Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer who targeted men and boys in Ohio and Milwaukee, committed traumatic acts that popular culture profits from. Netflix, producers of Dahmer TV shows, merchandisers, and blind consumers of it all fail to acknowledge the stories that matter most: the stories of each and every life impacted by Dahmer's violence. The fact that he killed at least 17 people over 17 years, across state lines, before being held somewhat accountable for his actions, is enough to indicate how negligent police were in matters of the victims' safety.

Failing the victims at every turn

When Steven Hicks, Dahmer's first victim, was killed, the Ohio officer who pulled over an 18-year-old Dahmer while swerving from drunk driving, allowed Dahmer to continue driving after the stop. The officer should have asked an underaged drinker to exit the vehicle before searching it. Detectives, investigators, and attorneys simply fought for an insanity plea for Dahmer. 

On the docuseries Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes, his own defense attorney appeared sympathetic to her client's violence after police all but admitted their incapabilities.

I long for the days that media – broadcast, written, popular, and the like – tell stories about root causes and needs for Black perpetrators of violence in this way. Black Milwaukeeans are privileged for even an ounce of their dignity to be recognized if they have a gun (Sylville Smith), steal cars (Kia Boys & Girls) or sell drugs to put food in their families bellies, put clothes on their backs, and keep roofs over their families' heads. We don't get insanity pleas and analyses of upbringing. Instead our parents are blamed and stigmatized while our rap sheets grow, and white folks selfishly come in to make documentaries about us, steering surface level conversations, setting up our young men for punishment rather than restoration, and collecting clout along the way. On top of that, when we get in the sights of a mass murderer, our brothers and sisters call the only public safety entity they know, and we are left to die.

"When we look at the Jeffrey Dahmer case, there are a number of failures by the system, whether it's probation and parole, or whether it's law enforcement, or whether it's the courts, that failed to protect the victims," said Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Reporter Anne Schwartz.

As we consider those impacted by Dahmer's violence and realize that police, their colleagues, and the justice system could not keep any of them safe, the questions of who could have done what or what could have been done emerge, and each victim's story gives us a new possibility.

Initial indicators and needs ignored

The people Dahmer killed were harmed by someone who was on the police's radar in 1988, after he had already murdered people as early as 1978. Still, when he was first charged with sexually assaulting the 13-year-old brother of Konerak Sinthamsophone, whose life Dahmer would later take, the judge minimized Dahmer's charges and sentence.

Sinthomsophone's brother, like many others targeted by Dahmer, did not need police to keep him safe. This child needed access to income. So did Tracy Edwards (one of few survivors) and most of Dahmer's victims in Milwaukee, who were lured by an invitation to be photographed for money.

Even the Department of Correction's Chief Psychologist Dr. Norman Golfarb only did a "brief evaluation" of Dahmer as he awaited sentencing in the Sinthamsophone case, demonstrating a need for deeper psychological care. In addition and despite "the doctor's orders," which advised that Dahmer "was too dangerous to be in the community," the judge in this sexual assault and drug case decided to allow someone who clearly needed extensive physcological support to go free without it and commit more harm.

Sinthomsophone's brother needed responses to sexual assault that centered victims and looked to prevent future assaults.

Festering root causes breed harm

Facing divorce, alcoholism, abandonment, and a mind too young to sort itself out but malleable enough to give in to violent thoughts, Dahmer and his family likely needed accessible mental health professionals and forward-thinking medical professionals, not to mention communities of care with cultures that promoted use of therapy and counseling. Dahmer, himself, probably needed a world in which gay men were allowed to be their full selves and find like-minded folks to develop safe communities with better habits and decisions. At the time of Dahmer's terror, all of gay Milwaukee, especially its Black and brown members, needed a world where police are not the only or best option for responding to communal harm ("crime" as we know it) – a world where we stretch our imaginations enough to think about folks’ deepest needs and opportunities to learn and develop, rather than shame and harm.

Isn't this what happens to other families, of all backgrounds, in Milwaukee and throughout the country, when the family units lack cohesion, authentic relationships, love, and accountability to one another, as well as external resources to support them through their troubles? Not always in the form of mass murder, but maybe certain folks feel ostracized and without guidance, awareness or examples of how to better exercise their frustrations, confusions, and desparations, and they turn to violence and harm. Therefore, wouldn't the answer to keeping our communities safe be enriching them with the tools, opportunities, hubs, services, and wealth of both funds and skills needed to prevent violence and crime, rather than the police who typically react far too long after violence has permeated communities?

Dahmer needed the kind of grandma who would be all in his business about where he was, what he was doing, and who he was doing it with. The kind of grandma who wanted to know the company he kept and nagged him the longer he stayed out at night, especially knowing the trouble he had in his childhood family life and with drinking. The kind of grandma who "don't care how old you is, she still yo grandmaw." The type who was going to sit in his room and demand a full story, interrogating it for accuracy, after he'd been out of the house for days and killed Steven Tuomi.

