Man Pants

It's not often, but there are times when I finish reading a press release from the Madison Police Department and I just have to throw my head back and laugh.

We're lucky here in Madison to have a former reporter of Joel Despain's caliber working as a spokesman for our police force. One of Joel's greatest strengths is his knack as a story teller, and there are times when it shines through in something like a police press release, which is generally intended to be bland and to the point at best. I've seen some from other departments come across my desk that almost require a cryptographer to decipher.

But the Madison press corps got a good chuckler from Joel today. As with most of them, you have to read between the lines to get the joke.

Incident report for Case#2009-182844
Released 06/24/2009 at 11:51 AM by PIO
Joel DeSpain
Incident Type
Injured Person
Incident Date
06/23/2009 -
3:08 AM
Address
400 block West Doty Street
Suspect(s)
Female, white,
5'6", 115 lbs., with curly, red shoulder-length hair, slender build, wearing a red sundress.
Victim
Male, age 21, MadisonVictim suffered multiple
abrasions to his back, including two cuts requiring 11 stitches. He also had a bruised chest, a cut lip, and a sore nose.
Details
On Tuesday, a 21-year old Madison man came into the Central District to report a battery that happened around 3:00 a.m. that morning. He said he was at a downtown house party, sitting on a porch, when a woman started dancing and taking her clothes off. The victim said he - and others - laughed as they watched the disrobing. As he chuckled, another woman, clad in a red sundress, slapped him across the face, saying, "You don't know who you're dealing with." The man backed up, sat on a railing, and continued to guffaw at the striptease. Suddenly, the woman responsible for the slap "rushed" the victim - knocking him off the railing. He says he fell more than six-feet onto concrete. The woman descended with him, landing on his chest. Friends cleaned him up, and he discovered his back was bleeding profusely. He ended up in the emergency room, and wishes to pursue charges against the assailant. She has not been located.

By the time I finished reading this story, I had nearly fallen out of my chair. I have no idea how the police officer that took this report was able to keep a straight face.

If this 21-year-old "victim" has any motive other than getting a phone number in wanting to file charges against this "assailant," I'd like to sit him down and have a talk about finding him a decent pair of man pants. I mean that. I don't know any self-respecting member of the male gender that would come forward to police to admit he'd had the crap kicked out of him by a girl.

Based on the "victim's" description, we're not talking about a bruiser here. Girls that are 5' 6" and 115 pounds don't play for the women's hockey team. With the red hair and sundress, guys should have been lining up around the block to get cracked in the jaw by this young lady.

Let's face it, there's a fair chance this guy got exactly what was coming to him. As a member of the male gender, I'm realistic enough to admit that 3 AM at a house party is not when most guys are at their most gentlemanly, and I find it hard to believe this guy was half the "victim" he makes himself out to be. I say good on this mysterious red-clad firebrand for being able to lay down the law with the punk.

But for this guy to take his pitiful, fabricated story to police is an unprecedented level of weak. There are certain unspoken rules all men should abide by. You never hit, push or otherwise lay an ungentle hand on a woman. If a woman takes a swing at you, you get out of the way or you take the hit. There's no excuse for fighting back. And if a woman gets the upper hand and bloodies you up a bit, you sure as hell don't tell anyone!

That's what I find so baffling about this story. So the guy needed a few stitches and will probably be the butt of a running joke among his buddies for a while. Dragging police in the matter won't solve either of those problems. In fact, it will likely prolong the humiliation, first when his buddies see the police report, then when some media attention is paid to it. If they actually catch the young woman, that will reopen the wound, as will any court appearances to follow.

I can just picture this guy, tears streaming down his face, describing to a jury the "brutal beating" he sustained at the hands of the five-foot-six pixie in a red sundress. Call protective services! He's going to need protection from this monster!

I've got to think that this guy was just a little concussed when he made the decision to take his story to police, and didn't think ahead to the guffaws that would follow any time one of his buddies mentions "that time Jimmy got his ass kicked by a girl."

So let that be a cautionary tale to any young men who haven't learned these lessons yet. Fiery things can come in small packages, and while there are times they will bruise your pride, you're just going to have to man up and get over it.

