The gunshots fired at West Towne Mall Saturday sparked conversation about the mission of Madison’s neighborhood officers at the Police Chief Forum Thursday.
The focus of neighborhood officers is to improve quality of life among the community as well as build relationships between community members to establish trust between citizens and police. These officers are often veteran policemen who work in overlooked neighborhoods dealing with emerging and chronic issues such as drug dealing, panhandling, gang violence and prostitution.
The Darbo-Worthington neighborhood, overseen by Officer Lester Moore, faces many of these issues. Moore’s neighborhood officer approach utilizes an element of social work and includes walking around and talking to the citizens, building strong relationships with the members of the community to eliminate the negative aura surrounding the police.
After surveying some of the younger members in the neighborhood, Moore learned that they felt unsafe.
“I kind of took that personally and I thought what can I do to make them feel safe?” Moore asked.
Moore said he has used his experience in the drug and gang units to implement a philosophy of prevention, intervention, suppression and re-entry because neighborhoods with more police intervention have been reported to have less crime.
“How do you keep from having to make so many arrests? It’s as simple as having a conversation because words are [so powerful],” Moore said.
Conversation and police intervention, though, do not solve the entire problem of neighborhood violence, the group agreed. Ald. Shiva Bidar-Sielaff, District 5, asked the forum what trends the officers have noticed.
Moore said many young people are second-generation gang members and enter gangs around middle school, largely due to lack of education.
“Without that continual, consistent connection, [young people] take different paths,” Madison Police Department Chief Mike Koval said. “It feels like we're doing, cooperatively, some really good things at K-5 … and then we are working hand-and-glove at our high schools with the principals [but there is a gap at middle school].”
The issue of illiteracy, specifically among African Americans, is incredibly high in Madison schools, noted Dr. Floyd Rose, who holds a doctorate in education administration and management.
“We have so many children who are not actually students because they cannot read,” Rose said. “Can we actually start to work on this issue of reading and nothing else?”
Bishop Harold Rayford of The Faith Place Church in Sun Prairie spoke about “1800 Days,” a collaborative effort among area African American churches attacking reading difficulties. The project puts together educational benchmarks for children from birth to day one of kindergarten and encourages family engagement in the child’s education.
“We will create a [supportive] family that engages that child in a positive peer pressure … there has to be some support that extends beyond the school,” Rayford said.
