Milwaukee

• Milwaukee Police DepartmentIncident detail since January 2004559,717 served

Sheriff in its county: Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office.

A department is the place's own when its name is the place's and its FBI population fits the place's people (decision city-or-town-is-its-police-department). Agencies: FBI NIBRS master file 2025 batch headers; names from the FBI agency list, pulled 2026-09-29.

County

Milwaukee County

People

566,973

Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024

Milwaukee follows Wisconsin law on arrests, release, and courts; the full set covers prosecutors, defense, and jails too.

Who decides release first

For most misdemeanors, a police officer or the jail can take cash bail under the statewide misdemeanor bail schedule. For felonies, a circuit court commissioner or circuit judge sets bail at the initial appearance. Wisconsin bars paid bail bondsmen, so sureties must be unpaid people.

Wis. Stat. 969.07Wis. Stat. 969.065Wis. Stat. 969.12Wis. Stat. 757.69(1)(b)Wis. Stat. 968.075(2m), (5)

Time to see a judge

A person who is arrested must be taken before a judge within a reasonable time in the county where the offense is charged. Wisconsin law sets no number of hours.

Wis. Stat. 970.01(1)

Money bail

Wisconsin courts may set cash bail. A surety must be a state resident and an unpaid natural person, so commercial bail bonds are not allowed.

Wis. Stat. 969.12

Read from the statutes and court rules cited, 2026-09-30. Municipal courts are left out of limited_courts because they hear only ordinance forfeiture cases. wispd.org returned errors, so the defense section rests on statute. Whether municipal judges must be lawyers was not checked; it doesn't affect criminal cases.

Offenses reported by Milwaukee Police Department, Milwaukee's own department. The county sheriff and state police may answer calls here too; their offenses are on their own pages.