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.

Mifflin Day Miracle?

And almost 365 turns of the world later, we're here again -- poised on the eve of another Mifflin Street Block Party with no accord reached between police and partiers.

Yet.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love this event. When I was a student, I laid plans for the day weeks in advance. I had to make sure I had room to sleep however many guests I was expecting, there had to be a guaranteed source of meat to grill and beer to drink, and, if there was time, it helped to have a destination in mind on the street itself.

But that, to me, has always been the glorious part of the block party. Sure, it's nice to know someone and have a porch or balcony to stand on. But if not, there's always the option of wandering up and down the block seeing the sights, pausing to take in a good band and sparking random friendships with people you'll never see again.

I honestly think Mifflin Day is more magical than Christmas.

Unfortunately, those good vibes have been on the decline in recent years because of rising arrests, increasing noise citations and the resulting decline in the number of bands. If somebody doesn't do something, one of the most unique traditions in Madison is going to become what outsiders have always said it was anyway. Take away the music and the high spirits, and you're left with a bunch of people standing around drinking in front yards, eyeing the police suspiciously.

It would be a "drunkfest," to quote a wise man I worked with once.

The Wisconsin Union Directorate tried, heroically, to step up to the plate and organize the event. And by organize, I don't mean "suck the fun out of," which some argue is what happened to Halloween. They wanted to work with the city to get a street use permit and noise permits, thus cutting down on arrests and citations, and set up a music stage with a line-up.

I'm told the chancellor's office pulled the plug on that pretty quickly, wanting no association with the block party. Never mind that it takes place only a few blocks from campus. Never mind that 80 percent of the revelers are UW students or alumni. Never mind that some of my favorite college memories will be forever rooted in that scrubbly excuse for grass that grows between the houses and the street on Mifflin.

This is the new, re-imagined University of Wisconsin, damnit! IF there's drinking that takes place, we certainly didn't sanction it!

So since Bascom Hall has torpedoed WUD's effort to work with the city, now the students themselves are pulling together to get the permits needed to make it a "legitimate event" in the eyes of police and city officials. They face an uphill battle with less than three weeks until the event takes place May 2, but they've got neighborhood Alder Mike Verveer backing them up.

Verveer is a Mifflin lifer, like I hope to be one day, having never missed a block party since his freshman year in college. His streak's considerably longer than mine (this will be number six for me). He understands what the block party can be, and what it's become. I think he would move heaven and earth to bring the music back to Mifflin.

I applaud Verveer and the students both for their efforts, and now the onus is on city officials. It's certainly an unusual notion to give a group of people with no organizational affiliation street and noise permits, but it's not without precedent.

It's certainly late in the game to get a process like this started, but nobody counted on WUD getting the rug ripped out from under them. The very fact that a group has coalesced to take up WUD's fight is proof they have the capability and the resolve to make this work.

The City of Madison needs to recognize this and do everything to expedite the permitting process. What we need now is a Mifflin Day Miracle.

Police and Thieves

Note: I just "graduated" from Madison's nine-week Citizen's Police Academy. In a nutshell, it's a series of three-hour classes where the cops bring in someone from each division to talk about different aspects of the Madison Police Department. It's strictly an educational thing -- there's no authority or badge or firearm you get for participating. But I learned a lot, and I would recommend the class to anyone who's interested in the way the department works.

At any rate, Public Information Officer Joel Despain asked me to pen a piece about my experience in the class for the MPD newsletter.

The evening after leaders from the Madison Police Department and the city press corps sat down last summer to talk over the increasingly frustrating communications gap surrounding the stranger homicides the department has been investigating, I half-jokingly wrote, on my blog, that the whole thing reminded me of, "a massive, gloves-off counseling session between a married couple that hasn't spoken in months."

There were certainly more than a few uncomfortable moments as, one by one, the sides aired their grievances. There are likely a few issues we’ll never come to a complete consensus on. But at the end of the day, we were able to agree on a few crucial points.

While our methods may differ, the media and the police share a set of common goals—we strive to keep the public informed, and in keeping them informed, we strive to keep them safe.

