Missing in Milwaukee Overview: Beyond the Headlines of Milwaukee’s Missing People

Carvell Jennings could fix anything, especially when it came to cars.

This was something he made sure to instill in his only daughter, Ebony Jennings. He taught her how to change her own tires and check her own oil.

As Ebony grew up on Hampton Avenue in Milwaukee, her dad was known as the neighborhood handyman. “He would fix their cars and their breaks,” she remembers. His family, which has Mississippi roots, runs a north-side asphalt company that once paved the Hoan Bridge.

In early May of 2024, Carvell, who had a history of strokes, suffered from a fall that left him hospitalized for 10 days.

“I just know that he wasn’t in his right mind,” Ebony says.

Just two days after he returned home from the hospital, ring video footage captured Jennings walking away from his group home on Brentwood Avenue around 4 p.m. Minutes later, he was seen getting on a Milwaukee County bus. Worry set in when he did not return that night.

“This is not like him,” Ebony recalls. “He would never stray away from home. My dad does not like to be away from home.”

It has been seven months since Carvell Jennings was last seen. Organizing search parties, handing out flyers around town, spreading the word via social media and working with local media and police, Ebony has done everything she could think of to find her father.

She wonders why her dad’s story isn’t national news.

“For me, I really would love for my dad’s story to be nationwide,” Ebony said. “Because it’s like, where is he?”

Carvell’s case is not alone; he is one of the 32,711 people who have been reported missing to the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) in the past 10 years as of Oct. 15, 2024, police confirmed to Media Milwaukee. Each year, between 2,500 and 3,300 missing persons have been reported in the city. Although it is likely most are found or voluntarily return in short order, MPD said it would take many hours to provide the students with the exact number of how many are located.

Though Carvell’s case received a fair amount of local news coverage after being classified as critically missing by MPD, many people of color, particularly Black men, and just missing men in general, are systemically underreported by news media. Academic research shows the media are more likely to extensively cover the cases of young, missing white women.

A team of 12 student journalists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee spent three months investigating 18 open cases of missing people of color in Milwaukee, and a few from smaller Wisconsin towns, spanning from 1975 to 2024. The cases ran the gamut from missing elderly like Jennings to a 15-year-old girl and a toddler who vanished over 25 years ago and whose new identity police are closing in on.

The student journalists reviewed thousands of pages of police case files obtained through open records requests to the MPD, met with the loved ones of each missing person, interviewed experts on issues affecting missing people of color and sat down with officers from the MPD’s Sensitive Crimes Department.

The Media Milwaukee investigation found that many of the cases occurred against a backdrop of criticism from the families of the missing about MPD, which was discovered to have only one detective dedicated to missing person cases amid an officer recruitment and retention crisis.

Officer Jamie Sromalla, who overcame a troubled childhood and teen motherhood and has been touted as a success story in the media, took over the missing person assignment in July of 2024.

“I try to put myself in their situation, [family members of the missing person]” she said. “If it was my child, my loved one, my parent, I would want someone to help me. So, I love just being able to help these families and give them some closure.”

In Milwaukee, Sromalla works within the realities of a slashed detective bureau and a shrinking police force, that struggles to fill its academy classes. In 2023, the number of sworn officers was down 26% since 1996, according to MPD data. Her time is often consumed by the glut of “critical missing” cases and pitching in on current sexual assaults, leaving little left-over time for long-term missing.

“A couple weeks ago, I think we had a missing critical every day,” Sromalla said. In these cases, Sromalla said that her boss would decide if and when she joined the investigation or not.

However, the families of the missing are connected by a common string of disappointment over how they feel their cases were handled by police.

“I do hope that no other family will go through this,” Carrie Davis, daughter of missing person Johnnie Patterson, said, echoing the frustrations of other families. “MPD, please get it together.”

The police files show that communication issues between families and police may contribute to this perception. Although the students found that police don’t always tell the families everything that they have done, MPD said that sometimes there are investigative or privacy reasons for this. It’s also not a crime for a person to voluntarily disappear. In other cases, it may be a true lack of communication with the families. MPD fulfilled all of the student open records requests for case files in just a few weeks time, and the Patterson case file documented an extensive police search for the missing man, down to canine units being sent around his apartment. Like Carvell Jennings, he falls into the category of a missing senior.

In the police files, there is a wide discrepancy in how thoroughly the cases were investigated. Especially in the older cases, including the missing toddler, some leads do not appear to be followed up on. The reopening of the long-term missing cases typically only involved contacting family members to ask if they had any new information over and over again.

MPD acknowledged the lack of documentation in older cases, whose files consisted of scrawled, cursive handwriting that was difficult to read. Capt. Erin Mejia of Sensitive Crimes believes that the work has always been done, but the detailed documentation may have not been years ago. MPD stressed that their investigations and filing systems have improved through advances in technology and DNA, social media, dental records and videos. Some of the recent case files especially document exhaustive searches by MPD, where it is difficult to see what else they could have done.

“These cases remain open until the missing person is found,” Mejia says of the long-term missing cases. “Open, meaning the investigation is ongoing. DNA, technology and science are continuously advancing, offering new opportunities. Family and community dynamics change over time and new information can be discovered which may further the investigation.”

