Preach

The holy men and women who have impressed me in my 24 years have been few and far between, but there are a handful. During today's Madison Police press conference, I added another to that list -- Pastor David Smith, who spoke both as a community leader and a black man about the senseless killing of Karamee Collins Tuesday night.

Pat Simms rolled tape, so I don't have to futz around myself to upload his speech. There's more, but these were the best parts

I hope Smith's cause resonates with the southwest side and gathers some steam. He closed his speech by calling on other members of the clergy to join him. I hope something comes of it.

The Corral Ain't Okay

Apparently, the big fad among young people around town is to indiscriminately blast everyone and everything in sight at the slightest provocation. I'm a little alarmed, mostly on account of the fact that I myself am something of a young person (though feeling less and less so after reading this week's headlines), but I didn't get the memo.

Well there's that, and then there are the bullets whizzing all over the side of town I work on.

You'd be hard-pressed finding anyone to argue that the drive-by shooting of 17-year-old Karamee Collins last night wasn't senseless. Sadly, you could find about 20-30 people, by police estimates, who would argue the recent string of nine shoot-em-up-don't-hit-shit gun crimes aren't outrageous, reckless, and foolish beyond belief.

But they're just idiots... 20-30 heavily-armed idiots with terrible aim who spray dozens of rounds willy-nilly around Loreen Drive as kids are coming home from school.

Police haven't be able to figure out for sure what's at the root of all this senseless violence, but there are some pretty good theories. When a 17-year-old is shot, it's likely he was shot by other 17-year-olds over whatever petty dramas 17-year-olds get fightin' mad about. The theory about the nine shootings is that there are four groups of people duking it out in a ridiculous Romeo and Juliet scenario spun rapidly out of control, to the point where they think it's become acceptable to walk down the middle of Allied Drive shooting the windows out of random apartments as a means of exacting revenge.

So brace yourselves. Now that we're in the midst of a spike in gun crimes, the old hot air machines will be firing up shortly to deafen us with insipidity. The anti-gun nutjobs will begin crying these tragedies could have been prevented by stricter gun control. The pro-gun nutjobs will start screaming a concealed-carry law would keep these thugs cowering in their basements instead of shooting up our streets. Both sides will lose all connection with reason.

And if the people of Madison are scared enough, they'll listen to whoever's solution is most outrageous.

I'm going to hazard a wild idea and say the guns are not the issue here. Guns are simply tools, a means to an end. People were killing each other for millennia before the first human had the idea to propel fragments of metal at other humans using a mix of saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur. Having more guns on the street will not lessen violence. Having fewer guns on the street will not lessen violence.

The shootings in Madison are a product of a problem with our society. This isn't a problem that's caused by television, or video games, or rap music. Those are all just symptoms of the problem.

The problem is there are some segments of our population that are so far out of touch with their humanity that they can momentarily justify using a gun, or a knife, or a bat to solve their own, smaller, insignificant problems. They've lost sight of the big picture of humanity as a whole and allowed themselves to become just a caricature of what they see on television and video games and rap music, because it's all they've let themselves know.

The young people who shot Karamee Collins didn't do it to protect their own lives. The 20-30 heavily-armed idiots running around the south side could lay down their arms and safely live out the rest of their days.

These criminals are acting out of line because of some perceived, irreconcilable wound to their pride, a pride which they've let become bigger to them than the sanctity of human life. And they'll suffer for it, but not before they exact even more suffering on the people around them.

But this problem of people losing touch with their humanity, it's not just limited to poor black neighborhoods on the south side. It runs through every strata of society. It lead a handful of Enron execs to try and steal billions of dollars from their employees. It lead two students to slaughter thirteen of their teachers and classmates before ending their own lives. It even lead an entire democratic nation into an immoral war. And the ends never justify the suffering that accrues along the way.

Collins was Madison's first murder of the year after a particularly bloody 2008, an inevitability given the way bullets have been flying. As my mom used to say, I guess it was only a matter of time until someone got hurt. But when I open the newspaper tomorrow or Friday and see police have released a "motive" in Collins's murder, I'll be hard-pressed to overcome the feeling of dread that will well up in me.

I know no matter what these foolish kids thought gave them reason enough to kill Collins, it will make me want to cry for them.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

I know the Dane County 911 Center has become the political kickball de jure over the past year, and I'm very glad of the shortcomings that have been exposed and addressed to some degree. But I'd like to take a moment to try and draw a line between what constitutes a legitimate gripe and what's just piling on.

By now you've read the tragic story of Farrell Kurlish, the 32-year-old man who was found dead in his car last March, poisoned by a carbon monoxide leak. The story has generated quite a bit of controversy, because the vehicle sat out on the street idling for seven hours after a neighbor phoned in a complaint to the 911 center's non-emergency line.

Mind you, this was a call to the center's non-emergency line, and if you read the transcript of the call, at no point does the caller indicate there was any kind of problem that required police intervention.

Call taker: "Police and fire."
Caller: "Yeah, there’s a pickup truck that’s
been idling in front of my house for one half-hour. Is that legal?"
Call taker: "Sure."
Caller: "Hmm?"
Call taker: "Yeah, sure."
Caller: "In the street?"
Call taker: "Uh-huh."
Caller: "Holy (expletive), what’s the town
coming to?"

And at that point, without any further ado, the caller hangs up. With that 20-20 hindsight we always hear about, yeah, it might have helped to have dispatched police officers to the scene immediately. But what the 911 Center's biggest critics are trying to say is that, based on those 35 syllables of information from the caller, the 911 operator should have sent help, or at least followed up on the call.

