The mayoral election is less than two weeks away and both candidates—Dave Cieslewicz and Ray Allen—sat down with The Daily Cardinal to discuss three key issues concerning UW-Madison. The first is safety.
How is your safety plan going to lower crime in Madison and keep residents, but more specifically students, safe?
Incumbent Mayor Dave Cieslewicz: Well, the last budget, we added $100,000 to a safety initiative downtown, and I asked the police chief to work with students and businesses downtown to develop a plan for its use. I think what they came up with is very good. There will be a greater police presence on the street, 70 percent of the money will go to police overtime. The rest of it will go to neighborhood watch programs.
Challenger Ray Allen: My focus is adding additional resources to the police force, so we would have additional officers, which then could be utilized to help create a better presence downtown. Because one of the things occurring down here is that you don't have a lot of officers on the street and the mere fact that we can enhance that will certainly be a deterrent to crime.
Right now, is safety an issue that needs to be addressed on and around campus?
MD: Yes, I think that certainly we've seen a couple of things. Last year we saw an increase in patterned robberies, which were really beatings. But that has pretty much gone away... Then we've also seen some sexual assaults on campus, so it's an issue.
RA: Yes, no doubt about it. I would go to the tavern league and restaurant association, currently there is a safe ride program that they have, and I'd like to see them explore the option of being able to provide vouchers for taxis to students when they leave the bars, particularly women.
How is the number of high profile crimes shaping the way you take on safety?
MD: You need to put things in perspective. Crime in Madison is down 50 percent from what it was in 1991 and overall crime from 2001 to 2006 is down just slightly, so what we've actually seen citywide is a decrease in certain categories and an increase in others. The big increase has come in robberies...the robbery phenomenon is nationwide; no one seems to have a good explanation for it.
RA: Well, certainly safety is an issue all around the city. The core concern is that violent crimes are up, so we've got to enhance our presence in terms of policing throughout the city, in particular downtown. That's a short term solution; in the long term, we have to address the issue of poverty.
What is one thing that could help end crime in the city?
MD: Well, you're not going to end crime anywhere; that's realistic. The question is how can we reduce it. Crime is such a complicated issue, I think you just need to continue this two-fold effort, which is one to provide a reasonable amount of police resources, but also to get at some of the root causes.
RA: I don't know if there's one silver bullet, but there are a couple things we'll look at. One is a strong economic climate that includes individuals who are currently left out of our mainstream economic plan.
Do you feel the MPD does an adequate job fighting crime?
MD: Yes, I think they have. If you take for example the patterned robberies that we saw downtown mid-last year, the police worked hard on that, and while they weren't able to make any arrests, they had a pretty good idea of who the perpetrators were.
RA: Well, I think they do a good job, but their resources are limited. They are not able to have the kind of presence that's necessary to do the kind of job that we would like them to do. As an example, they need more detectives.
