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.

And We're Back!

An old pop-punk band once sang, "It's good to be bad if it's better than bored." I think that's a fair assessment of the situation, but as I've grown up, I often find myself substituting "busy" for "bad." Either way, it's better than boredom, a condition I have not suffered from since moving to Madison.

Misbehavior and activity both are easy to overindulge in, but this past week, activity took a clear first place in my list of priorities. I can tell by the bags under my eyes, the week-old pile of unfolded clean clothes in the living room and the dirty dishes stacked next to the sink. And, far from being bored, I was red-lining like an overstrained engine for much of the week, but it didn't feel half bad.

And I got to get back into the filmmaking groove for a weekend!

Come to think of it, I was reminded a lot of college, and a little surprised at how easily I fell back into the ol' triple-the-caffeine-regimen-and-grind-on-through mentality. But buzzing around like a hummingbird of some kind took its toll on my blog entry total for the month, and I apologize for that. I assure you there's plenty to talk about, and I'll try and catch up as best as I can.

For starters, my buddy Griff just got back from serving his country for 15 months in Iraq (and not his first tour either) and I was stuck in a city council meeting the night of Saint Patrick's Day. Sure, they're two seemingly unrelated factoids, but the chance to welcome an old buddy home in style and a need to do something Irish prompted us to road trip it down to Chicago to see Flogging Molly at the House of Blues.

It was my third or fourth time seeing the band live, but I was still blown away by their energy and talent. And it was damn good to have Griff home.

Tuesday's city council meeting went off without a hitch, even if I was a bit tired out from staying out until four in the morning, and then some of the best people in Madison treated me to a fantastic Wednesday night on the town in celebration of the earth's 24th trip around the sun since the day of my birth. I tried (and failed at) sleeping off my hangover before work on Thursday, then braved a County Board meeting with a wicked headache. And then there was Friday.

I've always been a distant admirer of Wis-Kino. It's a local collaborative of Madison film makers, and I went to a few screenings in its heyday, but never really dug in with any gusto. My mistake, but following an unpleasant taste left in our mouths by a brush with the Wisconsin Film Festival, some colleagues and I were aching for a means of cleansing our palates. Lucky for us, Wis-Kino's 48-hour film Kabaret was right around the corner.

The idea? Assemble a team, report for duty, receive the "secret ingredient" and build a film around it in less than 48 hours. There are no trophies, no best actor awards, no flowery speeches -- just those who run themselves into the ground trying to make their five minute film and those who don't. Anyone who knows Tim, Aaron and I knows we don't do projects halfway, so the weeked rapidly turned into an exhaustion race to see who could kill themselves the fastest.

We put together a good crew of people and got our assigned secret ingredient -- "bailout" -- and then we got right to work. Here's a timeline of the weekend from my perspective, and because it's getting late and I need to catch up on a little more sleep.

7:00 PM -- The primer screening begins at Hilldale. 48 hours from now, our final project will be due. Aaron drinks a lot of whiskey.

9:00 PM -- The crew rallies at a handy nearby location where we finalize our assignments for the weekend. Then we begin one of my favorite processes, writing by committee. In two hours we have a concept tied together by a string of potential gags.

11:00 PM -- A few crew members head home as we get into the nitty-gritty of script-writing. Half a dozen of us sit down at computers and begin writing individual scripts.

11:30 PM -- Draft deadline: We get back together, none of us with a complete script, and take turns reading what we have. Kilgore insists on placing a joke about fatties in the film. The rest of the committee insists it would be wasted air in a five minute film.

2:00 AM -- We have outlined a script. Tim carries two pages of scribbled notes and six different scripts covered in cross-outs and circled text back to his apartment and sits down to hash out the final draft. The rest of us hit the sack by 3 AM.

4:21 AM -- An email arrives in my and Aaron's inboxes. The subject header is "script." There is no text in the email and no attachment. I am fast asleep and don't notice. Tim may be so tired he can't properly send an email attachment, but he has nonetheless completed the final draft of our script.

8:15 AM -- I am up and consuming coffee at a prodigious rate. I call Tim to make sure he's bringing extra copies of the script, as we will not be able to print any.