Now, none of the news stories that I've seen so far (that I haven't written myself) make note of the fact that this same 911 operator, Nathan Waite, was in fact commended for his performance in the line of duty as recently as January, when he gave instructions on birthing a premature child to a father parked on the side of a snowy road near McFarland. At the time, county officials hailed Waite as the hero who saved the day by keeping his head, making sure the panicked mother and father on the other end kept their heads, and calmly talking the husband through procedures as delicate as using a shoe lace to tie off an umbilical cord.

I myself covered the press conference that was thrown together by County Executive Kathleen Falk's staff as an election loomed against a foe who had made the 911 center a key issue. While I'm not surprised that the County Executive has not arranged a press conference in his defense, I did get a chance to meet Mr. Waite and chat with him briefly.

Nathan Waite is competent, humble, young and kind of quiet. I certainly don't see him as being "complacent," or lacking "the appropriate attitude of concern," to quote the internal investigation into the matter. In fact, I posit he reacted in exactly the right way.

My tax dollars pay Nathan Waite's salary, just the same as they pay for the police officers that patrol our streets. As such, in no way do I want either 911 operators or police officers wasting time responding to calls about every vehicle left running in the street. Following that logic, there should be a police response every time a garden hose is left running, a door is left ajar or a dog is heard barking in the distance.

Nathan Waite is a very busy man with a lot of important duties on his plate who was reacting to a stupid question from a person who was at best lazy and at worst an imbecile. The caller to the non-emergency line didn't say anything was wrong. She didn't sound like she was under duress. She certainly didn't open her front door and walk the thirty feet to the idling car and peer inside to see if everything was all right, which could potentially have saved a life.

The caller simply peered out a slat in the blinds and did what misanthropic old ladies are prone to do -- she complained to the first person who would listen. You can ask any 911 operator, and they will tell you the non-emergency line is a source of more useless complaints than Charter Communications' customer service.

Now I agree with Police Captain Carl Gloede that some kind of written procedures should be implemented to sort out non-emergency calls that might have some kind of urgent nature to them. It certainly could have helped in the Lake's Edge Park murder last fall.

But trying to link Farrell Kurlish's death to a failure on the part of the 911 Center is akin to kicking an opponent when they're down. Whatever political point or progress critics of the 911 Center are trying to make gets lost, especially when hard working civil servants like Nathan Waite get dragged into the fray to have their reputations tarnished.

I hope Waite sticks it out through the coming weeks of punishment and retraining he's going to be put through, then goes on to become a supervisor at the 911 Center. Maybe we can even talk him into running for County Exec.

Corpse-back Riding

I hate obligatory remembrances as much as the next guy, but they serve their purpose. So yes, it was a year ago today that UW-student Brittany Zimmermann was murdered in her Doty Street apartment.

And here's where obligatory remembrances serve their purpose. I have typed or spoken some version of that phrase, "UW-student Brittany Zimmermann, murdered in her Doty Street apartment," literally hundreds of times in the past year -- maybe more. As a news reporter and anchor, I've made mention of the event so many times that... well, I don't want to say it lost its meaning to me, but over time, the bitter anger I felt over her death had begun to abate.

But the first anniversary of this tragedy gave me all new sources of that stinging clean, white-hot rage that first welled up inside me and inspired me to start blogging.

I didn't know Brittany personally, but I felt her loss as a Badger alum, a member of the community and a guy with a little sister Brittany's age living within blocks of the murder scene. The outrage I felt stemmed from a combination of shock, alarm that the system could fail this woman so completely and disappointment in our local officials for their lies, half-truths and complete unwillingness to disclose answers about the debacle.

These are all distressing, ugly feelings to have, and with time, it becomes easier and healthier to let them fade away. It's more comfortable to remember "Brittany Zimmermann, who was murdered in her Doty Street apartment," than it is to fathom the full human scale of the tragedy.

So it was with considerable chagrin that I approached my first assignment of the day -- covering the Brittany Zimmermann remembrance under the bell tower atop Bascom Hill. I certainly recognize the news value in the event and the interest we as members of the public have in peering into it, but nothing will ever stop me from feeling like a voyeur when I'm literally going out of my way to watch other people suffer.

But I have a job to do as a journalist, and self-hating reporter or not, I'm comfortable with myself if I cover these sorts of events in as sensitive a manner as possible, clutching my humanity and decency close. Reporter or not, I'm a human being first, and while it may cost me some so-called "competitive edge," as a matter of principle I won't ever do anything I wouldn't want done to my family if I was the one in the ground.

Apparently, though, two people left their humanity and their decency at home in recognition of Brittany's death.

A Madison Police press release in the week leading up to the anniversary made it clear that Brittany's family did not want to deal with the media, and those members of the media with a soul respected that. My assignment at the remembrance today was to roll some nat sound and then talk to a few students and get their take on the atmosphere around campus.

When I arrived, the family was gathered around the base of the bell tower. Nearby, posses from the university and police administration hovered respectfully. Keeping a 20-yard perimeter around them was a small ensemble of media, mostly newspaper photographers and television crews, all respectfully silent.

The ceremony began as a color guard approached the tower, and the bell began to sound, once for each of the years in Zimmermann's short life. All in all, it was very nice, until the tool bag with a camera and a long lens moved in for the kill.

While I can find a lot of stones to throw at our Modern American Mediascape, I'm often the first to take offense when someone accuses the media of being too pushy. I maintain that, like with any line of work, 99 percent of reporters are decent people doing their job the best they can that know where the line is and will go to extremes to avoid crossing it.