She noted: “Relatives and those involved may no longer be willing to participate in the investigation. There are some instances where the family wishes that we no longer contact them regarding the missing person’s investigation.”

Not one of the cases fits into the stereotypical “stranger in a white van” abduction, at least as far as is known. They are often rooted in a web of complex issues—family dynamics, mental health challenges, cognitive delays, online grooming, substance abuse and countless other circumstances that don’t fit the typical narrative seen in national headlines. According to the MPD, only about 0.3 percent of missing children cases involve abduction by a stranger. However, these rare cases often result in an international media sensation. The one-in-a-million.

Take Natalee Holloway, for example. The 18-year-old white, blonde woman from Alabama vanished from the Caribbean Island of Aruba on May 30, 2005, while on a senior class trip. She was last seen leaving a club in a gray Honda with a group of local young men, including Joran van der Sloot. The media quickly picked up on the case, especially after details emerged about the circumstances surrounding her last known whereabouts, turning Holloway into a household name. Nearly two decades later, van der Sloot confessed to killing her. Over the years, thousands of news stories and documentaries have been published, recounting every twist and turn of the investigation.

Let’s compare her case to that of Javeoni Buford. The 24-year-old Black man vanished from his mom’s Milwaukee home on Nov. 17, 2021, and has not been seen or heard from since.

His sister, Menshae Bonman, said he was a “very outgoing, very, very smart, a hardworking man with a smile that could brighten up a whole room. Just a good individual.”

She told student journalists that Buford hadn’t been himself leading up to his disappearance, which added to the family’s concern. Despite the troubling circumstances and the family’s activism, there isn’t a single news story, even local, about Buford’s disappearance, and very little information is available online about his case.

Some could argue that missing children may receive more coverage, including the “missing milk carton boys” of the 1980s who were followed by decades of coverage of missing white girls, teenagers and women. One of the most well-known missing person cases in Milwaukee was a Black child, Alexis Patterson, and a Hmong boy, Elijah Vue, recently received extensive coverage across Wisconsin. However, Alexis’s case has often been contrasted to that of Elizabeth Smart, whose case ignited a far larger national news storm around the same time.

The Media Milwaukee investigation found that other missing children of color, including toddler Dontray Hunter and 15-year-old Joniah Walker, who disappeared in 2022, did not receive anywhere near the level of attention given to Smart, Patterson, or Vue’s cases. That’s the case even after Joniah was discovered to have worked with the Milwaukee woman, Sade Robinson, whose body parts were discovered scattered throughout the city, her mom confirmed.

Joniah’s mom appeared at a press conference seeking a task force on missing Black girls and women.

So, why does this stark disparity in news coverage remain so persistent and glaringly obvious today?

Missing white woman syndrome fueled by non-diverse newsrooms

Well, the phenomenon is encapsulated in the term “missing white woman syndrome,” a concept coined by academics to describe the media’s tendency to prioritize stories about missing or endangered white women—especially those who are young, attractive, and from upper-middle-class backgrounds—over cases involving people of color or men.

Zach Sommers, assistant professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Institute of Technology, has published several research papers and made numerous media appearances to discuss this syndrome. He emphasized to the student journalists that psychological research reveals a tendency for humans to favor the familiar.

“So just sort of implicitly, if you have kind of a homogeneous group of people in the editor’s room making these determinations about the newsroom, this is not surprising that we might see an overrepresentation of certain types of cases,” Sommers said. “If you have that composition of folks in the room, they see a case about a white girl, a white woman—they might kind of implicitly identify with that story in a way that they might not identify with another type of story.”

The historical and current lack of diversity in for-profit newsrooms significantly contributes to this pattern and silences minority voices and stories. A two-year study published in 2023, The Damned Pipeline: U.S. Industry’s Broken Parity Promise by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, analyzed the diversity of 22 major news organizations across the country.

The study found that investigative newsrooms often fail to reflect the communities they cover. More than 60% of investigative reporters were white, while Black reporters made up 9%, Latinos accounted for 13%, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders represented 11%, 3% were Middle Eastern and North African, and only 1% were Indigenous.

Sommers is currently writing an updated research paper on how the “missing white woman syndrome” has evolved in the age of social media. He looks at the case of Gabby Petito, who had a significant social media presence across several platforms herself before she disappeared on a trip with her fiancé that led to massive news coverage in 2021.

“It just exploded on TikTok in particular, but also Instagram and Twitter,” Sommers said. “That coverage, I think, led to this snowball of news media covering it because they saw how many people, how many eyeballs, and clicks it was getting on the social media platforms.”

In today’s online world, users have the opportunity to spread stories of missing people of color themselves. However, the limited research available suggests that the “missing white woman syndrome” has persisted across these platforms. The New York Times noted that on the day Gabby Petito’s remains were found, the hashtag ‘#gabbypetito’ had received more than 794 million views on TikTok. In contrast, the hashtag ‘#rosalitalongee,’ for an 18-year-old Indigenous woman missing since 2015, had generated only 16.4 thousand views as of November 2023. Media Milwaukee previously traveled to North Dakota to investigate missing and murdered Indigenous women in the wake of that movement. Read that project here.