9:00 AM -- Cast and crew rendezvous at the Lindsay, Stone and Briggs ad agency, our primary locale. We set up base camp and start work on the costumes and props we will need. Our prop, costume and grip master Ellie quickly becomes my new hero.

9:30 AM -- I meet Steffen, our cinematographer, for the first time. He also becomes my hero. I take him through the script, then walk with him through each of the areas we will be shooting in and discuss shots.

10:30 AM -- Scene by scene, I start pulling our cast to run lines. For a five minute film, there's a lot of damn memorization in this flick.

11:30 AM -- I remember that I, too, have lines I need to memorize. This comes as a great shock to me, as I have not acted in some time and worse, we're supposed to start shooting at noon.

1:00 PM -- We start shooting. It wasn't learning my lines that slowed us down, but obtaining a makeshift camera dolly that had disappeared somewhere in Madison.

3:00 PM -- We begin rolling film on the fire escape scene. This is somewhat treacherous, and I am alternately convinced that Jeff is going to fall to his death or Erica is going to keel over from heart palpitations. None of this influences me when we push through the entire scene without pausing for a break. We are chasing daylight, goddamnit.

3:05 PM -- Crowds alternately gather and then break up below us, watching the drama unfolding high above them over and over again. Jeff's lunatic giggling and Tim's attempts as a "police officer" to talk him down are apparently fairly convincing. One high schooler shouts up to us between takes she almost dialed 911. I was two steps ahead of her and called Lt. David McCaw at the Madison Police Department at 2:30 to let him know what we were up to.

5:30 PM -- We wrap the treacherous fire escape scene after Aaron nearly kills Erica by reaching out to grab a flying piece of bailout check and Erica thinks he's going to jump. I decide I'm never going hiking with Erica.

6:00 PM -- We wrap the last of our outdoor shots on the ground. The cast and crew are getting crabby -- low blood sugar. We take 60 and get some good eats nearby. It's the first non-bagel food I have had all day.

7:30 PM -- Aaron puts on a fresh pot of coffee, we shake off the exhaustion and get back to cracking. We shoot the last group scene and dismiss some extras, then shoot the one-on-ones. Cast members start dropping like flies as they're dismissed.

12:00 AM -- We start rolling on our last scene at a different locale, the vending machines at Midwest Family Broadcasting. The infamous line, "Salsitas, NICE!" is born in a moment of divine improvisation. We wrap and roll.

2:30 AM -- Sleep.

8:30 AM -- Consciousness hits like a baseball bat... Coffee, shower, Lindsay Stone and Briggs.

9:30 AM -- Aaron and I get cutting at his office after he picks up the captured video from Steffen. We don't quite have the coverage we want for the conference room, but we can make it work.

10:00 AM -- Strutt shows up, and we have a 15 minute sit-down as I take him through the script and explain what we will need for a score.

10:15 AM -- Strutt leaves LSB for his house on the south side, where he will compose the film's score.

12:23 PM -- Somehow, there's an email from Strutt with a link to eight distinctive pieces of scoring for moments in the film... I am in awe of this man for about the twenty-third time in my life.

1:36 PM -- Timmy calls, then joins us in the editing studio. It seems surreal to be editing frantically with them on something that's not "Your Signs." I deal with it.

3:04 PM -- Erica calls... I tell her it's going to be tight. We're worried.

3:40 PM -- Kilgore texts me for the third or fourth time that afternoon, antsy to see progress. He tries to bribe me with ice cream. I cave in.

4:00 PM -- Kilgore shows up without ice cream. We let him see our progress, then send him off for ice cream.

4:30 PM -- A lot more non-editors have started hanging around the studio, which has some nerves on edge, but it seems like we're going to make it now.

5:00 PM -- We have a rough cut that runs 5:20. We need to get it under 5:00.

5:20 PM -- Our cut now runs 5:04. I say it's close e-damn-nough. Timmy throws a line back at me from a year and a half ago when we were working on the Christmas Special sequel: "We've gotten it this close, let's cut it all the way down."

5:30 PM -- We start our rendering process. A power outage or hard drive failure now will ruin our lives, but none seem forthcoming.

6:00 PM -- I am laying on the hard floor breathing deeply, listening to the computer click. I hate rendering.

6:05 PM -- Our render is complete. Aaron starts burning the project to a DVD.