But there's one in every crowd, and as a former newspaper photographer, I can tell you exactly what tool bag was trying to do with his long lens. Faced with a row of sobbing family members, he had to move to within five feet to get a sharp picture of his subject, framed from the eyebrows to the chin, of tears running down the subject's cheek. The depth of field in a shot like that is so shallow, the other family members are reduced to fuzzy cardboard cutouts, but the tears pop off the paper like gems.

It's a layout editor's wet dream.

And he didn't just shoot a few photos. That bell tolled 21 times, and from clangs two through fifteen, he was crouched up and down that row of mourning family members, shutter clicking like a machine gun until police spokesman Joel Despain tapped him on the shoulder and gave him a look that said the only thing that needed shooting was tool bag with the long lens.

I didn't recognize tool bag with the long lens, so I can't call him or the publication he represents out yet. But while the rest of the media kept a respectful distance, he was in there milking that family's grief for all it was worth, and it cast all of us as a whole in a poor light.

But as inappropriate as his behavior was, there was someone else at that remembrance even more hollow as a human being.

In hindsight, I should not have been surprised to see county executive candidate Nancy Mistele there. She's staked her entire campaign on faulting incumbent Kathleen Falk for the tragedy, sometimes fairly, but usually in ways that make me nauseous. Without the murder on Doty Street, Mistele's campaign platform would be bereft of all but one knotty plank -- some rural residents' regressive, irrational fear of bringing commuter rail to Dane County, but that's another issue entirely and couldn't win her 30 percent of the vote.

No one has managed to wring more personal benefit from this innocent young girl's death than Mistele. If there weren't laws against such a thing, she would probably try to dig up Brittany Zimmermann's body and ride it straight into the county executive's office like a sled.

Yet there she was atop Bascom Hill, surrounded by her posse of county officials which included, I was sad to note, Supervisor Ronn Ferrell, who's always struck me as a decent guy otherwise.

I bit my tongue until it went numb and walked the other way when the bell stopped tolling. Had I been a little more in control, I'd have stuck a live mic in her face and asked, "Seriously? What the hell? Have you just foresworn decency in your pursuit of this office or what?" I really wish I had now.

I heard later from another reporter that he did meander over to her and, without rolling tape, asked what brought her out. My source tells me she gave him a calculated lip quiver and sniffled, "I'm just out here for Brittany."

Every decent person on top of that hill today spent half an hour in the place they least wanted to be at that particular moment. Brittany's family was suffering the most visibly, but rest assured Lori Berquam and her crew had nice warm offices within a hundred paces, the police officials present would have traded their badges to have a killer off the streets, and most of the media were so busy hating themselves they'd just as soon have been working for the Rocky Mountain News.

But it was a red-letter day for Nancy Mistele, for whom the afternoon's biggest tragedy was that none of Brittany's family wanted to have their picture taken with her for campaign literature.

Out of the Doorway

I haven't even had a chance to really react to the apparent capture of one murder suspect, and there's already another new body to take the last one's place. This is nuts.

I have to go help a buddy move, so I must be brief this evening. But the top three things on my radar screen remain Joel Marino's alleged killer, finding ANY answers at all about Kelcey Fike's murder in Nebraska and, now, the Marcus Hamilton murder. And like any reporter worth his or her weight in gasoline, I've got plenty of questions about each.

Firstly, if we had to have another murder in Madison, I'm glad it wasn't another "stranger homicide." Call me insensitive, but I'm not the only one who breathed a sigh of relief when police said Hamilton's murderers were there simply to get him. Be it gambling debts, be it a personal grudge, be it a gangland hit, those two thugs were killers on a mission. It still rankles me to see this sort of thing turn up in my town, obviously, but this isn't the sort of random violence that could be waiting in some back alley for my little sister.

I hope police get it sorted out quickly, and I hope the thugs get put away forever. But if the cops don't catch these two guys, at least we know they're not out there waiting to strike again. They're long gone, and probably won't set foot in Wisconsin ever again.

With regards to Adam Peterson, who is now being held here in Madison at the Dane County jail, District Attorney Brian Blanchard has me absolutely baffled. They have their suspect in custody. They've managed to extradite him to Madison. They've got DNA evidence tying him to the murder weapon. Rumor has it they even have a confession out of him. So why the secrecy?

The State Journal (link above) says Blanchard has ordered the Minnesota search warrant that allowed police to obtain Peterson's DNA sample to be sealed. It strains logic, because by the time Peterson makes his initial appearance in court sometime this week, they will have had to update the criminal complaint and most likely release that information that way. They have to. The criminal complaint as it stands right now is incredibly weak; or as a certain Madison newspaper reporter leaned over and said to me at the press conference Friday, "A defense attorney with half a brain could drive a truck through this thing."

One almost begins to wonder if Blanchard doesn't just have a flare for the dramatic. I've begun to suspect he has designs on marching into court this week to trumpet fanfare and pulling his case out of a top hat with a flourish of his cape. Anything less, any leaked bit of information, would really ruin that final effect, you know?

Whatever. More details HAVE TO come out when the Peterson case hits court. It's the way it works. I can live with that. What's really irking me is that TWO WEEKS have gone by since police found my old high school acquaintance Kelcey Fike dead in a burned out trailer. Since then, they've said it's a murder. They haven't said peep beyond that, that I can tell in the vastness of the internet. In fact, as of tonight, if you google her name, MY POST from a week and a half ago is the first hit that pops up.

That should tell you something right there if the half-crazed incoherent ravings of an overstressed radio anchor draw more hits and links than any of the reports coming from media outlets to the West. The Kearney Police haven't told the papers or the broadcasters out there anything, so they've got nothing to work with. I presume most of the media outlets have just written the story off. Trust me, it takes a lot of effort to build a decent story when the authorities won't cooperate.

