I work in that area. I don't go to work without a carbine in the trunk.
Not even close to Milwaukee's north side... yet, however central and eastern West Allis is getting bad too. I've found out through some real estate friends that West Allis has the most aggressive rent assistance program in SE WI.
Just the other week, around 9:30 at night, we had a drunk trying to force his way into the house because he believed "Our (imaginary) 17 year old son stole his beer." Fortunately he was an older small wiry guy, and while you can't COUNT on a drunk being passive (I'm sure they teach cops to be careful) that's the kind of drunk he was.
He actually slipped right past me as I was bent over in the gap between the house and our temporary above ground vinyl pool's pumps and hoses. And I stood up to see him trying to push past Mrs. Dual into our back door. He had to invade a very private 6' high privacy fenced in back yard with a gate to get where he was.
Best guess is he was making a drunken beer run to one of the convenience stores 2 blocks away on a busier street corner, some teen offered to "help carry his case of beer home" then just ran off with it. We had just pulled in from some late errands, and we were the only lights/activity he saw as he staggered down the street.
Mrs. Dual was screaming at him, he was claiming he wasn't drunk, and recited the alphabet, skipping "LMNOP" entirely in the process of trying to prove it. I was dialing 911 and giving a description when he finally started staggering off down the street. If it weren't for the attempted forced entry, I'd have let it go, so I followed him from a safe distance, about 25 yards behind him, keeping the West Allis Po-po with a running commentary on his location. He started dodging between houses right when the squads rolled up on me, and had to have him pointed out to them.
In the past ten years we've been there, we've had kids place an aluminum/lye soda bottle bomb on our enclosed front porch. One car break-in. A brick and eggs thrown through a car's rear windshield during a multi-block vandalism spree. Verbally abusive teens urinating on my fence and garage, and now the drunk guy trying to get into our house.
And, barring any major economic disruptions, it's probably going to be about 5-7 years before we can afford to move further west into the Waukesha County burbs.