Like so many others across the nation, the editor of the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and president of Milwaukee’s National Association of Black Journalists chapter, Tannette Elie, found herself enthralled with Petito’s story, checking in on news updates every day when the case was fresh. She is a former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter.

“She was this victim, and everybody felt so terrible about this tragedy,” Elie said. “But the thing about it is, do you see women of color? Are they covered like that? Are their stories elevated to that level? So, you know, very rarely would you.”

The student journalists found that some of the missing Black women of Milwaukee, like Chandra Jennings and Tarena Hopgood, received very little, if any coverage. Some of the missing women were dealing with domestic violence or drug addiction concerns leading up to their disappearance.

Tory Lowe: community activist serves missing POC in Milwaukee

There is one man who hasn’t overlooked such cases in Milwaukee, and that’s Tory Lowe.

Born and raised in Milwaukee’s 6th District, Lowe never imagined his life would take the path it has. Growing up, Lowe aspired to be an astronaut, inspired by the moon landing. On career day at his school, he drew a picture of the moon with an astronaut and flag.

When his teacher came around to look at Lowe’s drawing, she suggested that he grow up to be a serviceman, like a police officer or firefighter. Every year on career day after that, he drew a police officer or firefighter and never went back to wanting to be an astronaut.

As an adult, Lowe looks back on this experience and realizes how at a young age, it narrowed his worldview. Today he understands how systemic racism subtly influenced his thinking, narrowing his aspirations without him even realizing it at the time.

“Had she not done that, maybe I would have tried to get in touch with NASA or travel that route a little more,” Lowe said.

As a high schooler at North Division, Lowe played football and was involved with the school’s media program. When he was a freshman, there were around 300 students in his class, but only about 55 of them graduated. He recalled that during this time some of his friends were killed, and their deaths were often announced during the morning announcements. “The school announcements were basically like an obituary,” he said.

Lowe went on to play college football in Iowa after his high school counselor made him a highlight reel and sent it to Iowa Lakes College, located in a predominantly white town. When he arrived, it was a culture shock. After college, Lowe moved to Madison, Wis. where he married his high school sweetheart, who later died of Lupus. He also lived in Minnesota for part of his young adult life, where he experienced an alleged racist attack by his co-workers.

Eleven years later, at the end of 2010, he came home to be with his dying Grandma and has been in Milwaukee ever since.

This is when he began fighting illegal strip-searching cases in Milwaukee’s 5th District, which resulted in criminal convictions. He also got involved in protests around the deaths of Derek Williams, James Perry and Corey Stingley. Stingley died after being restrained by three customers in a West Allis store where he was attempting to shoplift. Perry died in the Milwaukee County Jail. Williams died in an MPD squad car after saying he could not breathe. None of those cases resulted in criminal charges, although the city paid millions of dollars in settlements in the Williams and Perry cases.

After Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black teen, was shot and killed in Florida by a civilian on neighborhood watch, an event that made national headlines, Lowe organized a march linking the incident with the illegal strip-searching cases to draw attention to them. Soon after, a mother reached out, asking for help finding her 13-year-old daughter who had disappeared.

“I was puzzled because, at that point, I wasn’t looking for people,” Lowe said. “But when she said the police weren’t going to do anything, there was no Amber Alert and she feared her daughter was being human trafficked, I was like, okay, let me see what I can do.”

Lowe gathered the girl’s basic details, created a missing person flyer with her picture and posted it on his Facebook page, which had 50,000 followers at the time. The post immediately went viral. He received a tip that she might be near 28th and Townsend, so he distributed flyers in that area. Due to the attention he brought to the case, Lowe said the police got involved and found the girl, wearing a wig, with a changed name and hickeys on her neck. She was missing a total of four days and was found within two days of Lowe getting involved.

“I found out the community was willing to tell me information, but they weren’t willing to tell the police,” Lowe said.

That was just the beginning of Lowe’s work with the missing of Milwaukee; he started with a focus on young girls, which quickly turned to young boys too, and then everyone and anyone.

Today, Lowe has worked with over 250 cases of missing people and remains a dedicated community activist. He also hosts The Tory Lowe Show on 101.7 The Truth.

Through his Facebook, TikTok and Instagram accounts – with over 100,000 followers across platforms – and his radio show, he raises awareness about missing people in Milwaukee while personally working within the community to help families locate their loved ones.

His process for locating missing people unfolds in three distinct phases. It begins with spreading the word, and ensuring his community is informed and engaged. Next, he organizes search parties and strategically follows leads to track the missing person’s whereabouts. By the time he reaches the third phase, he acknowledges the grim reality: they may be searching for a body. Lowe informed the students he could not reveal all of his secrets when it comes to finding the missing, because he might be saving those for a book one day.

After being missing for over 20 days, Alonzo Lamar returned home with the help of Lowe’s activism

This summer, Satira Lamar called Lowe after she had not heard from or seen her son, Alonzo Lamar, for 15 days following a family dispute. His case also fits the more common profile: a short-term missing person who is quickly found.

Together, they distributed flyers, canvased miles around the surrounding area and shared a powerful, emotional video of Satira on Lowe’s Facebook, TikTok and Instagram accounts.