It's a sin I've been guilty of myself...hell, I'm guilty of it right now, but I have a full time job in a market hundreds of miles from the crime scene to blame for that. Of course, I would lay good money the media outlets in that neck of the woods are understaffed and over-worked, like they are everywhere.

In my last post on the subject, I said I wouldn't be able to work on this story because of my personal connection to it. I take that back. The more I have to sit idly back while the information lockdown continues, the more I wish I was out there digging on it. I want to do it for her friends and family, so they can have some damn closure...not an end to the nightmare, but at least the segueway to the next part.

An annonymous commenter on my previous entry about Kelcey said it better than I can. They wrote: "Sometimes the police are far too closed lipped about facts that could help families to heal--especially when the departments in many cases never solve the crime anyway. Perhaps it is healing that we need in this society, healing and more love. But without any sort of closure all the secrets breed is hate and anger."

Kearney Police have scheduled a press conference tomorrow, bright and early. It sounds like Kelcey's parents will be there, as well. I hope to God the police have something to say that helps them... and her brother John... and my friend Sarah, who grew up next door to her... and every other person who knew her in Monroe.

I've had enough of hate and anger.

And in case you were wondering, I have other interests that don't involve things as black and morbid as ongoing murder investigations. For instance, tomorrow, there's a new Alkaline Trio album coming out that I hope to review on this blog...

...okay, bad example of how I can be not black and morbid... But in spite of it all, I'm still excited about the new album.

Eat, Sleep and Breathe it

In light of everything that's happened the past couple of weeks, I guess it makes sense we were due for some good news. But as I head into tomorrow's press conference, I would just like to state for the record how godawfully tired I am of the words "murder," "homicide" and "slaying."In fact, with the number of high-profile killings I'm trying to keep my finger on the pulse of, I'm going to have to create some new synonyms or risk appearing inarticulate.

Madison Police announced today they have a suspect in custody for the murder of Joel Marino. I couldn't be happier at this news, and if it turns out to indeed be the killer, an entire corps of detectives deserves a barrage of back slaps, a standing ovation and a staggering round of drinks. The Capital Times is reporting they tracked the suspect down by poring over mental health records, through which they found a man who matched a suspect seen the day of Marino's death. A detective personally made the trip to Minnesota and interviewed the man, who, supposedly, admitted to killing Marino.

If this turns out to be legitimate, the sheer amount of grunt police work that went into this find is staggering. I am in awe of the lengths to which Madison's detective corps went for this case, and they are indeed a credit to the badges they wear.

With that much said, I can't help but take note that, even on what should by all accounts be a turning point for the Madison cops, the relationship between the press and the police is as strained as ever. Indeed, the press release that kicked the entire Madison media body into action late this afternoon was almost antagonistically simple.

Officer Mike Hanson didn't write much -- about half a page, in fact -- and what he did say was short, vague and to-the-point. In a nutshell, it read, "We've arrested a guy somewhere in Minnesota, we're extraditing him, and we're not saying anything else until the press conference tomorrow." And as any reporter in town will tell you, the department has been on information lockdown ever since.

I understand the need to get a whole lot of work done by tomorrow morning. I applaud the men and women who are still hunched over their desks as I type this in my flannel pants and the comfort of my own home. But isn't that what you hire a guy like Joel Despain for? Isn't the point of paying a public information officer having someone to act as the lone go-between for the police and the press so the cops can grind away at work while only occasionally fielding questions from someone who's already caught up on all but the latest developments?

Funny thing, that, actually. In what can simply be described as one of the most enviable occurences of fortuitous timing in public relations history, Joel Despain has been on vacation for a good week or two. A number of other regulars at the Madison Police Department have been filling in for him, including Officer Mike Hanson, Officer Howard Payne and Lt. Jerry Tomczak. I don't think any of them knew what they were getting into when they volunteered for that duty.

But back to the issue. Half a million people (excepting, I guess, the radio DJ who walked into our newsroom today and asked who Joel Marino was) in the Madison area have been thirsting for answers in an information dessert for months, and the police this afternoon handed them a shot glass of Tang and said, "We'll get you another round tomorrow."

In the mad flurry of phone calls I made after we received that email, I ended up on the horn with Minneapolis Police Department Sgt. Jesse Garcia. He was incredibly helpful, to the extent he was able, at least. In the span of a half hour, he dispatched a dozen phone calls to determine the suspect was NOT, in fact, arrested in Minneapolis. Yes, we were very strapped for leads.

When we touched base later, after the initial frenzy had settled down, we had a moment to chat. Garcia mentioned he had been on the phone with a few Madison police just to make sure this case was not one his department should be aware of. He even kidded me a little, "It doesn't sound like they want to talk to you right now. You've been too rough on them."

It's a universal misperception that hits reporters the most. When one newspaper, radio or TV station reports something, the perception quickly becomes, "It's the media out to get us..." As in, "every one of you bastards with a press pass."

In this case, I personally was guilty as charged, so I laughed about it. I explained that, yes, a number of us in the media had taken some pot shots at the police administration for what I still consider to be an overzealous approach to controlling the information about these stranger murders. I told him about Kelly Nolan, who turned up dead a year ago, and how her family, friends and neighbors still don't even know how she died.

I expressed my belief that an informed public is a public armed to defend itself -- maybe even help police catch the perpetrators -- and he agreed with me. "Yeah, it sounds like they could really do a lot more to work with you guys on this," Garcia told me.