6:20 PM -- We have two DVDs with the screening-cut of Monsieur Maintenance on them. I tell Aaron he is to submit the second copy if I am killed in a fiery accident en route to Hilldale.

6:45 PM -- I am not killed en route to Hilldale, but submit the film to the guy at the door, count the number of entrants above me on the list, then pump my fists into the air and proudly declare, "Third Place!" He looks at me like I don't get it. I look at him like he doesn't get it. We were probably both right.

So all in all, a trying but rewarding experience. My favorites of the night were Rob Matsushita's "Extremed," starring the fabulous Emily Mills, and Josh Klessig's Ethology. The Decider did a write-up on the Kabaret which is definitely worth a read. Those itching to see the final cut of Monsieur Maintenance can check back here in a week. Tim, Aaron and I agreed we want to tack about ten seconds back onto the film and clean it up, and then we'll be posting it on Youtube.

And it sounds like we'll be rallying the same crew to participate in the July Kabaret. Steffen, Ellie, Jeff, Kilgore, Erica, Katie, Adam and Branton were just too good not to work with again.

Now I'm going to sleep, damnit!

Art of the Moniker

Maybe it's a goofy thing to get excited about, but when I saw the Cap Times headline today that read, "Parka Bandit Hits Again," I let out a whoop, then nearly fell out of my chair in a fit of maniacal chuckling.

No, I was not delighted at the news that some low life had held up his sixth, seventh or even eighth convenience store in a week. And no, I am not in fact, as some have suggested, moonlighting on the side as the Parka Bandit myself, though in my darker, broker hours... Well, we'll just leave it at that.

But I was excited to see the Parka Bandit in the headlines because I coined the term "Parka Bandit" on-air in the middle of last week when I first found out some goon was knocking over gas stations with a black coat's hood cinched down tight over his face. Police spokesman Joel Despain heard it and loved it and ran with it in one of his press releases, and Channel 3 and the Cap Times took it from there.

I had no idea the term would end up being this persistent, but with every store the Parka Bandit hits, it becomes more clear a term is needed to refer to this thug, and I'm pleased mine made the cut.

Again, it seems like a silly thing to get excited over, but I feel like I've achieved some legitimate accomplishment, some rite of passage.

Before I go on, it sounds like this slimeball hit a convenience store again tonight, though a little earlier than he usually strikes. It's the same MO all up and down, though. The suspect walks into a gas station in a black coat, his face covered by the hood, and makes to order a pack of smokes. When he has the clerk's attention, he flashes his piece, they throw money on the counter and he walks away.

It isn't brain surgery. It isn't rocket science. In fact, it's so simple-minded and myopic that this guy has all but guaranteed he's going to be caught eventually. Let's face it. All it would take is an enterprising bystander who realizes that hood cinched down so tight really limits this guy's peripheral vision to bash him over the head with a heavy jar of salsa, and the Parka Bandit's reign of terror would be over.

I've talked to a few police officials about the case, and they all say the same thing: he's not the brightest crayon in the box, and he's probably trying to feed some kind of drug habit.

That's part of the reason I felt coining a moniker for the Parka Bandit was appropriate. Right now, this guy thinks he's walking away with easy money, night in and night out, and he thinks he's pretty tough getting it with a handgun. Others could see his example, and in their own simple, short-sighted ways think they've found a great way to earn a few bucks themselves.

In the long-term, the Parka Bandit will be caught, and he will be locked up in jail for a very long time. But until that happens, we as a society need to make it clear that the bandit's behavior is simply unacceptable. It will not be tolerated. While jail time will make an example of the Parka Bandit eventually, until then he deserves every ounce of our collective derision, accumulated disdain and outright mockery.

Potential copycats need to see that there is nothing glamorous about being a two-bit thug with a handgun, a goofy disguise and delusions of grandeur. Who knows? The Parka Bandit may be a victim of his own circumstances, stealing money to pay off a dangerous debtor or fund his own sick mom's cancer treatment, but he lost any claim for sympathy when he carried a firearm into public and used it to endanger the lives of his fellow Madisonians.

Because as easy as he is to mock, the Parka Bandit and his ilk are two things above all else: dangerous menaces and timebombs waiting to go off. Every time I see a press release come down the pipe about this guy, I hold my breath and hope this wasn't the time the clerk wasn't quick enough with the cash for his liking.