In a strong, resolute voice, Satira told viewers that Alonzo was last seen at a relative’s home, visible behind her in the video, and that she and her boyfriend were the last to see him. She explained that his cell phone had been turned off, with the last ping coming from inside their house. She alleged that the relative and her boyfriend had given multiple conflicting stories about his disappearance and that every time the police were scheduled to visit, they happened to not be home. They have denied wrongdoing, according to the police file.

In the video, Lowe asked her, “What do you want the community to know?” Satira responded, “I’m just looking for my child. Even if I only get his body, let me lay my son to rest. He has a daughter who deserves the chance to say goodbye to her father.”

After the video was posted, Satira’s relative told MPD that Lowe and Satira were harassing her by putting her home on social media. So, the police told them that they couldn’t make any more videos that included her house.

But that didn’t stop the search from continuing. Lowe and Satira made another video for social media on Aug. 26 featuring Satira passing out flyers, looking around the neighborhood, giving updates on the search, and asking for anyone with information to come forward. Both posts received thousands of likes, shares, and comments across platforms.

Five hours after the second video was shared on social media, Alonzo was found on the side of the street, in an unsettling blank state, with a large bump on his head and no memory of what had happened to him, or even the names of his family members.

“He didn’t even know who his mama was, and the mama was crying,” Lowe said. “Like we got him, but we didn’t get him. Because he came back not the same.”

To this day, Satira said that Lowe continues to check in on the Lamar family during this difficult time.

“He is doing what the police are supposed to do; he’s doing what the media are supposed to do,” she said. “He’s taking it all on his own, by himself.”

 Lowe revealed that he can receive up to 15 calls a day from people desperately seeking his assistance.

“Killing, human trafficking, evictions, housefires, they come to me for everything,” Lowe said.

Lowe’s role as a go-to resource for crises in Milwaukee’s Black community reveals the hesitation of people of color to turn to systems that many believe have repeatedly failed them. From his experience, missing person cases are far from simple, and they occur in a city that has a history of segregation, crack cocaine, court backlogs, and poverty.

Additionally, the Black community in Milwaukee has a deep-rooted and complicated relationship with law enforcement, which includes the era of sex offender and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who targeted Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latino boys and men in the city. Police and the media did not connect the dots on that string of missing people until a man escaped from Dahmer’s apartment with a handcuff hanging off his wrist in 1991. Two police officers gave one victim, a teenage boy, back to the serial killer despite the protestations of a Black woman in the neighborhood named Glenda Cleveland. The handling of his crimes are often cited as an example of systemic racism and neglect by law enforcement and the media. Milwaukee police say they have made a lot of progress in how they investigate missing people cases over the years.

Social media used as an alternative to traditional news

While recent studies reveal that social media can reinforce the “missing white woman syndrome” on a large scale, as in what’s more likely to go viral, it has also become a critical tool for raising awareness about missing people of color in Milwaukee and other local communities nationwide.

One such effort is the Facebook page Missing Persons MKE, created and managed by the Community Task Force MKE. Its bio states: “Because the current ‘policies’ and culture of our state and local law enforcement do not adequately/equally cover persons of color when it comes to response times/reporting for ‘Amber Alerts’ or ‘Missing Persons,’ this is the COMMUNITY’S response.”

The page features countless posts—both original and shared—alerting followers about missing persons and providing updates on their cases. Lowe’s posts are often featured on this page.

Students investigating more recent cases noted a recurring trend: families of the missing increasingly rely on social media to spread the word, filling a gap left by traditional news outlets, including Ebony, in the search for her father Carvell.

After a sleepless night grappling with her father’s sudden disappearance, Ebony turned to Facebook the day after he walked away from his group home. Despite being hesitant to share personal matters online, she posted about her father’s disappearance, hoping it would help.

“People shared it like over 1,000 times,” Ebony said. “People started reaching out to me to help make flyers for me, and they were really concerned.”

Social media not only serves as an alternative for families who receive little or no news coverage but also helps spread information quickly within the community in less time, which can be critical for receiving tips and information from the public.

One officer, seven districts, 570 open cases of missing

Jamie Sromalla has been a police officer with MPD for the past seven and a half years. She’s worked in human trafficking undercover operations, the anti-gun unit and as a domestic violence high-risk liaison officer, where she discovered working with victims is where she finds the most fulfillment.

Since July of 2024, Sromalla has been assigned to the Sensitive Crimes unit within the missing persons division, where she is the sole officer in this role. Here she investigates the long-term missing cases, assists each district with critically missing persons and works directly with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the medical examiner’s office.

“I specifically wrote for this position because I love working with families,” Officer Sromalla said. “If it’s providing closure to them, just showing them that someone cares. This position is very challenging, but I am up for that challenge.”

The day Sromalla sat down with the students, Nov. 22, 2024, she revealed that there were currently 570 open cases of missing people in Milwaukee.

When a person is reported missing, either through a 911 call or in person at a district station, the case is initially handled at the district level. According to MPD police policy, an officer will take the report and gather all available information about the person’s disappearance. The policy notes there is no 24-hour waiting period to file a missing person report, and all reports must be accepted without delay.

The officer at the district should then check for any prior police contacts associated with the missing person, such as if they are wanted, have been victims of crime or have known associates. The officer who files the report is responsible for conducting an initial investigation, as long as the person was reported missing from a location within that officer’s district. This includes conducting a consent search of the last known location, canvassing the neighborhood, reviewing local surveillance footage and interviewing family members, according to MPD policy.

