In light of a recent spike in crime in the Madison area, city police officers presented the Public Safety Review Committee with an update on a gang-targeting task force Wednesday evening.

Madison Police Department Sgt. Amy Schwartz, who has served on the MPD Crime Prevention and Gang Unit for 19 years, said the Gang Task Force has spent a lot of time on the streets downtown and on the west side to prevent gang-related crimes.

The crime prevention gang unit consists of six officers and one sergeant. Schwartz said the force uses a four-pronged approach to gang violence: prevention, intervention, suppression and reentry. She defined a gang as a group of three or more people who have common signs, signals and names, and who engage in criminal activity.

Schwartz said there are currently 60 active gangs in Madison, including 1,200 confirmed gang members. MPD’s Gang Task Force estimates there are an additional 2,500 suspects or gang associates.

Schwartz said the youngest confirmed gang member in Madison is 12 and the oldest is 62. She expressed concern for the young age of several gangs.

“We are seeing more third generation gang members,” she said.
 
Schwartz said the force is conducting more interviews with people on the street to collect more “pieces to the puzzle.” She added gang members are involved in all sorts of crimes, ranging from curfew violations to homicides.

Madison has a strong gang influence from Chicago, Milwaukee, southern California and the Twin Cities, Schwartz said, though Madison’s gangs differ in that :anything goes in this city.”  Unlike other cities in which gang membership rules are typically restrictive, if you want to be a “gangster disciple” in Madison, race or other factors are not barriers for entry.
 
Schwartz said the unit’s main asset is its community partnerships. The force works daily with school districts, social services and gang members’ families to discuss potential strategies for assistance or violence prevention. She added some officers often enter schools to participate in classes, give presentations and train school personnel.
 
The force strives to maintain positive relationships with gang members even after arrests have been made because of an element of respect, Schwartz said.
 
“We can’t just arrest our way out of this,” she said.
 
MPD Gang Task Force began collecting data on gang and gang-related violence three years ago, and intelligence continues to grow.
 
Schwartz said there is some difficulty in measuring the force’s success because the force is still struggling to provide a good answer.
 
“There are so many variables with the numbers,” Schwartz said. “There is an increasing number of gang members we’ve been able to identify, so tracking crime in gang members looks like it’s going up, and that may be true.”

Schwartz cited a potential factor in the perceived increase in gang-related crime as MPD spokesperson Joel DeSpain’s use of the word “gang.” She said DeSpain began more frequently using the term two years ago.
 
Madison Fire Department Division Chief” Arthur Price said the perception of an increase in gang-related crime might not be what the public thinks.

“Gang members were already here, but now we have a positive way to identify that they’re here,” he said.
 
The force’s focus will now be to collect data to put into numbers for the community, Schwartz said.