Given the recent spate of crime on campus, student safety will be the No. 1 issue in the April 3 election for the Madison City Council 8th District seat. Both candidates for the seat, UW-Madison students Eli Judge and Lauren Woods, have put forth detailed plans for how they intend to improve safety in campus communities.
Their respective plans are ambitious and substantive, but on the whole, Judge's proposals are more practical, less dependent on government funding and, most importantly, able to be immediately implemented.
Woods' plan reads like a Christmas wish-list of programs that could help the community if only they receive enough money from the city. She promises in 10 specific instances to expand funding of various organizations, and she proposes several new initiatives without addressing where the money for them will come from.
Her strong familiarity with and support for community organizations is obvious, but promising to fund all of them simply ignores practical financial constraints.
Judge's plan focuses limited financial resources more directly on increasing the number of police officers in the community and installing pedestrian-scale lighting on poorly lit streets with high occurrences of crime.
The 2003 report of the Police Staffing Study Committee recommends that the city increase its staffing ratio from 1.8 to 1.9 cops per 1,000 residents. It doesn't sound like much, but 1.9 instead of 1.8 cops per 1,000 residents in a city with a population of roughly 220,000 means a total increase of about 22 cops in the field.
Woods mentions her support for a new staffing study to be conducted over 2007-'08, but the results would not be in until 2009—an entire City Council term down the road. The previous study's recommended staffing increase is already four years old, and Judge is correct that priority must be placed on getting these 22 officers out on the streets as soon as possible.
Both Judge and Woods support building new streetlights, but only Judge's plan recognizes that immediate crime-fighting measures must be taken as well, since installation of new lamps will be an expensive and lengthy process requiring months of tearing up streets.
First, Judge proposes an increase in private lighting installed around alleys and entrances to houses by the owners themselves. These inexpensive lights, which are available in hardware stores, decrease the risk of burglary and create a safer environment for people going to and from house parties. Some property managers will even install them at their own cost.
Second, he favors expanding student patrols of campus neighborhoods based on the successful model of the Langdon Street Watch Program. Teams of students would walk the streets in late-night shifts and would function in concert with the police and campus SAFE services. His stance has earned him the endorsement of Drew Willert, organizer of the Langdon Street Watch Program.
Another difference between the two safety plans is the candidates' positions on reauthorization of Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's $100,000 Downtown Safety Initiative. While Woods calls for reauthorizing the plan in full, Judge expresses concern with the initiative's third plank, which calls for stepped-up bar raids and an increase in criminal prosecution of offenders.
He suggests that resources would be better spent cracking down on violent crime in the streets rather than devoting officers and expensive technology to making sure 20-year-olds don't drink in bars.
In addition to Willert, Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney has also endorsed Judge. Judge has already worked with the greek community to get private lights put on fraternity houses, which has resulted in a decrease in crime and vandalism. In addition, he proposes to have frequent community ""listening sessions,"" an idea first piloted by U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.
Both candidates should be commended for releasing detailed safety plans, and any student who has felt unsafe on campus should read the plans before voting.
However, it is Eli Judge's pragmatic, low-cost proposals and attention to detail that make his crime-fighting plan the better one. His emphasis on getting cops out of the bars and onto the streets, coupled with enhancing bottom-up community participation, will lead to an immediate and noticeable increase of campus safety.