He explained to me that his desk is located in the Minneapolis Chief of Police's office. He is privy to attend meetings with the Chief, and they work very closely with the press to release as much information as possible. When I told him how Madison Police Chief Noble Wray subverted public information officer Joel Despain by keeping him out of the loop early in the Brittany Zimmermann case and going around him to announce a week into the case her door had been broken down, Garcia was bemused.

"That doesn't sound very effective," he said.

"It's a miserable way to play the game," I agreed.

"Should it really be a game though?" he asked, then caught himself. "I mean, I guess it kind of is any way you play it. But aren't the police and the press ultimately in it for the same reason?"

He's right, we agreed. After all, I could be making a whole lot more money as...well, just about anything that's not a reporter, but I chose this line of work for now as a means to better society as I see it. "Knowledge is power," and I want to protect the public, just as the police do in their own way. Sometimes the means to that end differ between the media and the authorities, but those differences are out of control in Madison.

Granted it's skewed, but from my viewpoint, the police started what's become a bitter, even spiteful tug-of-war game with all the facts as a rope. The harder we pull, the harder they pull back, to the point where we're picking battles over some pretty petty issues.

So tomorrow is a big day for Madison's police department. The men and women who have helped bring this suspect into custody still have a lot of work ahead of them, but they'll finally get some of the credit they're long overdue.

The police administration has a chance to shed a whole lot of information on a case that has, quite frankly, been scaring the crap out of people for far too long. It's certainly possible they'll simply hand out another vague page of information and spit out a few useless soundbites, but I'm hopeful this press conference will mark a new information modus operandi for the Marino case, if not the unsolved murders altogether.

One thing's for certain: I'd probably better wear a tie to work tomorrow.

a Little Shaken Up

Bad news travels fast, they say. That's how it worked out that it took me a year to find out my old classmate Kelcey Fike had moved out to Nebraska, and only about a day to find out she was dead.

Murdered, actually, is what they're saying now. Authorities arrived early Tuesday morning and found her home on fire, and so for a couple days they allowed the story to persist that it was an accidental death. But in a press conference on Thursday, the Kearney Police said that's not so much the case. Apparently, autopsy results show the cause of death to have been something else entirely.

Of course, the police are playing it tight-lipped with the details. Quite honestly, they haven't said shit, and for Kelcey's friends back here in Wisconsin, it's maddening.

A couple of months ago, I invested a good deal of effort in lambasting the Madison Police Department for their reprehensible lack of transparency in the unsolved murders of Kelly Nolan, Joel Marino and Brittany Zimmermann. In fact, this Monday will mark a year since Kelly Nolan was last seen in the State Street area before turning up dead in a swamp south of Madison weeks later, and her immediate family -- the people she lived with and loved -- still don't even know how she died.

A lot of people pointed out -- and fairly, might I add -- that as a member of the media, I'm inclined to take the approach of full disclosure. They maintain I think the police should release any pertinent detail, consequences be damned. I know that's not true. In fact, when I was working on a very high-profile murder case in Portage a year ago, I'm still very proud of the decisions I made with Jason Maddux, our editor, Ed Treleven, reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal, and WSJ state editor Phil Brinkman about which information was fit for publishing and which was simply titillating conjecture.

I also think the Portage Police Department was very professional and very fair in the manner they chose which information to release and which to repress, in that case. They're a goddamn bastion of "right-to-know" prowess when contrasted with Madison lately.

It's been my fear since I started in this line of work I would end up on the other side of the reporter's notepad. A wise, albeit fictional, man once said to a doctor, "You ought to be shot. Or stabbed. Lose a leg. To be a surgeon, you know? Know what kind of pain you're dealing with. They make psychiatrists get psychoanalyzed before they can get certified. But they don't make a surgeon get cut on. That seem right to you?"

That was how I felt last night when I found out Kelcey had been murdered: numb like I'd been shot. We went to the same church, we sang in the same choir and, most notably, we dicked around in Mr. Bennett's eighth-hour Stagecraft class together -- the source of my most vivid Kelcey Fike memories. And then when I graduated, she became one of those people I always wished I had kept in better touch with.

It seems very distant now, and I don't think I had talked to her since I graduated high school five years ago, excepting a few Facebook wall posts. Her death, for me, is just a taste of the kind of pain I document in other people as a reporter. I'm incredibly unsettled, distracted even. I'm a little scared, a little vulnerable, a little wistful. But mostly, I want answers, and quite honestly I want to see the person that did it to her flayed alive. I want to see them writhe in pain, terrified of death and overwhelmed with remorse for the heinous crime of snuffing out a life as vibrant as Kelcey's.

I've heard second-hand that Kelcey's brother, John, and her parents are in agony -- obviously. I can't do anything but wish them the best and hope there are quick answers to the questions burning inside them.

It's the doubt that's the worst. I feel like I need answers before I can accept this as the actual truth. Right now, it seems too surreal to be fact, and I can't see myself acknowledging it until I know much, much more about what happened. I can't see how people like the families of Kelly Nolan, Joel Marino and Brittany Zimmermann have made it this far with as few answers as they've gotten.

I'm sure of this: I'm glad I'm not working closely with this story as a reporter. The authorities in Kearney, Nebraska had better think long and hard about how they approach the information surrounding Kelcey's death this weekend, because there are a lot of people just hanging, waiting for answers.

I wouldn't be able to handle working on this story. I watched the video (link above) of the press conference in Kearney, and if I had been there, I would have been hard-pressed NOT to knock that smug facade off Police Chief Dan Lynch's face. I'm not a patient person, nor do I have much stomach for the standard "we're not going to talk about" it bullshit. I would have had to excuse myself from the room or face officer assault charges for grabbing that bungler about the throat and screaming "She's not just another body, you pig!" into his face.

