Town Hall Meeting Recap and Commentary
The Riverwest "Town Hall" meeting Monday night was covered in some depth by Ryan Haggerty at the Journal Sentinel (FOX6 Video), but the two biggest issues to emerge at the meeting deserve more attention: 1) problems with the 911 system, and 2) proactive crime prevention, such as how to deal with nuisance properties. Lower-level nuisances often frustrate city residents, leading to a sense of powerlessness, especially if growing small problems are followed by bigger ones later.
The latter issue should have been addressed at the meeting, which over a hundred people attended, drawn by their concern over the recent murders of two UWM students in Riverwest. With it already clear there would be no discussion of the homicide investigations, this was an opportunity to talk about safety and crime prevention with a crowd that mainly wanted to do just that. Unfortunately, the meeting started late and was minimally moderated by Alderman Nik Kovac, who had scheduld the meeting some time prior to the recent murders.
Kovac was a virtual non-entity during the main event, with most of his remarks echoing Chief Flynn's statements and affirming support for the chief. Toward the end of the question-and-answer period, resident "questions" started to become "statements" with more rebarbative remarks being made, while others tried to offer well-intended safety advice. Unfortunately, none of this justified the presence of the chief and District 5 Captain Hudson, let alone the dozen other police officers in attendance. The audience and our District 5 guests deserved better moderation.
One of the last "statements" to be offered was from Sura Faraj, the alderman's former "co-candidate," who proposed legalization of drugs and prostitution. This drew a lot of laughter and cued a mass exodus of people from the room.
(Notably UWM sent no representative to the meeting; they did send a campus police officer who did not speak. UWM has remained silent about the two students killed in Riverwest where their newest dormitory opened last year.)
Regarding the 911 call system issue, it is widely known that 911 calls made via cell phones are routed through the County back to MPD--"if they don't drop the call," as Chief Flynn remarked. How much this affects the time it takes to reach an operator and how often calls are dropped was not information offered at the meeting, but it would be helpful to know.
John Potter, the father of one of the murder victims, called for "a politician with some balls" to fix the 911 system, which he claimed is "broken."
Chief Flynn, echoed by Ald. Kovac, suggested such a politician may as well bang his balls against the wall: while it would be far better to have the City handle 911 calls, passing the responsibility and costs to the City at this time is a non-starter, in their view. Nevertheless, it would be in the public interest to know the true cost of the 911 system in money and also lost time and dropped calls when emergency services are needed.
Regarding what city residents can do to proactively deter crime, Chief Flynn seemed to misunderstand resident's emotions which were expressed as a sense of powerlessness to do anything to prevent crime. Others expressed frustration that proactive calls to the non-emergency operator about "broken windows" (nuisances and low-level crime) sometimes receive a slow response. This should have been interpreted as a question about how to communicate and cooperate with police better.
Instead, Chief Flynn said police can't be everywhere instantly, and he loudly blew off an East Side resident's question about dealing with prostitution as a situation where there is not much police can do. Banging on the table loudly, he joked "We can't have officers just knock on doors and ask, 'Do you have a hooker in there?!'"
This answer did not go over well, and Captain Hudson redirected the conversation in a more productive direction about how to watch such activity, document it, report it to the Community Prosecution Unit, and work with landlords. She mentioned landlord compacts are emerging as a useful tool for residents, police, and landlords to cooperate on tenant safety and crime deterrence. This is the right answer: we can take action, but we have to do the work and forge relationships with others, including police, ourselves.
One of Flynn's consistent messages was that MPD is not going to focus on bringing down response times; they are going to focus on decreasing crime, and they are succeeding. Flynn noted that all crimes are down significantly in Riverwest except murders, which he said are up by one this year. (This appears to be false; there were no homicides in Riverwest last year according to COMPASS. There was one on Holton St. in 2007.)
What I think Chief Flynn failed to properly stress is that MPD really wants resident cooperation in the form of non-emergency tips and other information communicated directly to units assigned to their area. There are now squads assigned to specific tasks in the district, and these units can't be called away for other issues during their 8-hour shifts. Their tasks change in response to current crime trends in the area, so the more information they have from residents, the better. Additionally there are bike patrols assigned to Riverwest, and a lengthy contact list with many cell phone numbers and email addresses was provided at the meeting for these and other officers. (See MPD District 5 Contact List.)
I highly recommend making use of this community policing strategy. During the meeting, one of my neighbors observed car-to-car drug dealing involving a vehicle we have been seeing at regularly repeating times on our block. He called it in this time, and after I got home from the meeting, I saw (via MPD's dispatch logs and SpotCrime.com) that the squad dispatched for his call had logged an arrest. I emailed the gang unit sergeant about it, and the next day I had a response from him detailing the arrest, which I passed on to nearby neighbors. That was a first, and I am impressed. This is the community-police cooperation we need.
I talked with Captain Hudson after the Town Hall meeting about a Harambee resident's remarks (which is where I live also) about police officers making disparaging remarks about her and where she lives. I've experienced this before too, and I know some misguided Riverwester anti-police rhetoric in the past has likely gotten under some officers' skin. Police irritation with residents and residents' irritation with police feed on each other. What we need is to know each other better and work together better, which is what a smart community policing strategy involves.
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