Aug 28, 2026 · 38 min · 10 segments
This week on Reporter's Notebook, WTMJ's Nazir Spencer recounts the unusual end to a Milwaukee Department of Emergency Communications press conference that left reporters with more questions than…
Adam RobertsHostSandrine ButeraGuest
Debbie Lozaga
Nazir SpencerGuest
Libby Collins
Steve ScafidiCassandra ZunguGuest
Tori LoweSadiq SulemanaGuest
For all of you listening to this, whether it's live or on the Reporter's Notebook podcast, I want to know, Have you ever once at your job encountered something where you find yourself, whether you say it out loud to yourself, maybe in private or thinking it in your head, have you ever thought or said, this could have been an email? I feel it's something we all at one point or another are experiencing.
corporate work world have found ourselves either saying or thinking at some point in our lives.
And I found myself thinking that thought as it related to a situation that unfolded at a press conference in Milwaukee this past week.
While this 99-year-old woman was assumingly asleep at around 4.30 in the morning, A man, 23-year-old Joseph Masias, is alleged to have broken into the home and began to beat her.
Over the course of the next few hours, three 911 calls were sent through the Milwaukee Dispatch Center.
The woman is expected to survive and Macias now faces a series of charges in criminal court.
As a result, over the course of the last month or so, an internal investigation has been ongoing within the Milwaukee Department of Emergency Communications, led by Director Tony Bueno.
This past week, Bueno and a member of his staff held the aforementioned press conference to provide an update on that investigation.
We obviously didn't meet what we set out to do in our mission, vision, and values.
But we committed ourselves to some of our core values, among them accountability and excellence.
At the start, Bueno indicated two call takers at the center of the situation had resigned.
I was later able to determine those resignations were in lieu of discharge, which essentially means resign or be fired, and these two took the former action.
A third person involved, a dispatch operator, was not fired but is receiving additional training.
The press conference, though, is where the crux of the focus of this episode of Reporter's Notebook will lie because that information was about the only new information gleaned from this investigation at that press conference.
Going back to my question before of, have you ever said this could have been an email? In the newsroom, we get a lot of those emails that are just providing an update on an investigation, maybe just a couple of paragraphs.
And then if it's ongoing, they'll mention that at the bottom or something like that.
And the gathered media at that press conference, which was concluded suddenly after just a couple of reporter questions after about 10 to 15 minutes, were not too happy about.
For all of you listening to this, whether it's live or on the Reporter's Notebook podcast, I want to know, Have you ever once at your job encountered something where you find yourself, whether you say it out loud to yourself, maybe in private or thinking it in your head, have you ever thought or said, this could have been an email? I feel it's something we all at one point or another are experiencing.
corporate work world have found ourselves either saying or thinking at some point in our lives.
And I found myself thinking that thought as it related to a situation that unfolded at a press conference in Milwaukee this past week.
While this 99-year-old woman was assumingly asleep at around 4.30 in the morning, A man, 23-year-old Joseph Masias, is alleged to have broken into the home and began to beat her.
Over the course of the next few hours, three 911 calls were sent through the Milwaukee Dispatch Center.
The woman is expected to survive and Macias now faces a series of charges in criminal court.
As a result, over the course of the last month or so, an internal investigation has been ongoing within the Milwaukee Department of Emergency Communications, led by Director Tony Bueno.
This past week, Bueno and a member of his staff held the aforementioned press conference to provide an update on that investigation.
We obviously didn't meet what we set out to do in our mission, vision, and values.
But we committed ourselves to some of our core values, among them accountability and excellence.
At the start, Bueno indicated two call takers at the center of the situation had resigned.
I was later able to determine those resignations were in lieu of discharge, which essentially means resign or be fired, and these two took the former action.
A third person involved, a dispatch operator, was not fired but is receiving additional training.
The press conference, though, is where the crux of the focus of this episode of Reporter's Notebook will lie because that information was about the only new information gleaned from this investigation at that press conference.
Going back to my question before of, have you ever said this could have been an email? In the newsroom, we get a lot of those emails that are just providing an update on an investigation, maybe just a couple of paragraphs.
And then if it's ongoing, they'll mention that at the bottom or something like that.
And the gathered media at that press conference, which was concluded suddenly after just a couple of reporter questions after about 10 to 15 minutes, were not too happy about.
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