CRIME

Carjackings in Milwaukee show early drop this year, but victims relive pain

Ashley Luthern

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Samone Spencer, who was shot during a carjacking, says she has lasting physical and emotional effects from the crime.

Samone Spencer knew she had been shot only because she heard the gunfire.

She didn’t feel the pain at first.

Minutes earlier, she had dropped off her 19-year-old daughter at their home in Milwaukee. As she headed back to her small SUV, she heard her 4-year-old niece, who lived nearby, call out, “Hi, Auntie!”

Spencer, then 52, tossed her purse in the backseat and climbed back behind the wheel. Then, the passenger door of her Chrysler Pacifica opened.

“Give me the keys,” a young man said, pointing something at her in the dark.

She froze in confusion. The man started cursing.

Oh my God, this is for real, she remembers thinking.

She flung the keys toward him.

Then she heard gunshots. And screams.

Spencer was shot three times.

In the two years since, she has continued to deal with the emotional and physical challenges. During that time, hundreds of others in the city have fallen victim to carjackings, including a recent attempt that ended with the fatal shooting of an on-duty city building inspector.

“I feel so bad and so sad for that family,” Spencer said. “Every time I see that I go back to what happened to me.”

The city recorded 464 carjackings in 2016, an average of more than one a day. The figure is down 9% from the 512 carjackings in 2015 but still up sharply from 2014, when there were 354, according to police data.

Early numbers for this year show promise: 68 carjackings were reported in the first quarter, a nearly 40% drop from the same time last year. Officials have credited the Police Department's Robbery Task Force with the decrease.

The task force, composed of the “best and brightest,” made 553 robbery arrests last year. More than half of them — 365 — were for carjacking, Police Capt. David Salazar told the Common Council’s Public Safety Committee in early April.

Robbery, carjacking and auto theft are related crimes and the task force’s work is making a dent in them, he said.

Just released

After she was shot, Spencer tumbled into the street.

Fearing she would get run over when the shooter fled, Spencer rolled toward the back of her Pacifica.

Then the man drove away.

A few Milwaukee police officers working nearby heard the gunshots and came to Spencer’s aid. Her next clear memory was waking up at Froedtert Hospital the next day.

By then, police had already arrested the carjacker. Grover Ferguson, 17, had just been released from a youth prison, Lincoln Hills School for Boys, two months earlier.

As a baby, Ferguson was taken away from his mother after a drug raid and adopted by relatives, a cousin said during an interview for “Precious Lives.” The two-year series about youth and gun violence appeared on local radio and in the Journal Sentinel.

Ferguson's life took a negative turn when he learned the people he thought were his parents were actually his biological aunt and uncle.

“He went from being the kid who wanted to make his parents proud to being the kid who wanted to make his parents pay,” his cousin said.

He staged a robbery at his own house. One of the friends involved had a gun. Ferguson ended up at Lincoln Hills — now under federal investigation for abuse and mistreatment of the residents. There, he threatened a counselor and his sentence was extended.

While he was locked up, the couple who raised him fell ill. His uncle got pancreatic cancer and died shortly after Ferguson was released. The day of the carjacking, Ferguson stole a gun from his aunt. She reported it to police, fearing he was going to kill himself.

Instead, he shot Spencer.

Spencer said she understands Ferguson’s background but feels he truly did not care whether she lived or died at the time of the shooting.

“You should have dealt with that in your family, not go out and assault other people,” she said.

Changing technology

Carjacking burst into the public consciousness in the 1990s, when it was made a federal crime after several high-profile incidents.

Trends in auto theft and carjacking may have been influenced by changes in car technology and driver behavior. Newer cars have anti-theft devices or can’t be turned on without a key fob. Drivers may have removed spare keys and stopped leaving idling cars unattended, making it more difficult to steal empty cars.

Carjackers may also consider the robbery “safer” than stealing a car from the street, said Bruce Jacobs, a criminologist at the University of Texas at Dallas, who has studied carjackings.

“With auto theft, you’re breaking into a vehicle and you have no idea who is watching you, you have no idea if the owner is a few feet away in the apartment or house,” Jacobs said.

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Jacobs and other researchers have examined the national crime victim survey, which includes information about carjacking, but do not believe the data set fully reflects the scope of the crime.

What the survey shows is more often than not the offender is armed, half the time with a firearm, and about two-thirds of the victims resist with only 1% being injured to the point of hospitalization, Jacobs said.

“What that tells me is the car is a weapon and shield,” he said, meaning victims can use it to flee or hit their assailants.

Carjackings are not separated from robberies in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting System, however, making them difficult to track nationwide.

Milwaukee police began tracking carjackings in 2014. Several other large cities do the same, with increases reported last year in Baltimore and Philadelphia.

“I do think we need more examination of this,” said Stan Stojkovic, dean of the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

It tends to be an opportunistic and rare crime, he said.

'I am always cautious'

Ferguson's impulsive act left Spencer — who was shot in the face and back — blind in her right eye. She also suffers from headaches and recurring pain in her leg and back.

Samone Spencer, 54, lost vision in her right eye after she was shot in the face and back during a carjacking in 2015.

She cannot drive and had to give up her career as a day care teacher.

But the more noticeable change, she said, is mental.

“I am always cautious, looking around, locking doors,” she said.

She doesn’t trust people. She avoids going out alone and doesn’t like gas stations, where she feels like a target. She watches people closely and is nervous if she sees their hands in their pockets.

Spencer, who has four children, said the criminal justice system needs to be strict with carjackers, even if they are teenagers.

“They need to start somewhere,” she said of fixing the problem.

Youths need to realize their actions can harm both themselves and the community.

“It’s hurting a lot of people and then you, in turn, end up incarcerated. And for what?”

Spree behavior

Officials agree that to solve the problem of carjacking, they need to start with teenagers who are stealing parked cars.

For the past two years, juveniles made up 43% of arrests for operating a vehicle without the owner’s consent, the most frequent auto theft-related charge, according to Milwaukee police.

That can escalate to carjackings.

Both crimes tend to involve younger offenders and spree behavior — with crews racking up multiple crimes in one night.

Cars allow people to move freely and evade supervision, so it’s not surprising that this type of behavior emerges when teens are interested in autonomy and independence, said Michael Cherbonneau, an assistant professor of criminology at the University of North Florida.

“There’s also some status with having a car or acquiring a car to pretend it's yours,” he said.

When mentors at the Running Rebels Community Organization ask young people why they have stolen cars, the answers vary, said Dawn Barnett, the agency’s co-founder.

“It’s been everything from ‘I am addicted to the speed and addicted to the activity of it’ to ‘I get bored’ to pressure from friends," Barnett said.

All teenagers' brains are still developing and they have difficulty thinking through consequences, she said.

“When you combine that with trauma and abuse and a host of other things, there’s no surprise when you look at the behaviors that are occurring,” she said.

Multiple appeals

As for Spencer, she's thankful to be alive and grateful to her family, friends and co-workers who supported her.

She’s faced Ferguson in court twice. The teen was indicted in federal court and first received a 50-year sentence, far above the 20 years prosecutors recommended. Ferguson appealed and the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new sentencing, saying the judge had not given a sufficient explanation of why he went beyond the guideline sentence.

In November, Ferguson was sentenced again and received 35 years in prison from a different judge. He appealed again.

Spencer told both judges the teen had shown no regard for her life.

“You had everything,” she told Ferguson in the courtroom. “I gave you what you wanted. I didn’t give you a struggle and you still shot me.”