Lacking communities

Toumi needed a team of colleagues, in the kitchen where he worked, who knew him well and cared about him showing up to work each day.

In Milwaukee's former Club Bath, Dahmer drugged and sexually assaulted people. The night one of Dahmer's victims was left unresponsive, that person, the bathhouse owner, and every one of its patrons needed safer communities, where possibilities could be birthed, whether those were advocating for bright street lights, creating and prioritizing the club's consent culture, more personal relationships between club staff and patrons, or something entirely different. However, what they got were police who simply said, "Don't let Dahmer back in" and "Let us know if you see him." Milwaukeeans, decades old and especially those who are LGBTQIA+, will tell you that letting the police know still would have not prevented harm. Police departments worldwide value neither gay nor non-white lives as much as they do those of straight, white men. Further, policing policies for missing persons, domestic and other violence, only allow for response to very tangible violence having happened. Dahmer would have gone on harming people either way. Gay POC in Milwaukee needed stronger communities to keep them safe, not police. (Side note: I can't help but wonder if poor policung contributed to Milwaukee's gay culture's current safety status. If so, this is further evidence that police don't just respond to violence, they perpetuate it in nuanced ways).

And the list goes on: Anthony Sears, and his mother Marilyn, need the friend who dropped him off after one night of partying and after-bar breakfast to exercise better judgment. That friend needed intervention skills. Anthony also needed work release policies that prohibited Dahmer from leaving items (i.e. Sears' remains) in a work locker while he was housed at Milwaukee County Jail in the evenings. All of the bar frequenters who were killed in the Oxford Apartments: Edward Smith, Earnest Miller, Curtis Straughter, Anthony Hughes, Henry Smith, etc. – these people along with Dahmer's neighbors who attempted to intervene, needed bar cultures and a landlord that investigated disappearances once patterns were noticed. These people needed curiously organized communities.

Even Sinthamsophone needed people to believe the Black woman and girls who expressed concern for his safety when the police did not.

Many of Dahmer's victims needed violence interrupters, transformative and generative conflict, and accountability structures in the gay, residential, and night life communities they were parts of. 

Communities in relationship keep us safe

Victims and survivors alike needed communities of service providers and neighbors who understand the human capability to cause harm. They each needed for their loved ones, witnesses, and especially police, detectives, and judges to ask more questions. All of them deserved a community that understood that root causes like lack of community, alcoholism, homophobia, minimal employment opportunities, trauma, and policing breed harm when they are left to fester. They needed, and Milwaukee continues to need, these types of communities that both understand the consequences of these things and possess the willingness, skills, access and processes necessary to proactively mitigate them.

Dahmer's victims needed relationships to save them. They needed people to ask where they were, to encourage them to not live and socially interact in secrecy, to remind them of stranger danger. These relationships don't come from police; they come from genuinely building trust, patterns of integrity, moments of joy, support in our deepest, darkest moments, all of which I can count on zero hands the amount of times I, and most I know, have experienced with a cop.

Untruthfully, and as should have been indicated by several police contact reports and previous charges, E. Michael McCann said, "No one except Dahmer knew there was a serial slayer in our city. The police just didn't know. Nobody in the community knew." 

Nonetheless, what if more people knew Dahmer's victims better? The police have proven themselves exterior to communities and, in many ways, strive to be seen as superior to our community members. Therefore, police are incapable of knowing communities in ways that could keep us safe. This, to me, means that the communities themselves bear the responsibility of deeply knowing one another, knowing our needs, having access to networks, places, spaces, resources, skills, and tools that can keep us safe. These communities come from people who are set up to thrive, who learn how to transform themselves and the communities they participate in. These people create ecosystems of care that actively participate in relationships with one another, discuss the nuances of the issues they face, minimize harm, and prevent crime from happening altogether. 

Implications today

Dahmer's victims needed care, and Dahmer did too. Instead, everyone involved got police who less-than-half investigated, were a part of ostracizing cultures for gay men, were not in right relationship within the communities they worked, and probably lacked the skills and tools necessary to foster the type of communities that we need to prevent harm. If this was the case for Milwaukee between the 70's and 90's, what does this tell us about police in Milwaukee in 2022?

Think about the conflicts, domestic violence, and other harms that happen in our neighborhoods and lead to violent deaths when isolated.

Communities keep us safe by deeply and persistently inviting new folks in, sounding alarms when people's behaviors seem off, holding its members accountable to what it agrees is and isn't acceptable within it, and getting help to community members whose needs aren't met, especially those of us with the gravest needs that could lead to harm.
In the murmurs and marvel of the stories of the victims, three things are not being said enough:

1. The victims’ names.

2. The fact that police did not and could not keep them safe.

3. The idea that had the victims and survivors' needs been met by folks they were in community with, more young, gay, Black and other men could have been saved.

Ryeshia Farmer is the Community Programs Manager at the African American Roundtable.