elected as Milwaukee County District Attorney; 1-on-1 with Kent Lovern

MILWAUKEE - Milwaukee County District Attorney-elect Kent Lovern will officially take the oath of office during a ceremony on Thursday, Jan. 16. 

Lovern has been a prosecutor in Milwaukee County for roughly 27 years and served as Deputy District Attorney since 2008. FOX6's Aaron Maybin went one-on-one with Lovern about assuming the office, challenges he faces, his focus on public safety and more.

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One-on-one interview

Maybin: What is your number one thing that you want to accomplish right away?
Lovern: We have to continue to tackle very quickly the violent crime problem we’re facing in the community. I would say the other issue that is of deep concern to me personally has been domestic violence. We’ve seen a high rate of domestic violence homicides over the last several years. We need to better connect with those who are most vulnerable in situations related to family violence, because righht now, we’re not seeing as many people back accessing those services as we need.

Kent Lovern

Maybin: How do you plan to lead this office differently than your predecessor?
Lovern: Well clearly, we have to continue to be very very responsive. We’ve had prosecutors in the neighborhoods for a long time now that have done really great work intersecting with neighborhoods and the police departments in those neighborhoods.

I think we need to take that to another level and build on that and connect people in neighborhoods who are concerned with safety, but maybe aren’t connected to economic opportunity.

Maybin: What do you think is driving violent crime in Milwaukee right now?
Lovern: I think it’s complex. I think there are a number of issues here, certainly the pandemic contributed to the rise in crime. We saw that nationwide, we saw big spikes in violent crime.

Kent Lovern

We have to continue though to look at some of the gaps we see in our community. Gaps related to poverty, gaps related to home ownership, because what we do know is the neighborhoods that have a homeownership, and high rates of family sustaining jobs do not have high rates crime.

Maybin: How exactly do you plan to make Milwaukee safer?
Lovern: On violent crime, there has to be a very strong response to that. That has to be unequivocal.

By violent crime, I mean not only the shootings we see and the sexual assaults we see but clearly the reckless driving that we have seen now for several years that has frightened everyone has got to treated as a violent crime.

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We’ll receive a response from this office in terms of the charges and the recommendations, we don’t sentence people, but in terms of the recommendations we make in court that reflects that there needs to be a strong response to that type of behavior.

Maybin: What is your greatest challenger right now?
Lovern: One is an internal challenge and that relates to the funding of our office. Because our office has always relied on federal grant funding. Some of that grant funding is expiring very soon. This office needs to be fully funded. It needs to be supported financially in order for us to do what we need to do, not only in Milwaukee County but the greater Milwaukee region.

Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office

Maybin: For people living in Milwaukee County, what do you want them to know right now?
Lovern: I’m a person deeply committed to this community, I’ve demonstrated that over my career. I have boundless energy, which might surprise a few people because I can be fairly low-key at times.

What we need to do in this community, in my view, is we need to better connect with one another and to the good work that is on going on in a lot of places in this community right now. We are small enough to do that.  We are a small, major league, NBA city here and that’s our advantage at my standpoint, that we need to make the most of here.