But more importantly, furthering those ends requires keeping an open line of communication and maintaining a sense of trust between all parties. Like any other relationship, the link between cops and reporters can’t be taken for granted, or else it will fall apart entirely. It’s something we have to work on together, constantly.

That kind of effort doesn’t come easy when a tight city budget scales back the overtime that’s available or waning ad revenues lead to yet another round of layoffs in the news room. It’s certainly more efficient in terms of man-hours to deal with each other as faceless voices on a phone line, but that kind of nuts-and-bolts approach does a disservice to the hardworking parties on either end, as well as the people we’re supposed to serve.

So when I heard about the opportunity to enlist in the Madison Citizen’s Police Academy, I seized on it eagerly. If nothing else, I figured it would be a chance to get to know a few more of the faces that work beyond the public’s realm of perception and learn how they do their jobs.

And I certainly got that chance, but more importantly, the citizen’s academy leant me a deeper understanding and appreciation of the depth at which our police department operates. Granted, my perspective on the department’s goings-on is still limited, but I was awed by the competence, dedication and attention to detail the public servants our class met bring to their jobs.

Viewed from the outside, the police department appears to move like some sort of autonomous, headless beast (much how the media appears to operate, from an outsider’s perspective). But on a closer approach, one begins to grasp the number of levels that have to mesh in order for the department to work, from the beat cops that show up at a crime scene to the investigators that figure out what happened to the Crime Response Program that comes in and helps the victims start to pick up the pieces.

Again and again throughout the citizen’s academy, I had these kinds of Eureka moments. It certainly makes sense that Madison has a need for a group that helps crime victims cope with the turmoil they’ve been through, or a gang task force that knows more about how gangs operate than the gang members themselves, or a unit that focuses on the well-being of the officers themselves as they cope daily with stressful situations everyday civilians go out of their way to avoid.

But these vital programs go unnoticed and unappreciated by most civilians, until recently myself included among them.

So it was, in going to these weekly classes, I came to expect to be surprised by what the various presenters had to offer, and I was never disappointed. I also had the chance to surprise a few of them as well, as those who came to know me as something of a deadeye with a 9-mil can attest to.

But while the evening at the MATC training range was certainly the most exciting of the classes, it was informative as well. I was more than a little alarmed to learn I had honed my skills with a firearm on video games at bars that are more technologically advanced than the simulators we train our own police force on.

The understanding and respect I took away from the nine-week course will do more than just help me as a journalist. While the Madison Citizen’s Police Academy should probably serve as a prerequisite for any reporter in this city, the benefits I took away as a civilian are universal to any citizen of our city.

I owe my thanks to Lt. Melissa Schiferl for organizing the class, to the various presenters for their candor and taking the time to share their world with us and to the Madison Common Council for having the wisdom to resist one city leader’s attempts to gut this gem of a program during last fall’s budget process.

As police and media, we will have our inevitable misunderstandings, arguments and even occasions where we have to call each other out for being out-of-line. But if we can continue to build the relationship between cop and reporter, we’ll be able to settle those disagreements with a heated discussion over a brew instead of a cold war.

Hell's Parking Enforcement

When I first moved to Madison, I'll admit, I was inherently suspicious of any food that's served out of a shack. The same goes for trailers, carts, wagons, trucks and wheelbarrows.

Maybe it was part of coming into my own as a UW freshman, but I did eventually get adventurous and try some of the food vendors who set up regularly on Library Mall. Ingrid's Mad City Meatloaf converted me from a cautious mobile cuisine dabbler to a shameless promoter and rabid fan of the entire food cart community.

But then again, Ingrid's meatloaf could probably turn Vegans back to carnivorism, if she didn't offer a hefty selection for Madison's lettucehead population as well.

Nonetheless, one of my greatest failures as a UW student may have been neglecting to visit "Jin's Chicken and Fish" shack even ONCE after a night out at the bars. And now, if the City of Madison Vending Oversight Committee has its way, I may have less than a month to do so before it's gone for at least six months.

At a meeting last week, the VOC voted to recommend that Jeff Okafo, the proprietor of Jin's Chicken, be stripped of his vending license for six months. His offense? A stack of parking tickets and a run-in with a Madison Police officer that resulted in Okafo being on the business end of a taser / pepper spray barrage.