Lynch told reporters, "We have several suspects...we're trying to work it down." Hopefully that means they'll have someone in custody shortly, and they'll be able to answer more questions. In the meantime, I hope Kelcey's laughing somewhere at what a fuss all of us are making over this whole thing.

I did spend a half hour this afternoon digging through an old box of photos I have. I was sure I had a good one of Kelcey in there somewhere, something I had taken in Stagecraft my senior year in high school. As I flipped through dozens of photos, my stomach dropped through the floor with dread as I found pictures from that class. I knew I was coming up on it.

Then, suddenly, there she was, standing among a saw-dusty set shop in jeans and workboots. The lighting in that back room was terrible, and as a result, the camera's flash lit her up brighter than everything else. She looks vital, very much alive, and her smile jumps right off the polyethylene.

I had to show it to Clinton, my roommate and best buddy, who was closer to her than I was. He nodded slowly. "That's a nice picture," was all he said.

Going fast

I'm guessing this means the police have cleared Brittany Zimmermann's house as a crime scene.

http://madison.craigslist.org/apa/681596568.html

We wouldn't know, of course, from what they've told us about the investigation thus far (Read: nothing). But this is still maybe a little premature. Have they even had time to repaint the walls and recarpet the place yet, or are they counting on that as a selling point? "And if you'll look to your left in the (REDACTED BY THE MADISON POLICE DEPARTMENT) room, you'll see the stain where Brittany Zimmermann laid in her final minutes on earth. And over here is the door the killer broke through. Don't worry though... we've fixed the lock!"

And in fact, it says right in the craigslist ad: the building "could easily be used as a whole house for a group of friends!" That's good, because someone will be upstairs to hear you scream. And if you need an early move-in, no worries! It's not like the outgoing tenants are around to object.

I think Wisconsin Management Company is doing the honorable thing here, I really do. After all, sure Brittany Zimmermann's death is tragic, but the real tragedy would be if one of Madison's biggest slumlord management companies went a year without squeezing every conceivable cent out of the UW's student population.

the Person vs. the Policy

I received a response to a recent piece I wrote about the Madison Police Department's planned response to the Mifflin Street Block Party, and even if it's not legit, with all the ragging I've been doing on the PD lately, I have some 'splainin' to do.

In the aforementioned post, I called Police Lt. Joe Balles "Buzzkill Balles." He (or someone writing under his name, but there are a few clues in context that convinced me this is legit) responded, at God's-Ass-O'clock this morning, with this note.

"Hi Dustin, Just an FYI... if you really knew me you would know I'm not a total "buzz kill"... and I enjoy a beer w/ friends just as much as anyone... stop by the Echo Tap sometime and I'll buy you one. I also do not enjoy seeing "force" (handcuffs and whatever else) used to control an unsponsored college drinking party. If you ever want to do a ride a long on the MPD side of the fence...let me know... I think the experience will change your perspective a bit... it has changed many others'...Lt Joe"

I had two distinct reactions on reading this. The first was, "Holy crap, someone reads my blog!" After recovering from the near stroke I had, the second one set in, and it's that second feeling I hope to explain in this piece.

It's an easy mistake to make, in any line of work, when you make assumptions about a person based on contact you have in a professional capacity. There have been plenty of times in my line of work where I've had to place a phone call to someone in a difficult or tragic spot and ask questions that are hard or painful to answer. It's not because I like to make people suffer, and then show it to the world. It's what the job...and my supervisors...demand.

In our conversation about the cameras on Mifflin Street, Balles presented himself in a very hardline manner. That may or may not be how he feels personally about the block party, but it IS the stance the Police Department's administration has taken, and as such, it's a line he's expected to toe. When you think your boss is being a douche-rocket, you may vent about it to friends or family, but you don't advertise it to strangers on the phone.

I do think the feelings of malaise he expressed with regards to the unsponsored nature of the block party are sincere. He shares that with the department's administration, I know. But let's face it, even though it would lose some of its mystique, the block party would do well with a sponsor to put forward a definite timetable and action plan for emergencies.

But I have had the pleasure to get to know a number of law enforcement officers beyond just the Blue and the Badge. Portage police officer Gary Peterson, Portage Assistant Police Chief Kevin O'Neill, Columbia County Deputy Scott Oelke and Columbia County Sheriff Dennis Richards are just a few of the people I've gotten to know as more than just "cops." They're good guys with a job to do, and they do it to the best of their abilities.

Knowing them certainly hasn't kept me from disagreeing with a position they take. In Sheriff Richards's case, I was pretty frank that his department was way out of line in its handling of the 2006 Sheriff's race open records request the paper filed. They were wrong to surpress the information the way they did, and the State Supreme Court eventually agreed with us.

But my issue was with the Policy, not the Person. And while that disagreement took a good deal of time to overcome, we still managed to see eye-to-eye eventually.

In Lt. Balles's case, he doesn't even set the policy, and I was mistaken to "shoot the messenger," as it were. I have a lot of respect for the fact that he approached it directly as he did, because it took... well... Balles... And he subtley called ME out for being a jerk, which, let's face it, I can be sometimes . What's more, someone seems to have told him that my mortal weakness is an offer of beer and an open bar stool. I accept your invitation to the Echo Tap, sir, and the second round is on me. Email me, dcweis@gmail.com, and let's set it up.

What's more, if it's not clear, most of the issue I've taken to date with the police department has been with the administration. I do think that in the lead up to the block party, they have presented too unbending a front on the Mifflin Street issue. How that works out in practice...we'll find out tomorrow. And I certainly think that the veil the administration has wrapped around the ongoing murder investigations is far more opaque than it needs to be. In the most recent case, I understand that making mistakes is acceptable and human. Covering them up, if that's indeed what this is, is neither. I certainly don't want to know every gory detail of the crimes, but a little transparency would go a long way toward dispelling the appearance of a cover up, at least.