Sromalla told the students that district officers often check social media accounts as well.

“We obviously can’t hack into their [social media] accounts like everyone thinks we can,” Officer Sromalla said. “We can look them up. You know how when you look up someone on Facebook and go to message them it says if they are active or not, or when the last time they were active that’s as far as we can go without a search warrant or a subpoena.”

She said district officers will often also check hospitals, ambulance services, and bus stations.

“Some people voluntarily check themselves in somewhere, and that’s their right,” Officer Sromalla said. “A lot of these medical hospitals will not release information to us, and the person that was reported missing is just trying to get mental health treatment. These hospitals still have laws that they have to follow as well.”  

If these efforts fail, officers are expected to follow up and stay in contact with the family as the investigation continues over time.

Sromalla steps in when a case becomes a long-term missing, meaning they have been missing for over 90 days, or when district officers face what she likes to call “roadblocks.”

“The district is super busy,” she said. “They handle 911 calls, walk-in complaints, any type of call that you think a district would have to handle, they are dealing with that on a daily basis. So sometimes officers will reach out to me as well personally like, ‘Hey can you look into this?’ So, then I’ll come in and reach out to our databases, do a little bit more than a general patrol officer would do.”

Once a person has been the subject of a missing persons investigation for over 90 days, it is Sromalla’s responsibility to collect DNA samples from close family members, check for dental information, x-rays and fingerprints. Although, if there is reason to believe that the missing person is in danger, she can collect family DNA before the 90-day mark. When a case becomes a long-term missing, the district officers are supposed to continue to follow up periodically on their cases as well.

Sromalla explained that each case is unique, and the approach to locating a missing person depends on the circumstances, with search parties and other things of that nature not always being the first option.

“I think that what people forget is that going missing is not a crime,” she said. “I can pack up my stuff, never look back and say, ‘You know what, I don’t want to talk to any of my family members ever again.’  I think that’s what makes this topic so challenging because it’s not a crime. It’s really hard to prove that something other than them just packing up their stuff and leaving happened. Like I said, every missing is different.”

In some cases, she will inform the family that if she does locate their loved one, she can’t disclose where she finds them. “At first, some families are a little frustrated, but I think they understand,” she said.

She told the students how she has had cases where the missing person is located, and they have asked her not to tell their families where they are, “and I have to respect that,” she said. In this case, she will tell the family that they are safe, but locating any missing person, “is very rewarding,” Sromalla expressed.

Sromalla shared that missing persons cases can easily turn into homicide investigations; if foul play is suspected, the case becomes a criminal investigation, and if it’s believed to be a homicide, it is handed over to the homicide division.

When investigating long-term missing cases, Sromalla focuses on a handful at a time. First, she will try following up with family members over the phone, and if she can’t reach them, she will go knock on people’s doors. “Sometimes the missing answers the door and they are like, ‘Yeah I changed my number, I moved, I’m safe, I’m alive.’ I think the other day I went out and I was four for four, so I felt accomplished.”

“I was born and raised in Milwaukee,” Sromalla said. “I had a really rough childhood, growing up. I was leaving the house, not coming home when I should have been, so I get it. But this job is probably one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done.” 

If a missing person is deemed “critical” by MPD, the case is more likely to be covered by local news media

Sromalla also assists with critical missing persons cases. If a missing person is classified as critical by MPD, it means they fit into very specific criteria that can be found in MPD’s standard operating procedure of missing persons.

Critical missing criteria:

• If the missing person has a physical, mental or cognitive disability, like dementia or Alzheimer’s, a disability, drug dependency or other at-risk issues that subject them or others to danger.
• If there is reasonable suspicion to believe the disappearance of the missing person was not voluntary or if they are the victim of foul play.
• The missing person has a medical condition that requires lifesaving medication or procedures and there is reason to believe that the missing person does not have access to them.
• The missing person is missing after a disaster, like an explosion or drowning, but has not been confirmed deceased.
• The missing person is 11 years old or younger.
• The missing person is under the age of 18 and has their own minor child in their custody.
• The missing person is suicidal.
• The missing person is a veteran and meets the criteria for a Green Alert.

However, the critical missing designation means the case is more likely to be investigated by Sromalla and the department’s Sensitive Crimes Division. When a person is not determined to be a critical missing by the MPD, the case is handled by officers at the district level.

In a critical missing case, police are more likely to release information to the news media to garner public assistance in locating the individual, according to MPD missing persons procedure. The procedure also notes that MPD will carefully select what information to share in order to not jeopardize the investigation.

“In my honest opinion, I do believe that the media in Milwaukee are overall helpful with our cases and the things that we decide, or ask for their help with,” Captain Mejia said. “One of our missing persons cases, somewhat recently, was cracked because of the help and the assistance of the media. There were indicators in that story that someone called and provided a tip, and that person was successfully found.”

In retrospect, Javeoni Buford’s case was not classified as critically missing. Despite his family voicing concerns about his mental health before his disappearance, authorities did not deem it sufficient to warrant the designation. This may have contributed to the lack of media coverage surrounding his case because the police will not release information on a person who is not critically missing. However, the police file does document many steps MPD has taken to find him, from using cadaver dogs to search a family member’s background (she denies wrongdoing) to comparing his DNA to human remains. They also show that one search party devolved into alleged confrontations involving a brandished firearm.

