Last night, downtown Alders Verveer, Rummel and myself (Eli Judge was ill) met with the Capitol Neighborhoods group to discuss issues of concern to the downtown. What struck me was that unlike many other areas of the City, the police weren’t even mentioned. Each of us outlined some of the issues that we see in our districts and after 45 minutes, we opened it up for questions. Questions from the audience included: downtown neighborhood plan, zoning code rewrite, planning coordination between State St and Hilldale with an emphasis getting a good variety of retail and other businesses, beautification of the downtown area, support for our neglected parks and homelessness. It wasn’t until the end of the discussion that someone asked about Madhatters, but even then, this discussion wasn’t about police or police resources. It was about the behavior of the people who go to these places.
This just refueled something that I’m been thinking about. Why isn’t the downtown having the same kind of hysterical safety meetings that are going on around other parts of the City? The issues are largely the same. We have the same “quality of life” issues that everyone else is facing. We have the same types of police non-responsiveness to these types of issues. They don’t respond to our calls about noise and other issues either.
I’m not sure why there is a little bit different attitude downtown. I can’t really say for certain, however, I have several guesses. So, here’s a few ideas about why the reaction of downtown people is a little different:
1. We’ve been facing these issues for years. Some people are just worn down from talking about them ad nauseum and feel like we’ve gotten the best response we can from the police.
2. Our downtown alders have been asking for resources and getting them, essentially getting a better response from the police department because of the advocacy of some very active alders (I credit Alders Verveer and King for this.)
3. The responsiveness of the police includes regular downtown safety meetings and liaison officers for our neighborhoods. (These are not necessarily neighborhood officers, just a primary contact in the police department.)
4. Downtown people are very involved in neighborhood listserves and the information that they need has been provided through police newsletters and active questions to the police with relatively prompt answers.
5. Perhaps, by this point, they are satisfied with the promise of 30 new police officers.
6. We were ahead of the curve and had our “freak out” meetings last year and have moved on to solutions.
7. The police and the Mayor were not there last night and so they focused on other issues.
8. These issues were expected to be discussed in other venues.
I’m not sure what the reason is, but the noticeable lack of expression of concern about “downtown crime” was interesting, even if the reasons were not clear. And, to be clear, I don’t think this means that downtown residents are not concerned about crime, I am certain that they are. I just think that when given the opportunity to discuss issues of concern with their alders, there were many other issues that were of concern.
After saying all of that, there is one other factor to be considered. How meetings are portrayed in the media and the amount of hype that they get. Check out the headline in the Badger Herald. Based on the headline and what the writer chose to focus on, I would have guessed I was at a completely different meeting. I guess the other issues discussed just weren’t “sexy enough” to write about. That’s the danger of relying on the media to know what really happened.