Guys like Joe Balles are out there, doing their part to get the job done. It's at the higher levels where my buzz is getting killed.

We'll see you on the block tomorrow.

A Real Burden

A great man, albeit a fictional one, once said, "It's a real burden being right so often." I take no pleasure in either the fact that it was, indeed, "a damn long day" today, nor the fact that everything I was afraid of is coming true.

The Isthmus broke the story today. This was a very fine piece of digging by reporter Jason Shepard. I've said before that good reporting should turn heads, great reporting should rip them off, and the shitstorm that blew up behind this article was certainly a Category Five.

As information emerged from two press conferences, I read a new version of this story on the air EVERY TWENTY MINUTES for four hours. Here's the short of it: Someone at the police department, likely frustrated, leaked to Shepard that Dane County's dispatch center received a 911 call from Brittany Zimmermann's cell phone at the time of the murder. That call was disconnected, and in their followup to the call, someone absolutely dropped the ball and may have squandered valuable time.

The police, in their infinite wisdom, won't say anything about the content of the phone call. We don't know if the dispatcher spoke to Zimmermann. We don't know how long the call lasted before the line went silent, leading the dispatcher to disconnect from it. We don't even know if it was Zimmermann who made the call. All police are saying is that something in the content of the call should have led the dispatcher to alert them immediately. Instead, the dispatcher took another call in the queue, and broke from national 911 policy when he or she did not try to call the "hang-up" back.

Dispatch center director Joseph Norwick, for his part, quibbled over the county's ability to accurately trace 911 calls placed via cell phone. None of that matters, of course, if we are to buy Chief Noble Wray's line that something about the call ought to have caused dispatchers to notify police right away. But with each side pointing its finger at the other, and neither releasing any substantive information for fear of "compromising the case," attentive citizens will just have to be satisfied venting their rage at law enforcement in general without a specific, deserving target.

The real crime here, at least the one that's not murder, is that none of this was made public until the article ran today. In all likelihood, were it not for Shepard's vigilant snooping, the public would never have known the case was mishandled from its very inception. I'm not saying police could have saved Brittany Zimmermann's life, but they VERY conceivably could have arrived on the scene in time to spot a deranged maniac with a bloody knife running down the block.

Like the decision to withhold information for a week that the home was broken into, keeping this from the public was bad judgement, and it reeks of a coverup. Norwick saying his department has "nothing to apologize for at this time" is despicable, but Wray should be ashamed of the growing lack of transparency in his department. Five unsolved murders in one year is scary. A public that doesn't know enough to protect themselves about any of them is damn alarming.

What's more, with as little information as has been released, there's no guarantee there aren't more major mistakes lurking beneath the surface of these stories. The answer to Lisa Simpson's age-old question "Who will police the police?" isn't the Coast Guard, and as much as I hate to admit it, I don't think we've seen the last cover up.

This week's BAMFs

It's been one of those weeks that runs high on inspiration and low on free time.

However, I couldn't stay away from one piece of information I got for long. It was actually funny, because I was sitting at the Mifflin Street Block Party informational meeting when I heard about it. Contrary to conventional wisdom, when confronted with the choice between sitting at a table with strangers and plopping down with a couple of competing reporters, I will often plop down with the other newshounds. We delight in taunting each other with tantalizing leads we're working on and swapping stories of our favorite and least favoite public officials.

Anyway, the meeting was getting long, a student asked a particularly asinine question of an already badgered Madison cop and I was sharing a knowing glance with State Journal writer Brittany Schoepp and WIBA reporter Jason Fischer. Mike Verveer, in the midst of a sentence that likely defused the eighth potential police / student clash of the evening, mentioned this noteble tidbit. Immediately, the three of us siezed notebooks and began shorthanding furiously.

Apparently, Brittany Zimmermann's family will be at the Mifflin Street Block Party this weekend operating a food stand. That's right, the people whose daughter was stabbed by some psycho who's nowhere near being brought to justice will be selling hot dogs to drunk college kids a few short blocks from where the body was found in order to raise money to establish a college scholarship in their daughter's name. I hope you'll pause just a moment to reflect on the colossal hearts beating in these people's chests...

...because I, quite frankly, am in awe. And don't for a moment think that it's numbness or insensitivity at play in her parents. This is love. It's bravery, it's philanthropy, it's every good and decent thing most of us don't even have the gall to imagine we would be capable of in their position. Instead of wallowing in self pity and hiding from the cold reality of the situation, they're immersing themselves in it. Saturday will, in all likelihood, be the second most painful day of their lives, as they watch kids their dead daughter's age enjoying everything Madison has to offer. Every reveler they see will be a reminder that Brittany should be there, among them.

They know this, yet they'll be there Saturday, tears streaming down their faces, lips pressed tight in brave smiles, hearts broken. They will come because it's a chance, they think, to raise a few hundred bucks to keep their daughter's memory alive.

I spoke to Brittany's father, Kevin Zimmermann, a couple of weeks after the killing. He told me he never went to college, but his family loved the Univerity of Wisconsin. They went to football games for years, and it was his daughter's goal to attend school here. She made it in, and even though they were a family barely scraping by, they worked hard, together, and raised the money for her to attend. He told me he and his wife agreed founding a scholarship in her name is something Brittany would have liked a lot.