When Okafo told me about the taser part this morning at Indie Coffee, I nearly doused the guy in a mouthful of black coffee. I CCAPed him in preparation for our meeting, and I was aware of the Obstructing an Officer charges pending against him for a little kerfuffle from last spring. But the cavalier way he described having chili derivative sprayed in his eyes and upwards of 15,000 volts of electricity coursing through his flesh nearly floored me.

I would not mess with Jeff Okafo, even at bartime. The city of Madison, on the other hand, swings a decidedly heavier hammer than I do.

One can certainly make the argument that Okafo has damned himself in this whole situation. Wracking up 29 parking tickets in a year is of itself a feat worth some note, perhaps even a record of some kind. The alleged fight with a parking enforcement officer in May is even more damning, as are the Operating After Revocation tickets he's earned along the way.

But then again, put in his same situation, I can see myself winding up even worse off. It's not much of a stretch.

Okafo makes his living selling food out of a cart late at night. The city has not granted him permission to set up on Library Mall or State Street, where he would be out of the way when parking push came to parking shove, so he has to battle for spots on the one street they have given him permission to use: Frances Street, where the spots are scarce and metered.

The meters, of course, aren't monitored after six o'clock in the evening, but the spots there are filled up long before then by people hoping themselves to park overnight. In order to be assured a spot, and thus an income for the evening, Okafo needs to get there by the middle of the afternoon... Which means plugging the meters... Which means risking a ticket.

29 tickets in a year still seemed extreme to me, until I realized that I myself have amassed seven or eight tickets in the past year for various parking infractions. As a reporter, I certainly spend more time tooling around in a car downtown than most people, but I certainly don't make my living parking out on the streets like Okafo does. For him, parking tickets are almost just another business expense.

The tickets are of course a hair-tearing inconvenience, but it's when they stack up that they become a major problem. When you amass as many as Okafo has, it's only a matter of time before a few slip through the cracks and remain unpaid. This runs up the amount owed, and eventually suspends your registration with the state.

But when your livelihood depends on driving a cart downtown to set up for the evening, a suspended registration could certainly look insignificant compared to having no income until the troubles are cleared up...that is, until those blueberries and cherries show up in your rearview mirror.

As to Okafo's alleged run-in with the police last May, it's tough to work out what actually happened. He says he came upon a parking enforcement officer writing him a ticket, had some words and the police got called. In what he describes as a complete police overreaction, he ended up down for the count and under arrest.

Okay. Who hasn't gotten a little heated when they discover they've received a visit from Madison's Parking Ninjas? Judging by my overreaction to getting a parking ticket in June, I'll be bound over on attempted homicide charges if I ever catch the actual parking goon in the act, though I'm convinced they're equipped with some kind of stealth technology.

Were the officers' actions appropriate in dealing with the situation as it unfolded? That's a gray area. As anyone who was on State Street during either of the last two so-called "riots" following the Halloween festival will tell you, our department has an affinity for quickly deploying teargas. And if you believe Okafo's account, it sounds like his situation wasn't much different:

"I went to go talk to the police officer to complain about the parking enforcement officer. Meanwhile, the guy is yelling at me to get on the ground and put my hands behind my back. I didn’t want to put my hands behind my back because I didn’t want him to think I had a weapon, so I put my hands over my head. Then he tasers me. I felt the taser, it didn’t take full effect, I grabbed the dart out of me. I’m standing 10-15 feet away from him, he says he’s gonna call another officer. I say that’s a good idea, and he interpreted that as a threat. He made it sound in the report like I was screaming in the middle of the street, which is completely untrue."

(By the way, that previous link is why you don't meet with a source in a coffee shop frequented by student journalists with laptops and nothing better to do on a Tuesday than eavesdrop your interview and scoop you before you can get home from work and do your writing. Get a job, and get off my damn lawn you kids! (...so kidding...) )

I'm not making excuses for Okafo. I have nothing but respect for Mike Verveer, who sits on the Vending Oversight Committee. I have occasionally disagreed with him, but I think he's an admirable leader with sound judgement. And when I broached the topic with Verveer tonight, he assured me the city is within its rights to do what it's doing. He also went to bat for the officers on the scene, saying Okafo "picked a fight."