While 95 percent of this sleeze only carries a weapon for show and would never actually use it on an innocent, there's always that dangerous element that's too drugged up or too disconnected from reality or just too nasty to let something like decency stop them from crossing that final line.

LERN TOO RIGHT!!!

I don't know who writes the web copy for Madison's Channel 27, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's someone's third-grade kid, because most people I know had a better grasp of the English language starting at age eight than this alleged "writer."

It's well-documented that the abuses inflicted upon grammar as we know it by wkowtv.com have rankled me for some time, and while I don't know what it was about today's story on the Allied neighborhood that pushed me over the edge, I may have finally reached my breaking point.

A wise man once said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," so I won't be throwing any rocks at Channel 27's news studio any time soon. I will, however, right these grammatical sins to the best of my ability and be completely merciless in terms of leveling criticism until the culprit either attains his or her GED or is re-assigned to a more appropriate duty at the television station -- say, for instance, pushing a broom.

From wkowtv.com, as of 1 PM Friday, February 27.

" MADISON (WKOW) -- A Madison neighborhood task force is working on making sure people living in the allied drive (1) area can get to the grocery store.

The communities (2) only grocery store, Cub Foods on Verona Road, closed down, and because of the tough economy, it could be a while before another store takes it's (3) place.

The closest stores now are Copps on Whitney Way and Super Target off PD. Both are a two mile trip.

"Even when Cub was here, that was walking distance, they (4) can bring their grocery's (5) back in buggies to their houses...Bus fares will go up to $2.00 in April and I can't see how people are going to survive without a grocery store in their community," says Allied Area Task Force member Robert Artis. "

The corrections, as you see, are simple. These are not nitpicky details, which I could spend even more time whingeing about. These are basic grammatical rules that are being flagrantly ignored -- or, the writer is flagrantly ignorant of them.

(1) Used: "allied drive." Needed: "Allied Drive." The name of a street in Madison is a proper noun, warranting capitalization.

(2) Used: plural form, "communities." Needed: possessive form, "community's." As you'll see, the possessive versus plural forms are really this writer's Achilles' Heel. I can't read a damn story, or in this case, a damn paragraph without choking on one of these errors.

(3) Used: contraction of it is, "it's." Needed: possessive form of it, "its." Some people call this one a curve ball. They're just idiots. You wouldn't say "another store takes it is place," so don't write "another store takes it's place." I learned this when I was seven.

(4) Used: Run-on sentence. Needed: A period and a new sentence. I realize it can be tricky to take spoken sentence fragments and turn them into something that looks good on paper -- I did it for two years. But for the love of everything that's decent in the world, you have to at least TRY! And while you're at it, you can add something in paratheses to make it a little more clear what this goober was talking about, a la "Even when Cub was here, that was (within) walking distance. They (could) bring their groceries back in buggies to their houses..."

(5) Used: possessive form, "grocery's." Needed: plural form, "groceries." This could not BE any more simple. In most cases, if there are more than one of a thing, there's no need for an apostrophe. If a thing belongs to a person or people, use an apostrophe. You just damn well better make sure you place that apostrophe correctly, or we'll really have a beef.

So there you have it: four grafs, and none of them very meaty, five obvious grammatical errors my 10-year-old cousin could have picked out in 30 seconds.

This kind of writing on the internet, or anywhere else for that matter, is brain pollution. It's as dangerous as the C02 and particulate matter being belched into the air by massive factories in our nation. I fully support creating a cap and trade system for carbon emissions in the United States, but there is no excuse for this kind of grammar. It needs to be stamped out, and the most egregious violators need to be publicly flayed in order to keep our children from being exposed to this vile filth.

Its four you're one good.

Nip it in the *Bud*

The last thing I wanted to do after a long Monday was sit down and write a double post, but it seems like the State Journal has forced my hand tonight.

Read this, and then ask yourself why any publication posing as a credible news source would choose to run with such drivel. Go ahead, read it. I'll wait...

...Okay, while you were doing that, I sat here and got progressively more fed up with what's clearly a half-assed hatchet job character assassination carried out against one of the most dedicated, selfless, hard-working, amicable and admirable civil servants our city has ever known. State Journal -- No. Inappropriate. Uncalled for. Go back to your sagging ad revenues and think about what you've done.