On Saturday, I hope our students show the Zimmermanns not only that we know how to party at the UW. Everyone knows that. I hope we show them how we take care of our own, and how the block party is more than just a "drunk fest." It's a celebration of life in general, and foremost this year, one life in particular.

In the worst years, through sleet and rain, I've seen 10,000 people turn out to the block party. In good years, authorities have estimated the number between 25,000 and 30,000. At any rate, if half those people visit the Zimmermanns' food stand and buy something for five bucks, they'll have enough money to start a fund that will guarantee their daughter's name will outlive them both, which Kevin told me was his goal. I will personally be disappointed if they leave Miffland with less than $100,000, and long after the last hot dog has been sold, I expect to see Badgers lined up to pay their respects and drop a tenner in the bucket.

After all, it's how we roll.

In closing, I just caught wind there was a shooting on West Washington Avenue, and crews are going to begin setting up to shoot scenes for the new Depp movie at the state capitol tomorrow. There's a whole lot of shooting going on. May 1st is indeed going to be a damn long day.

CSI Madison ?!?

The state journal reported today that Brittany Zimmermann's killer forced entry into her apartment on Doty Street before killing her. This upset me a bit, and not just because they beat us to the story. In fact, they beat everybody to the story, including their spokesman Joel Despain. As I understand it, he was just as surprised as everyone when Madison Police Chief Noble Wray decided to come forward with the information.

What alarms me is that, as members of the media and an informed public, we operated under the assumption that Zimmermann's killer walked through an unlocked front door and assailed her. As a downtown resident myself, one who could fire a waterballoon launcher and hit the alley where authorities found Joel Marino's body, I took heed to the warnings of friends and family. They cautioned me, "Lock your doors, even in the middle of the day."

If our original assumptions were correct, and if police are correct in assuming Zimmermann's slaying was indeed a random act, and if they are correct in saying her killer is still at large in the downtown community, locking the door would have been enough to keep anyone safe...Except now, Chief Wray adds, almost as if it were an afterthought, that the killer broke into her house. And it seems like, if my friends and family really wanted to give me good advice, "You ought to consider reinforcing your front door with quarter-inch steel rebar and plating the windows" would have been more appropriate.

I understand the need to keep certain details of an investigation shielded from the public view. As a reporter, I deal with it, I accept it like a brick wall, every day. In Joel Despain's written statement to State Journal reporter Sandy Cullen, he makes note of it as well:

"When you have a homicide where there is the distinct possibility that a true stranger/strangers might be the perpetrator/perpetrators things like method of entry, and cause of death are often withheld. The reason for this is that detectives must rely heavily on interviews wih potential witnesses/suspects wherein only they and the killer/killers or witness/witnesses possess the details of the crime. It is not unusual that some contacted during an investigation -- who because of things like mental illness, or alcohol/drug abuse -- will proide bogus confessions of information. They may purport to know things they do not, and the only way to determine their veracity is by holding back key details. Police Chief Wray, as you know, is also keenly aware of the question regarding public safety as it may relate to the mode of entry in the Zimmermann case. He took time deliberating whether revealing this detail would outweigh investigators desire to withhold the information while they search for a killer. It has proven to be a difficult decision. However, Chief Wray has decided -- after conducting this balancing test -- that the right thing to do was to confirm to you that there was forced entry on a door to the building in which Zimmermann resided..."
You're DAMN SKIPPY the right thing to do is to confirm the damn detail! A DETAIL?!? A measily, worthless little DETAIL?!? We're talking about the public safety of forty-two thousand University of Wisconsin students and maybe twenty-five thousand more downtown residents. Telling us the door was forced open is simply a START. How about telling us HOW it was forced open, and what WE can DO to keep it from happening to US?

Chief Wray certainly "took time deliberating" over the release of this information...eight days, in fact, during which it could have happened again. I won't insinuate there's a connection between Zimmermann's murder last week and Marino's murder in February, but I wouldn't be the first to do so. The similarities are striking and apparent to anyone who can read. I will, however, drag the other THREE unsolved murders in the past year out onto the table.

Authorities have remained ever-so-tight-lipped about the details surrounding each, but it doesn't seem to have helped them catch the killers. To this day, we don't know how UW-Whitewater student Kelly Nolan was killed after she disappeared from State Street, and police have yet to release any details other than where she was found.

I have a sticker on my computer monitor that reads, "Knowledge is power. Arm yourself." Under this standard, the Madison Police Department has left every single Madison resident vulnerable and defenseless.

Now I know that we're talking about Madison, a metropolitan area of only half a million. Furthermore, I know there are cities that would, pun intended, kill for a murder rate as low as ours. That's what's appealing to so many Madisonians.

Policing is an occupation that puts glory in danger and duty, and Madison ain't New York City. But if Chief Wray and his detectives are occluding details that are in the public's best interest to know so they can have a macho "CSI moment," we have more than a murder problem in Madison. Detective Sipowicz might wear a tie with short sleeves, but even he isn't foolish enough to endanger the public by squelching information. It makes you wonder if they don't just clamp down on details as some kind of demonstration of their authority as police.

It makes you wonder what mistakes and ineptitudes might be exposed if the investigations were more visible to the public. Not that I have any reason to suspect the police have handled the murder investigations in anything but a competent and professional manner. But they have utterly failed in their obligation to keep the public abreast of the crucial knowledge they may have in these murders that affect, endanger and frighten us all.

As a reporter, it becomes easy to fall into the habit of accepting it at face value when a member of law enforcement tells you they've given all the information they can give. It's the authorities' responsibility to keep the public informed and safe, and it's the media's responsibility to do the same. But beyond that, it falls to the media to out the authorities when they're not holding up their end of the bargain.