MILWAUKEE -- A bullet fired over the heads of two Milwaukee police officers crashed into the living room window of a house in the 2600 block of N. 33rd St. in a midafternoon shooting that drew dozens of Milwaukee police and Chief Edward Flynn to the west-side neighborhood.
"God was with me. He surely was with me today," said Carolyn Jackson, who had been standing near the window frame moments before the shooting.
The bullet lodged in the frame of a window of Jackson's house at N. 33rd and W. Clarke streets, west of a Master Lock plant.
Jackson said she heard the bullet hit the window but didn't realize what had happened until her son opened a door to check on the damage.
"Sure I was scared," she said. "I got grandkids in the house."
Flynn said it appeared that several shots were fired toward two Third District police officers, who heard the bullets fly overhead and rattle into trees as they walked to their squad car on W. Clarke St. shortly before 3 p.m.
The officers had responded to a report of a man with a gun, he said.
No one was injured.
The chief suggested that the shots might have been retaliation, or "pushback," for recent stepped-up patrols by Third District officers.
The shooting will bring even more police saturation, Flynn said.
"We're going to make sure these streets are safe," he said.
Some people among the dozens of onlookers who watched dozens of police scour a five-block stretch of W. Clarke St. for shell casings said the streets are far from safe now.
Drug-dealing, prostitution and gunfire are common in the area, according to several people who observed the swarm of police.
"It's time to clean up the area," said Patricia Davis, who lives about two blocks south of the shooting scene. "Everybody is trying to kill each other. Enough is enough."