Candidates vying for the opportunity to represent the city’s predominantly student district in the City Council said campus safety issues would shape their agendas if elected into office April 5.
State-Langdon Neighborhood Association President and District 8 candidate Scott Resnick said campus safety is the “single most important issue in this City Council race,” and released a 22-page document outlining the issues he finds to be the most pressing, as well as what he said was a constantly changing list of plausible solutions.
Resnick’s proposal said statistics from University of Wisconsin Police Department show crimes have increased on campus in the categories of burglaries, sexual offenses and weapon charges.
Resnick’s plan looks at short-term and long-term solutions for safety concerns around campus, proposing improvements such as better campus area lighting and establishing stronger ordinances surrounding police response to alcohol policy and landlord requirements to ensure safety of new tenants.
In Resnick’s proposal, he said campus safety traditionally plays a hefty role in the District 8 race because the council establishes law surrounding public safety and because the governing body determines how much funding should be provided to the Madison Police Department.
Resnick said it was important to note that alders do not control the strategies law enforcement officers use.
“Although alders can effectively control the purse strings, there is a balance of power between the law enforcement agents that carry out the laws and the government body that creates them,” Resnick said. “Moreover, the city council and Madison Police Department must also abide by county, state and federal law.”
UW student and District 8 candidate Kyle Szarzynski said if elected to office, he would work with the council to establish different attitudes about the methods police use to enforce existing criminal laws, including possession and use of marijuana and underage alcohol consumption – both of which have different regulations under Madison and Wisconsin law.
Under Madison law, residents are allowed to have 28 grams of marijuana in their possession in their own residences, but MPD officers can choose to enforce Wisconsin state law that criminalizes any possession. Szarzynski said he would work with MPD and the UW Police Department to encourage police to work under Madison’s marijuana law and focus less on underage drinking.
“Underage drinking on a college campus should be decriminalized – students in their decision to drink when they are under 21 should not be really enforced by police,” Szarzynski said. “Beyond that, I would argue that marijuana use should also be decriminalized because I don’t think that prosecuting people or criminalizing people for smoking marijuana or drinking underage is really going to do anything to keep the community safer.”
UW Legislative Affairs Chair and Resnick’s campaign manager Sam Polstein said while Resnick supports the idea of decriminalizing underage drinking, it is not a realistic proposal.
Instead, Polstein said Resnick would work to pass medical amnesty legislation to allow underage friends of students who need medical attention to call for help without fear of prosecution. Szarzynski also said he was in fully support of medical amnesty legislation.
“[Szarzynski] can say as much as he wants to on the council floor, but decriminalizing underage drinking is not realistic – it would be laughed out of the water,” Polstein said. “But medical amnesty is something that would help students and could pass on the council floor.”