I'm not attacking Sandy Cullen or Dean Mosiman for their work on this story. I know Sandy personally, and Dean's reputation proceeds him wherever you go in city hall. Many of the same adjectives I used to describe Mike Verveer can be applied in their cases too, and as sure as I know anything, I know writing this piece left an awfully bitter taste in their mouths.

I would lay good money the orders to write this piece came from up top, somewhere. Again, I pose the question: why would a newspaper choose to run this story? What about this story makes it newsworthy? What service does it provide me as a citizen and as a reader?

If I were to try and peel back all the layers of *wrong* heaped into creating this hit piece, I would start by trying to trim away the multiple levels of conjecture used to build a false link from "marijuana" to "Mike Verveer." If you take away the narrative of this piece, clean it up and set it in its proper order, a police officer went into a bar, thought she might have smelled marijuana, decided to leave and saw Mike Verveer on her way out.

Upon the patrolwoman's return, the officer in charge noted the incident and said she ought to file a report. Trying to keep things in order, the police department is reviewing the case to make sure there were no improprieties. Good for them.

It could be there was no weed at all, and the officer was smelling something else. After all, for some godforsaken reason, they make incense that smells like marijuana. If could be the odor was on someone's clothes. It could be someone in an apartment above or an alley behind the restaurant was toking up and a bad HVAC system pumped it in. It could be a few "bad seeds" in a notably dark establishment were enjoying a few puffs.

If simply being in a room that smells of pot is a news story, the entire city of Madison would have had their turn on the front page by now.

The possibilities are so endless, this can't even be called a case of "guilt by association." Nor was Alder Tim Bruer's assertion in the WSJ article that Verveer was "in the wrong place at the wrong time," accurate. This is the condemnation of a man with a political bullseye on his back by enemies striving to draw the remotest connection from him to anything resembling dirt.

Of course, none of that speaks to the fact that there isn't a damn thing wrong with it if a person chooses for him- or herself to rock the occasional bit of ganj. Verveer certainly wouldn't be the first official elected to office that enjoys a puff here or there, but if any of them do, it's none of the press's damn business.

Yes, that's me, a reporter, saying the press ought to go sit and spin on this one. What stinks about this story isn't anything herbal, it's the reek of "gotcha" tabloid grubbing that falls nowhere within the realm of respectable journalism as it was taught to me by the professionals at the University of Wisconsin.

That much said, watch for every single media outlet in town to sieze upon this story. I myself am liable to have to read it on-air tomorrow, and if you listen closely, you'll be able to pick out the sound of grinding teeth.

It doesn't take Rainman to get the math to add up on this one. Word of the investigation worked its way through the ranks at the police department, and eventually one of Verveer's enemies got wind of it. As an assistant district attorney, an outspoken city resident and a longtime member of the Progressive Dane party, he's made plenty of enemies, and there are factions trying to take advantage of a recent momentum swing in local politics that will use any edge they can get.

The news made its way through some of the seedier elements of local government, and eventually one of them walked into a senior editor's office at the right-leaning State Journal and said, "Boy, have I got a scoop for you."

Alder Michael Schumacher calling into question Verveer's suitability to serve on the Alcohol License Review Committee smacks of the worst kind of political gamesmanship. It's no secret he butts heads with Verveer on a number of issues. Frankly, I take it as a comfort on the occasions I see Verveer out at a downtown bar. It's nice to know that the people who regulate the city's drinking establishments, some of them at least, aren't out-of-touch curmudgeonly old squares.

And you'd better believe Alders Tim Bruer and Mark Clear weren't crying when they saw this story make headlines either.

I find nothing so disturbing as the notion that these sorts of political dramas are playing out, but I'm not so naive as to pretend they aren't. I already have it from good sources exactly which alders dug up the dirt, and which of them delivered it. You're on notice. If this sort of chicanery persists in my city's government, I will confirm who among you are perpetuating it, and you will be outed.

After that, I will apply a microscope to every facet of your life and flay you open for the world to see. The blade you wield is double-edged, and if you get too caught up in swinging it, you're liable to trip and fall on it.

All that violent imagery is strictly figurative, of course. But this really cooks my damn bacon.

