The city’s Public Safety Review Committee approved the Downtown Safety Initiative plan in a meeting Tuesday, moving the plan to increase patrol levels at key times closer to final approval by the City Council.
Madison Police Department’s Central District Capt. Mary Schauf presented an overview of the 2010 spending plan for the project, which was allocated $100,000.
The program, which began in 2007, allows police to provide greater patrol during spikes in downtown activity, such as weekend nights, football weekends and other special events.
The program seeks to address two problems: Lack of patrol during times of high volume and alcohol related crime and disorder, such as batteries, fights and disturbances, Schauf said.
“The downtown has somewhat of an anomaly of a staffing issue where we have a really high demand that exceeds the capacity of staff,” Schauf said.
Committee members spoke enthusiastically in support of the project.
“The mayor recognizes this line item in the budget as the most effective and efficient means to address the spike … in activity downtown,” Joel Plant, assistant to Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, said. “It employs the necessary officers at the necessary times in the necessary places.”
Plant added that while he has worked for the past two years to secure private contributions from businesses to offset the city cost, no private funds have yet been secured.
With the Public Safety Review Commission’s approval, the DSI will be reviewed at the council’s next meeting.
The committee also reviewed the police department’s decision to designate gang and crime prevention officers in district stations.
According to MPD Capt. Jim Wheeler, after noticing an increase in gang-related activity, the police department assigned a detective to assess the situation.
The investigation resulted in the police identifying over 1,000 confirmed gang members, 66 gangs and 1,500 associates of gang members in the city. These findings, Wheeler said, illustrated the need for an increase in gang prevention officers.
MPD Chief Noble Wray said a goal of the gang unit is to not become “a self-fulfilling prophecy,” in which officers are continually being added to the unit in response to the high gang numbers.
“We do want to continue to work ourselves out of a job on this one,” Wray said. “We don’t want to just keep adding officers to this particular unit.”
The program, Wheeler said, is based on prevention, intervention and suppression, which will involve partnering with various social services, as well as schools to provide gang-prevention education.
“We can’t be the center part of this whole gang problem,” Wheeler said. “We’re just a piece of it. My expectation with our unit is that we will build relationships with other community members and stakeholders, such as probation and parole and social services.”