“Like I said earlier, going missing is not a crime,” Sromalla said. “So, it adds a lot of barriers to officers, and detectives and investigators to these cases.”

“I’m really big into like let’s (work) with the media,” Captain Mejia said. “So, we have kind of changed. If we have the criteria to know that someone is missing critical, it has not always historically been, ‘Okay let’s put this out.’ That’s something new that our unit has determined under the current supervision.”

Carvell Jennings was deemed critical because of the cognitive delays that his daughter had observed before his disappearance, and his case received a fair amount of local news coverage.

Initial reports about Jennings’ last known whereabouts and calls for tips were published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WISN 12, CBS 58, TMJ4 and FOX 6. Plus, a few follow-up stories were published in the months that followed, emphasizing that the search for him was still ongoing, though Ebony wished for more publicity as time went on. News coverage tends to dissipate as the months and years pass. And he, like the others, never got the sweeping Alexis Patterson-style searches generated by wall-to-wall coverage nor did he hit the national news.

“Maybe they think it’s old news now,” Ebony said.

MPD says there are five categories of missing persons, Lowe says there are eight

The MPD classifies missing persons cases into five categories, one being voluntary or runaway. Sromalla told the students that these often involve children, many of whom may leave home due to factors like parental abuse, feeling misunderstood, bullying or even being told to leave.

“We also have chronic runaways where sometimes I am looking at some of these reports, and some of these young kids, this is like their tenth missing report,” Sromalla said. “It’s like they come right home, they eat, they sleep and then they run away again.”

One case that was labeled as such is Joniah Walker. The 15-year-old girl was last seen on June 23, 2022. Doorbell camera footage captured her walking away from her Milwaukee home with a large backpack and wearing her brother’s clothes.

That afternoon, Walker was supposed to meet her father outside of her mother’s apartment to get a work permit for a summer job. When she failed to show up, he called her mother, Tanesha Howard, and she immediately knew something was wrong, this wasn’t like Walker, she said.

That was the last day Howard saw her daughter, who would be 17-years-old today.

When Howard went to the police station to report her daughter missing, she was met with what she described as a dismissive response from an officer. “She’s not a child, she’s a teenager,” he allegedly told her. She says he showed little urgency in addressing Walker’s disappearance. In the first few weeks, Howard said she was even told the department didn’t have time to prioritize her case. She says the officer allegedly made other comments, including, “Oh, I wish I could come put on a cape and help you find Joniah, but unfortunately I can’t because I’m stuck behind a desk.”

Today, the first 24 to 48 hours after someone goes missing are widely understood as the most vital part of a police investigation. It can be critical to finding leads, collecting evidence, and, in some cases, saving lives. However, it can be difficult for law enforcement to know what cases to devote their resources to when FBI data from 2016 notes that about 70% of all reported missing persons are found or voluntarily returned within 48 to 72 hours.

“I believe that’s just a way for them to make it where they won’t have to be responsible,” Howard said. “To make it, ‘Oh, your kid just ran away, so what do you want us to do about it? There’s a reason they ran away, what are you doing wrong at home.’ That’s what I think about it. It’s just a lame excuse.”

Determined to find answers, Howard went door to door in her neighborhood to find the ring video footage of Walker walking away from her home that day, hoping to get a sense of what direction she went or where she could have gone. She shared it with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and shortly after, the video was published in the news without her knowledge.

“That just made the public think, like, ‘Oh, she just ran away,’” Howard said. “Instead of helping me find my child, that is what they took it as. No one came to help me look for her. I really wish that news lady would not have done that.”

Howard noted that she and her family members have even received hate messages on social media from the public regarding Walker’s disappearance.

Police files, though, paint a more complicated picture. The files revealed that police determined Walker had been talking to several older men through various apps, and her mother shared with the students that she strongly believes her daughter was groomed and trusted someone online. Walker was particularly vulnerable to this, as children between the ages of 12 and 15 account for over 50% of online grooming victims, according to the Child Crime Prevention and Safety Center. Walker was also perusing a doomsday website and struggling with troubles in her childhood and personal life, according to the file.

This scenario may fit into one of Lowe’s eight missing persons categories, online grooming, a category not included in the MPD list.

“Once they get them labeled as a runaway, nobody’s gonna look for them, nobody’s gonna care,” Lowe said. Although, in Joniah’s case, the investigation eventually resulted in police following leads as far as Texas, and the FBI is now involved.

The perception around this label also dismisses the fact that Black women and girls are at a higher risk of becoming victims of sex trafficking. A study by the U.S. Department of Justice shows that 40% of sex trafficking victims were found to be Black.

Officer Sromalla said that law enforcement has looked into every lead and has done everything they possibly can regarding her case.

Another of MPD’s categories of missing is a stranger abduction. These are extremely dangerous for children, although a very rare circumstance, making up only 0.03% of all missing children’s cases according to MPD. Officer Sromalla revealed that children abducted by strangers are most likely to be killed.

“It’s rare, I’ve seen it before while being a police officer and I’ve definitely seen it nationwide,” Officer Sromalla said.