A friend of mine who's familiar with the case admits, "Jeff has made mistakes and handled himself poorly, but I agree with him that it seems unfair that he may lose his vending license because of this. Parking tickets come with a penalty already."

The city is taking a hardline stance with Jin's chicken, and it could set a dangerous precedent for the other street vendors that make downtown Madison the colorful, vibrant place it is. In a sense, Okafo is being doubly punished: he's taken the steps to pay off most of the parking tickets, and he says he spent over $3,000 to get his license and registration reinstated. He pays a nonrefundable fee to the city for the privilege of vending food on the streets, but they're looking at taking that away from him anyway.

And if a court indeed finds him guilty of obstructing an officer and disorderly conduct, he will pay the associated penalty. But if the city strips him of the livelihood he's made for himself since 1992, what reason does he have to reform, to break out of the funk he's stuck in?

As he told me very plainly, "Nobody else I've ever met's job is threatened by parking tickets."

And don't even get me started on those maniacs down at parking enforcement. How many cities have you heard of where the meter masters literally have the power to drive a man from his livelihood?

The Crazies Come Out

Okay, I resent being right about that heat making people crazy thing within 15 hours of writing it. Right now the forecast calls for the temperature to peak out on Sunday, but we've already got nutters like David Floyd coming out of the woodwork trying to blow things up on Capitol Square or scare the bajesus out of people or whatever he was trying to accomplish. I hate to think what this weekend will bring.

But as busy as the alleged bomberman kept us today, I would still rather touch on the meeting between the Madison press corps and the Madison Police that took place this morning. Given the mood of late, I was expecting something akin to a Conference of the Five Families. Eerily, 911 Center Director Joe Norwick could easily have gassed the studio the gathering took place in and eliminated a hearty majority of his critics among the police and press.

Instead, I was reminded more of a massive, gloves off counselling session between a married couple that hasn't spoken in months. Even though there was a neatly-typed agenda outlining a variety of topics, both sides leapt straight for the throat and spent the entire two hour session griping on the crux of the relationship problem: communication.

There were certainly some heated exchanges between the press and the police that would have made any marriage counsellor wince. Overall, I felt just facilitating the face to face communication was a huge positive step toward bridging the gulf that's developed between this side and that side of the thin blue line. But we're certainly a long way away from the crazy make-up sex that follows the resolution of any serious conflict.

Uh... that last part was purely in keeping with the metaphor...

There was little consensus reached, but at least we're talking. The press still maintains the police are playing their hands too close to the vest. The police maintain the constraints of convicting the perpetrators of these crimes are such that the fact lockdown is appropriate. The old tug-of-war between full disclosure and utter information blackout will probably go on forever, when the optimum solution always lies somewhere elusive in the middle.

It's gone all the way up to this point, but the problem now is it's become too impersonal. Until today, I could only put faces to a few of the names on the force I read and write about every day. In today's Modern American Mediascape (***see footnote***), being competitive means every passing minute is another deadline, and that doesn't leave a lot of time to sit down over a coffee or a brew and catch up. That doesn't leave time for personal understanding. That doesn't leave time for trust.

So the police don't trust the press enough to share more details about these sensitive crimes, and the press don't trust the police when they say the information they're squelching is for the good of the investigation.

And as I pointed out during the meeting today, that negativity is bad for all of us. Being a police detective, a reporter or any kind of public servant is a thankless job. 95% of the time, if you're in the spotlight, it's because you screwed up in a major way.

And yes, I lump reporters in with public servants. Trust me when I tell you I could be making a lot more money in another, less stressful line of work.

The due credit, the kind the public owes the police for their hard work solving the Joel Marino homicide, gets lost in the darkness. And for every time some loose-lipped jackass of a reporter violates someone's trust -- police officer, victim or otherwise -- there are a thousand instances when a journalist's conscience outweighed the potential for self-gain.

I don't have the answers, but I'm happy to have the opportunity to try and figure them out with the Madison Police. Everybody involved probably needs to adjust their expectations and learn to communicate a little better, but that's needed in any dysfunctional relationship. And that's what I hope to see happen if we're able to meet regularly with the police.



