The University of Wisconsin has always been known to be part of a Midwestern city whose neighborhoods are safe and close-knit. While the facts generally support this perception, the last few years have shown a disturbing trend downtown. For many UW students, robberies, theft and other crimes seem to make the news more and more often. While students need to continue efforts to reduce crime by taking all precautions to be safe, the Madison Police Department must step up and take a closer look at their downtown priorities. With violent crime on the rise around our city, Madison’s finest still seem overly concerned with underage drinking and house parties.
Even the authors of this column do not condone unsafe partying and blackout drinking, but we realize that drinking is a part of our culture and can done appropriately. Nonetheless, the Madison Police Department seems hell-bent on stopping the “evil force” of underage drinking by any means necessary. The police are in a tough position — dealing with both the growing pains of an expanding city and the associated crime, but should still be prudent in their goals and policies. We support the Madison police in their efforts to control crime in the downtown area, but must remind them to keep focused on violent crime and not twenty-year-olds drinking a beer at a friend’s house. The misaligned goals of the Party Task Force and their Zero Tolerance policy towards minor drinking offenses do nothing to curb the city’s more serious problems. As taken from the Aug. 27 Wisconsin State Journal article “Policing the Party Precinct,” the Downtown Safety Initiative was originally created in response to an increase in crime in the downtown area, but has since decided to focus on parties and underage drinking to curb the violence. Mayor Dave Cieslewicz was even quoted as saying that the program has been “successful and popular.” Of course, it is only much later in the article that Mayor Dave explains how the program is only “tremendously popular” with Capitol Neighborhoods Inc. and the MPD. It’s not surprising that this increase of funding is supported by an organization with a track record for supporting unnecessary drinking restrictions, but a program’s effectiveness should be more important than a popularity contest. The article also explains how a large majority of the $100,000 allotted to the program has been used to purchase surveillance equipment. It seems clear that this movement is taking Madison towards a police state rather than a safe state.
The city must re-evaluate its priorities when it comes to protecting downtown citizens, as its policy is clearly failing. Robberies and violent crimes have continued, and will continue, whether or not students are having parties as long as the police are not specifically focusing on curbing truly threatening crime. In fact, two UW students were violently assaulted near the stadium just last night. It was a senseless, brutal beating, and although alcohol was not a factor, news coverage the next day in this very paper linked the event to underage drinking and public urination at football games. If only the city could have caught a few more hooligans chugging beer at a tailgate party on Saturday, perhaps this crime could have been avoided. Or, in an even more likely scenario, the student victims should have opened a can of beer in the street at the first sign of trouble. The police response would have been immediate.
Better solutions than “Bigger Brother” must be found to control crime in our area. Various groups have started neighborhood watch programs to provide safety through vigilance around our campus. These programs not only provide a first line of defense for students, but they also give students a resource to get involved with their own protection. Past personal experiences with the neighborhood watch program have shown the faults but also the benefits of the program. A video in the sky can never offer the same protection as a friend walking through your neighborhood to help. The police should be helping to foster these grassroots movements and not foster an “us vs. them” mentality with the UW students.
Overall, to control crime effectively, police officers should build relationships with neighborhoods to curb violence and not simply be enforcers. As a current and former resident of the Mifflin Street area, we have seen both types of police officers — those that bond with citizens and those that simply enforce the law. Hopefully, the police administration will be realistic for future policies and programs for the Madison area and will work with the students, not against them.
Sol Grosskopf ([email protected]) and Tom Wangard ([email protected]) are seniors majoring in education and international business, respectively.