Missing because their disappearance is directly related to an ongoing criminal investigation is another category on MPD’s list. Bobby Curry of Kenosha had a warrant through Probation and Parole in 2005. According to the current officer on his case at the Kenosha Police Department, the original detective assumed that Curry was fleeing his warrant. Curry has not been seen or heard from since.

“Could we have done something better, 100%, but the right people didn’t fall into place,” said Captain of the Kenosha Police Department, James Beller, of the earlier police investigation, which was conducted by a detective who has since retired. Beller and Detective Vicente Correa are still pursuing justice for Curry, however, and they indicated that there are leads they are still following, one generated by a sporadic television news story.

“We have done as much as we can at this point, but we are still waiting for that last tip,” said Correa.

Next on MPD’s list of missings is interference with child custody. This can occur in cases of divorce or separation. “In most cases, the parents are just fighting over custody of their child, and this is through their court process,” Officer Sromalla said.

Officers are not allowed to report these kinds of instances until 12 hours after the fact. “The spirit behind that is to allow that parent the opportunity to do the right thing,” Captain Mejia said.

One case the students investigated involved the young mother Elizabeth Harris-Liuhoulol. She was 13-years-old when she gave birth to her son, Christopher Harris. Shortly after Christopher turned 1-year-old in 1997, the boy disappeared. Elizabeth had long suspected her own mother’s involvement in giving him away without her permission, as well as the possibility that the child was handed over to extended family members who now live in another state. Her parental rights were never terminated.

Christopher is 28-years-old now. Elizabeth has not seen her son since. “She destroyed my life,” Elizabeth said. “Mentally, physically, emotionally.” Her mother is now deceased.

Over the years, Elizabeth reached out to three different police departments with varying success in Gary, Chicago, and Milwaukee. Years ago, Milwaukee police gave a DNA test to another boy Elizabeth has long suspected of being Christopher. They say it was not him; she still believes it is. Then they dropped the case for years, the file shows. Recently, police pinpointed another man in a different state as possibly being Christopher. That man has allegedly used the missing boy’s social security number, but he hasn’t provided his DNA, according to the documents.

Officer Sromalla noted that she is still looking for Christopher, and recently spoke with Elizabeth.

Next on the police list of categories is missing due to a medical condition. Sromalla explained how this could be dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, autism spectrum disorder, down syndrome or cognitive and intellectual delays, and how these cases typically involve the elderly.

Johnnie Patterson, then 71, “was hilarious,” his daughter Carrie Davis said. “He loved his family, especially his grandchildren. He could cook, he loved to cook. He loved family outings. He was heavy on family, I would say. He enjoyed holidays and birthdays. He was very firm, and he wouldn’t sugarcoat things.”

Over 10 of his closest family members trickled into the UW-Milwaukee library one by one to meet with student journalists in early November, eager to keep his story alive. Their presence underscored the humanity behind each missing person.

“He was a business-type man,” Hattie Nichols said. “He didn’t wanna work for anybody else. He wanted to have his own business and run it himself, and he did a pretty decent job.”

Surveillance video captured Patterson leaving his apartment in June of 2020. Earlier that year, he had been diagnosed with early-stage dementia. “According to the doctor, he was okay to live alone,” Davis said. “He didn’t need 24-hour care, he just needed people checking in on him and we did a pretty good job at that. Except I don’t know what happened that day, he walked out and just disappeared.”

Over the past four years, Patterson’s family has not given up on the search for him, and his case fits into one of Lowe’s types of missing, an elderly person with dementia.

“Right now, my main objective is getting justice, finding out the truth, and holding people accountable,” Kallai Patterson said.

MPD Sensitive Crimes officers declined to comment on almost all questions about specific cases the students were investigating. They said this was because they are open investigations and classified information.

Lowe’s categories expand on police definitions

Lowe acknowledges the fact that some cases of missing people include those who simply no longer want to be at home, for whatever reason that may be, but they are not always children.

Lowe’s eight types of missing:

• Missing because they do not want to be at home
• An elderly person with dementia
• Human trafficking
• Online grooming
• Murder
• The person moved away and didn’t tell their family
• Mental health issues
• Younger Black men with mental health issues

“There’s eight different types of missing, and all of those missing can lead to different outcomes,” Lowe said. “We need to expand the idea of missing.”

Young Black men with mental health issues came up repeatedly in the investigation. However, most are not deemed as critically missing, because for MPD, this is something that is hard to prove and very situational, making these cases some of the least covered by news media and are investigated by police with limited resources.

“Patrol officers and our agency take mental health concerns seriously,” Capt. Mejia said. “Learning of an underlying condition helps to determine the difference between a missing person and a critical missing person. The approach can be more exigent depending on the missing’s conditions. The goal is always the same, to bring the missing person home to their loved ones and or reporting person.”

One Milwaukee man was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had forgotten to take his medication before he disappeared for 39 days.

Lowe estimates that around 30% of missing person cases are because of mental health challenges. He advocates not just for the missing people, but for overarching inequities for minorities like mental health care.

“What we tend to see is that the people who need the services the most are oftentimes the people who have the least amount of access,” Dr. Gabriela Nagy, professor at UW-Milwaukee who studies mental health resource inequities, said.