(***I would just like to make it known that I am claiming the term "Modern American Mediascape" as my own. I coined it, and I'm staking my claim, damnit. I used the term extensively on "Slightly Off Kilter," the radio show I hosted from 2005 to 2007 on Madison's Student Radio Station, 91.7 FM WSUM, as a means of describing the increasingly convoluted and polluted excuse for discourse bred by sweeping media deregulation and the massive corporate ownership it spawned, as well as the growth of the 24-hour news cycle and the decline of the American attention span. I consulted the Google Gods, and it looks like I was the first. Having dibs on the term may seem petty now, but it'll come in handy some day when I'm publishing a book on what the hell happened to our country... if we still have books, that is.***)

Tonight I Am a Criminal

It seems only fitting that on the eve of a massive meeting between the Madison press corps and the belligerently tight-lipped Madison Police Department to discuss means of furthering our cooperation, I should run afoul of some boys in blue. And it's no secret that I have been pulled over more often than any body has a right to in my seven years as a licensed driver, but tonight takes the cake in terms of the absurd.

As I mentioned, early tomorrow morning (actually, this morning, as it's now well after midnight) is the scheduled kaffee klatch between reporters and cops. This is something I've been very eager to attend, as it's well documented I feel Madison police should be more forthcoming about the details in their higher profile crimes (see any entry on the subject of Brittany Zimmermann or Joel Marino).

Seeing as it will be an early morning, I cut out from my Tuesday night regulars a little early tonight. We're still in the process of looking for a new Tuesday night hangout since the Angelic closed down, so we've been using Bacon Tuesdays at Wando's as a crutch until we find a bar with suitable beer specials, bar food and atmosphere.

In the name of gas economy and easy parking, I prefer to take my motorcycle when I'm out on Tuesday. I never drink enough to make operating a two-wheeled vehicle a concern, so it's not been an issue. Except, apparently, I've been breaking the law all along.

I pulled out onto University Avenue and immediately caught a red light at Lake Street. I watched as a pair of bicycle cops pedalled across the intersection, then turned, looked at me and put up their hands. I wasn't sure if it was a salutation, a command to stop or a "Dude... nice ride." I've gotten all three before.

The light turned green, and I crossed the intersection tentatively, waiting to see if there was any further response from the heat-packing Livestrongers. Just when I thought I was off scott-free and gunned it, a shrill whistle pierced the night air. I knew I should have drilled out the baffles to make my pipes louder.

Reluctantly, I pulled over and weighed my circumstances. I had consumed approximately a pound of bacon and one-and-a-half PBRs at Wando's after batting clean-up when Emma didn't want to polish hers off. I was sober enough to do cartwheels or recite the alphabet backwards, if I was capable of doing either of those things sober.

I won't lie, it's a little awkward to be the guy on a motorcycle pulled over by two geeks on bicycles on a major urban thoroughfare. I was almost relieved when the UWPD Paddy Wagon pulled up flashing lights as backup because it made me look like less of a sucker. In hindsight, I probably could have ratcheted back the throttle and left Officer Aaron Chapin, his Schwinn and his neon yellow polo in the dust, but I honestly think curiosity just got the better of me.

Turns out, my crime was eye protection -- I wasn't wearing any. Furthermore, as Chapin explained it to me, my continued travel down the public right-of-way constituted enough of a threat to safety -- the public's and my own -- that he would let me off with a warning, but he couldn't in good conscience let me ride the remaing mile to my house.

As he so eloquently put it, "A block from here, a big bug could fly into your eye and you could go down right there."

By this point, my mouth was hanging so far agape, a pterodactyl could have flown into it while I was riding and choked me to death. So it was probably for the better that I swallowed my pride, nodded, said "yes sir," and walked home.

So I take away three morals from this story, one of which the officers intended for me to take. 1) is that I need some eye protection when I'm riding my bike. I actually had a good pair of protective lenses, but some douche-rocket stole them out of my saddle bag. 2) is that, under any circumstances, there is no damn reason to pull over for a bicycle cop while driving a motor vehicle. And then there's 3) which is basically that Madison has so many police officers they get bored on Tuesday nights.