As to what ought to happen in the next few days, the answer should be nothing. Zilch. Nada. Give the story its fair play, and then let it die a quiet, lonely death. Do not revisit it. Do not follow up on it. In perhaps the most awful pun I've made in months, it ought to be nipped in the bud, and if one person mentions it in passing come Mike Verveer's next run for office, the city council ought to pass legislation making it legal to shoot them.

But, in other news, someone out there had a worse day today than Mike Verveer, and that person is Fitchburg's Marc Jones. Up until this afternoon, Jones thought he was going to be competing with Mayoral candidate Jay Allen in the April election after placing second in last week's primary election by a single vote.

As common sense procedure would dictate in a race so close, the Fitchburg Clerk's office decided to stage a recount. In the course of counting the absentee ballots, they noticed one of the witness signatures on an envelope was invalid, meaning one of the absentee ballots cast was as well. Following state protocols, they picked one of the absentee ballots at random to discard, as the ballots and their envelopes had already been seperated.

The ballot randomly selected to be cast off carried a Marc Jones vote, knocking him into a tie with third place contender Mark Vivian and knocking the race into yet another uncharted facet of state law. In keeping with procedure, they placed the two candidates' names in a hat and drew one at random.

That's how Mark Vivian went from planning a nice, quiet spring break (presumably) to laying plans for an assault against Jay Allen's sizeable lead in the primaries. Witnesses at the drawing tell me Jones took the news with marked calm, meaning if someone bombs Fitchburg City Hall in the next couple of weeks, I know who's going at the top of my suspects list.

Helluva Bender

When an official with the Middleton Police Department told me it was going to be a while before they knew more details about a string of arsons because the suspects were "still sobering up" at ten in the morning, I knew it was going to be a good story.

Of course, that was more than a week ago on February 13, and as the tale of 23-year-old Christopher Ripp and 19-year-old Collin Tubbs's (alleged) bender has emerged since, I've been proved more right with each detail.

A wise, albeit fictional, man once said, "If you can't do something smart, do something right." While there's certainly nothing intelligent (or admirable, for that matter) about what these two braniacs did, when it comes to history's great nights of mayhem, their (alleged) actions in the wee hours of February 13, 2009 certainly deserve a page in the book.

Of course, Ripp and Tubbs are presumed innocent until they stand trial for their actions, but here's the story as I've been able to piece it together, mostly through conversations with the Middleton Police Department.

It was Thirsty Thursday, and Ripp and Tubbs were throwing a few back at a house party in Middleton. We may never know what started it, and frankly it doesn't matter, but in the course of their carousing, a brawl erupted with some other partiers, words were exchanged, fists were thrown, and feelings were hurt.

After a brief breather, the fighters decided to "take it outside," where the perceived insult became so egregious as to necessitate the introduction of knifeplay into the fray. But stabbing one of the other brawling parties in the hand was only the beginning for Ripp and Tubbs, who then jumped into their car and went tearing through the sleepy, residential streets of Middleton exchanging gunfire with other cars full of window-lickers.

It's no small miracle an innocent bystander wasn't wounded in the ensuing firefight, although I'm sure a few of Middleton's citizenry found perforated mailboxes, garage doors and lawn ornaments the next morning.

After some time, cops say the chase ended without blood, and Ripp and Tubbs returned to their home. That's where a normal night of mayhem might have ended, as they staggered into the living room and passed out cold, only to awake the next morning with Jaeger on their breath, bulletholes in their car and no idea what connection there was between the two.

But what set Ripp and Tubbs apart from your average drunken losers was the decision they made next. Apparently none-too-thrilled with the new "speed holes" in their automobile, they took to the streets again with a gas can, delusions of revenge and not a thread of common sense or decency.

They threw a burning propane cylinder through the window of a house in Middleton, where a guy who had spent the night trying to mediate between the warring parties resides with his wife, who's eight months pregnant. To get back at one of the guys they were fighting, they set fire to a five-unit apartment building in Madison, where four other people with no involvement whatsoever lived. For their coup de grace, they tried to get back at another one of the brawlers by torching the outside of a house in Cross Plains.

Right block, wrong house. I don't envy the family that woke up in the dead of night with no idea why their house was on fire.

