The Wisconsin Union and UW-Madison Police defended the security of Bernie's Place daycare center, 206 Bernard Ct., detailing some of their precautionary measures Monday.
The outpouring of support came after Friday's revelation that the center may have known convicted child sex offenders lived nearby and did not notify parents.
Bernie's Place director Ann Welk was unavailable for comment Monday, but UW-Madison junior Kristina Mueller, director of the Union's committee on community service, which sponsors Bernie's, praised the establishment.
'The Union really supports Bernie's because of the support that Bernie's gives to the UW students and faculty,' she said.
Mueller said sex offenders are prevalent in the community. She said the offenders who live near Bernie's in the Porchlight Inc. housing complex at 306 N. Brooks St. have never posed a problem in the daycare's 30 years of operation.
'It definitely is a societal issue and a community issue, but singling out Porchlight and Bernie's specifically can do a lot of harm and create a lot of fear, when fear is not really the response that we're looking for,' Mueller said.
Contrary to one parent's report Friday, Mueller said Bernie's staff is careful to check the identity of everyone who comes to pick up a child from the center.
'Whenever anyone comes in, they are always careful to check who it is,' Mueller said.
UW-Madison police officer Kerri Miller said the center has gone through an 'all-hazards planning' program that she helped design.
The plan trains for natural disasters, as well as what to do if a suspicious person enters the building, Miller said.
Detective Sue Glassmaker of the UWPD said Bernie's Place falls under campus police jurisdiction, while Porchlight does not.
'Because of the jurisdiction, how everything is chopped up around campus, it's actually Madison Police Department and there is a level of notification policy,' she said.
The Madison police assign a level to each sex offender, with one being the least dangerous offenders with the smallest rate of recurrence and three being those offenders who have a high likelihood of committing another crime, Glassmaker said.
She said the campus and city police work in conjunction to facilitate safety between Porchlight and Bernie's Place.
Glassmaker said officials commonly place more sex offenders downtown and in the campus area for safety reasons.
'Their previous offenses were primarily children, so they would rather have them housed in a campus environment instead of a regular neighborhood, which has more children in it,' she said.