It's an hour and fifteen minutes past when I meant to get to bed, thanks in large part to the half-hour-plus it took me to walk home, get eye protection and get back to my bike on Uni Ave.

Oh, and to top everything off, I stepped in dog shit on the way home.

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.

Mifflin... another year already?

I have a new goal in life, one that should make my parents proud. I hereby vow never to miss a Mifflin Street Block Party so long as I live.

I know it seems like a bold vow, but I was speaking with Madison City Council veteran Mike Verveer this evening, and he told me that he has been to every single block party since he was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin. Now, not that Verveer's a dinosaur or anything -- he's consistently stood up for student rights and lobbied for a student agenda, and the UW community reveres him for it -- but that's a damn impressive streak. I figure as long as I'm living in Madison, I don't really have any excuse NOT to go.

So I have four Mifflins in a row under my belt, and I'm well on my way to a streak every bit as impressive as Verveer's... that is, if the Madison Police don't find a way to put the party out of commission, which I'm beginning to suspect they're intent on doing.

In the course of my duties today, I spoke with Lt. Joe Balles at the Madison Police Department. It seems they're going to be putting up more cameras at this year's block party. Before I go on with the post, I must directly address the kindly webwriters at WKOW. First of all, gentle writer, YOU DON'T NEED FREAKIN' APOSTROPHES IN THE PLURAL FORM OF "cameras." YOU MAKE THAT MISTAKE THREE TIMES. I WORK IN RADIO, AND I CAN GET IT RIGHT! SO IF YOU CAN'T LEARN TO USE THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CORRECTLY, PICK UP A FIFTH GRADE ENGLISH TEXTBOOK AND GET BACK TO BASICS BEFORE YOU GO AROUND POLLUTING MY INTERNET.

And on a less rant-inducing note, the Mifflin Street Block Party is NOT "notorious for getting out of hand." Since the riot that occurred in 1996, contrary to the way this story is written, the block party has been a bastion of goodwill between police and students. People show up at eight, they get drunk, a few get out of hand and are promptly, deservedly carted away by the cops, and after twelve hours of drinking, the need for a nap sets in and everybody goes home with a smile and some sunburn. As a student, in fact, the block party was the only time I wouldn't drop what I was holding or run the other way when I saw the UW or City Blues arrive on the scene. Poor reporting by the folks at 27.

But back to the cameras. I didn't know that there had previously been video surveillance, but Balles tells me they've had a single camera up on top of a tall apartment building in the area for years. Fine. Great. But now, they're adding two cameras to be mounted twenty feet above the ground at the busiest points on the street. According to Balles, these will be wired live into the police "Command Center," and they'll dispatch police to trouble hot spots via radio.

This begs the question, why do they need these new eyes? And what will they use them to do? It's well known, for instance, that the block party was a generally acceptable place for people so-inclined to "pass around a joint," so long as it wasn't blatantly in view of the police. But everything is blatantly in view of cameras mounted twenty feet from the ground.

Another thing that Balles the Buzzkill told me: "More people are starting to post their property down there for no trespassing, and we will be enforcing trespassing. So if (revelers) see pink trespassing signs, and if they're trespassing on private property, they can expect to be arrested." And he sounded like he meant it too, which makes me sad. It sounds like Balles, at least, wants nothing more than to swing a nightclub into a couple undergrad skulls come the first weekend in May. Maybe he's just mad because no one asked him to play Flip-Cup last year.

I just hope these new developments don't mean the police are out to kill the block party, now that they've neutered Halloween on State (I refuse to ever call it "Freak Fest"). And if they are, they're armed with a few more reasons to drag kids off in plastic wrist-ties.

There's a meeting, led by Mike Verveer, slated for next Tuesday night to tell students exactly what the changes mean for the beloved block party. I'll be on assignment there, and then of course, I've volunteered myself for "on-the-street coverage" of the event itself. Whatever happens, I'll be there, notepad in pocket, microphone in one hand and a beer in the other. I even got Verveer to half-promise a "City vs. Media Showdown" over the beer pong table, so it promises to be epic.

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.