All tuckered out, Ripp and Tubbs returned home to sleep the sleep of angels... that is, until they awoke at 7:30 in the morning to find Middleton Police poking around the bullet-riddled car they'd left parked in plain view on the street.

Still drunk, they went charging out the front door yelling at the police, who were in the process of impounding the vehicle as evidence. You have to credit the officers on scene for being able to catch the scent of gasoline on Tubbs and Ripp over the booze they must have reeked of.

If anything, we should be grateful these two menaces made themselves so easy to catch. They've been banged up in the Dane County jail since the thirteenth, and the DA's office is weighing a laundry list of 32 charges against them that include arson and attempted murder.

Personally, I hope they're charged too with Mayhem, which actually is an imprisonable, if vague, offense in Wisconsin, for no other reason than the morning of the thirteenth is a definition of the term worthy of Webster's.

I've also got some healthy respect for Tubbs's dad, Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs, for leaving his no-good kid to rot in jail this long. Bail was set at 40-grand in cash, and while I'm sure posting it or making other arrangements to get the punk out of lockup are not outside Chief Tubbs's means, it doesn't sound like he's made any effort.

The scope of this little crime spree goes well beyond the realm of poor choices and crosses the line of recklessly endangering innocent lives. If Christopher Ripp and Collin Tubbs are ever to become productive members of society, it's tough love that's going to do the job -- the kind of tough love that drops like a hammer.

Theirs is the behavior of dangerous children with no connection to the reality they live in, only a simplistic perception of themselves as the stars in their own private television crime drama.

Open Letter to WSUM

In response to today's seventh Anniversary of Madison's Snake on the Lake going live on-air, and a dedication by former UW Chancellor John Wiley of their brand-spanking new, state-of-the-art broadcasting facility in the new student services tower, I sent this letter (well, email) to General Manager Dave Black and Tech Director Matt Rockwell today. They are, simply put, the best there are.

"Gentlemen,

I know the WSUM move-in is an ongoing process, and I certainly hate to get the cart and the horse in the wrong order, but in light of tonight's events, I just wanted to offer my heartfelt congratulations to both of you on seeing what some would have called a blissful pipe dream all the way through to an operating reality. I'm a little irked I won't be able to be there early enough for the ex-Chancellor's presentation. As much as I tried to weasle out of work early, it just couldn't happen today, but I will be stopping out briefly a little later this evening.

I worked on the WSUM facilities visioning committee, sketching out the initial concepts for the new studios, knowing that I would be long gone by the time they were actually implemented. It was still one of the most exciting and fulfilling processes of my career at the UW, as we bounced ideas off of each other and, of course, Matt Rockwell, who has worked on this project with all the tenacity of a mother eagle defending her nest. Without his guidance, his technical know-how, his creativity, his drive and his dedication to the project, WSUM's new studio would be a shadow of what it stands to be today: the best student broadcasting facility in the nation. His fingerprints will remain on everything in the station for generations to come. If it's not too dramatic to say so, I think it's his opus.

While Matt's nuts and bolts knowledge of this project is unparalleled, it is matched in intensity only by the depth of Dave Black's vision for WSUM, which spans decades to a time when just having a radio station on the UW campus was more unlikely than the prospect of opening a state of the art facility was in 2006. Every accomplishment that's been made by WSUM's students and staff since its inception has stood on the shoulders of this giant. When he embarked on founding the program, he might have known this day would come, but it's a likely chance nobody else would have given it a shot, and it's his confidence, leadership and attention to detail that has guided WSUM to this point.

Coming up through the years in a ramshackle, second-floor, gerry-rigged, sometimes smelly and sometimes sweltering studio was never easy, but for the students that have built WSUM to what it is today, it was never about the equipment or the building. It was about WSUM's mission, and it was about putting together a unique on-air product we could all be proud of. I don't expect that will ever change, but that hard work is paying out today. It's only right that WSUM will finally have a studio worthy of the dedication exhibited by the dozens, the hundreds of students and staff that pour themselves into making the station the best that it can be. While I'm sorry I won't personally be able to capitalize on it, this new facility will provide opportunities for learning and expression that the towers building never could, and if anything, it will raise the bar even further for the next generation of SUMers.

Congratulations again,
Dusty Weis"