Wisconsin crime alert network, operated by the U.S. Department of Justice, controls missing person alerts across the state with strict criteria

All of the Amber Alerts, Silver Alerts, Green Alerts, missing or endangered child and person alerts and crime alerts in the state are controlled by the Wisconsin Crime Alert Network, and they all have their own very strict criteria.

“A lot of these alerts are super helpful for us,” Officer Sromalla said. “It gets the information out there quick and help us in locating our missing.”

Captain Mejia brought up the case of Prince McCree, the 5-year-old boy who was reported missing to MPD in October of 2023. “One of the basic questions that we are asked all the time is ‘Why didn’t you guys do an Amber Alert, why didn’t the police department put out an Amber Alert?” she said. “I just want to make it really clear that the police department does not have the authority to put out an Amber Alert, that’s done through the Department of Justice. So, we actually have to request an Amber Alert to be put out.”

McCree’s case led to a new law that was signed by Gov. Tony Evers, the PRINCE Act, which expanded the state’s missing person alerts for children after his investigation turned into a homicide. “Prince McCree did not qualify for the Amber Alert because we didn’t know if he was actually in danger,” Mejia said.

“So, if that’s ever a question for anybody on why the police didn’t do an Amber Alert, I’m guessing the answer to your question is going to be that the police requested an Amber Alert, just like we did with Prince McCree, and it was denied,” Mejia said.

Another case that did not meet the criteria for a missing persons alert was that of Carvell Jennings.

“What really hurt me and my family, was him not getting a Silver Alert,” Ebony, daughter of Carvell said. “I feel and I believe, that had that been done, he would have been found already.”

Carvell was one month and two days shy of 60-years-old when he went missing, the age requirement for a Silver Alert. MPD did make an effort to issue one, according to police files, but the Silver Alert Coordinator ultimately denied the request because of his age.

A month later, after endless hours of searching with no luck by both MPD and Carvell’s loved ones, Ebony called to inquire again about sending out a Silver Alert now that he was about to turn 60. However, the criteria require that the request be made within 72 hours of the individual’s disappearance.

Missing persons social media campaign in D.C. shows the double sword of publicity

In December of 2017, the Washington D.C. Police Department launched a social media campaign across platforms with the hope of aiding in finding the city’s missing kids, and the effort was met with a unique consequence. NPR reported that while the posts did attract the attention the police department was hoping for, it also came with fear and misunderstanding.

To the public, it seemed as if there was suddenly a wave of missing children in D.C., specifically children of color. As the campaign went on, members of the community’s concern grew.

In March, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser addressed the public to discuss a few points. She noted an increase in the visibility of missing persons cases on social media compared to previous years, and how she understands that it can be upsetting to see.

She also highlighted that approximately 2,200 children are reported missing in D.C. annually. However, Bowser emphasized that the overall number of missing persons had not increased and that police report most of those reported missing persons are eventually found.

Smaller Wisconsin towns handle missing person cases differently than Milwaukee

The students also investigated the case of John Lee from Appleton.

Lee, who disappeared in 2015 after he was last seen near his parents’ home, is one of three known missing Asian Americans in Wisconsin. In 2023, 96,955 missing persons were reported in the U.S., with 12.3% identified as Asian, despite Asians comprising only 7.3% of the population, according to FBI data.

Sgt. Chue Thao of the Appleton Police Department described Lee’s disappearance as the biggest missing persons case of his career and his town. A photo of Lee sits next to his desk, a daily reminder of the case that still weighs heavily on him. Thao recounted the extensive investigation conducted by the department in 2015, which involved deploying diving teams to scour nearby rivers and using sonar equipment and drones to search through tree lines. Today, he still conducts annual follow-ups on Lee’s case.

“It’s my duty, my responsibility,” Sgt. Thao said. “I owe it to every resident to do the right thing.”

The search continues for critically missing Carvell Jennings

Carvell has been missing for over seven months now. Police files reveal the exhaustive efforts MPD put towards searching for Carvell when he first disappeared and the continuous follow-ups made by officers, that were all unsuccessful.

“I have done so many search parties it’s ridiculous,” Carvell’s daughter Ebony said. “I don’t know where else to look outside of under some water at this point.”

The Media Milwaukee investigation found the mental toll and emotional pain missing persons cases take on their loved ones cannot be understated. Closure is a rare circumstance for many of the families, and it’s the thoughts of the unknown that are truly daunting.

“It is really hard for me to do these kinds of interviews because I pulled myself out a dark place,” Ebony said. “I’m a mom myself, so I can’t let myself become super depressed all over again.”

Anyone with information about Carvell’s disappearance, or any of the missing persons cases discussed here, please contact MPD’s Sensitive Crimes Division at 414-935-7405 or MPD’s 24-hour non-emergency line at 414-933-4444 or email mpdmissing@milwaukee.gov.

For free mental health resources in Milwaukee, click here.

For resources on Alzheimer’s and dementia, click here.

For racial equity resources in Milwaukee, click here.

For human trafficking resources, click here.

For online safety resources, click here.

This overview story was written by Liliana Fannin with reporting by Fannin and other members of the JAMS 500 reporting team.

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This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into missing people’s cases in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available here.