Update: This quote really bugged me:
With regard to the first point in particular, Ald. Michael Schumacher struggled with the idea of approving the license for Acker and Arnold Wednesday night. As a north-side alder, one of his big issues is that almost every week, between Thursday and Saturday, more than half of the city’s on-duty police officers are downtown near bar-time, drawing resources away from his district and others on the outside parts of the city. One of the main goals of the ALRC in recent years, he said, has been to relieve, not enhance, those policing issues, and until police have the resources needed to patrol the downtown and rest of the city late on weekend nights, he wasn’t comfortable adding a place of this capacity.
“I can no longer as an alder for the north side accept the fact that we have police going into the downtown area that we cannot even handle right now. I’m very tired of us thinking of this great downtown when I know people who won’t even go downtown after 11 o’clock,” he said
It’s pretty cut and dry – if the resources aren’t being used effectively downtown, they can be placed elsewhere. The above mentioned concern is valid, but are yet another reason why the Fiore-Hemming policy of tracking 20 year olds downtown for several hours of their shift brand of downtown justice has direct implications in the city’s daily business. Now, new establishments that would open up a significant number of student jobs is on the rocks because we’re concerned about police resources.
Why might that be?
_____
With my last post about bar raids, I outlined an argument about the Madison police spending too much time inside bars working on ineffective strategies to keep downtown safe.
Another impact of this resource trade off?
After more than three hours of discussion, Madison’s Alcohol License Review Committee late Wednesday delayed for a month a recommendation on whether to issue a liquor license to a controversial proposal for a 900-capacity restaurant and banquet facility in the heart of Downtown.
The move to delay a vote on the development at 702 W. Johnson St. in University Square came after committee members raised questions about whether police could handle such a large project in an area already beset by alcohol-related problems and governed by a city alcohol density plan that strictly limits the number of bar liquor licenses.
We don’t have the police resources?
7 Comments
July 17, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Schumacher is gearing up to run for Mayor. Watch what he’s up to on his committees. There’s bigger games afoot.
July 17, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Linking bar checks and limited police resources at bar-time intrigued me, so I took a look at when police were doing bar checks using ALRC summons from Johnny O’s and Ram Head (which at least on the surface seemed like a good sample to look at). Most of the bar checks seemed to happen before 1 a.m., but the number happening during the times when police have said they are understaffed was a little surprising: http://www.madison.com/tct/blogs/cityhall/458724
July 17, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Schumacher would get destroyed in the campus wards. He opposes the bars, pro-student venues and jobs, and has done very little to reach out to campus despite his connections to UW.
He might run, but thousands of student votes would go elsewhere.
July 17, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Thousands? Have you seen campus municipal election turnout?
July 17, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Anonymous, there aren’t thousands of mayor votes in the campus wards.
Using wards 40 (D2), 41 and 42 (D4), 45-48 (D8), 49 (D13, south of Regent), and 60, 62 and 63 (D5) as “campus” wards, there were a grand total of 1,915 votes cast in 2007 for Mayor across 11 wards. In the entire city, there were 49,872 votes cast for mayor.
Being more generous, and including ward 39 from D2 (a fair amount of students), ward 43 (north of Broom in D4 – ie Metropolitan Place and Meriter retirement community), ward 44 in D4 (out to Lake Monona, including the big Condo buildings on the shore), Ward 50 in D13 (south of Regent, but the Vilas neighborhood down by the zoo/arboretum) and ward 61 (Breese Terrace, but mostly University Heights) the vote count goes up to 3704, but those extra 1600 voters from five more wards are by and large not students. (Though, admittedly, the students that live there are upperclassmen, and are more likely to vote than the students who live in ward 62, Lakeshore dorms)
It’s going to have to be very close for students to make a difference.
July 17, 2009 at 2:59 pm
“haven’t you seen the first 43 presidential elections! there is NO WAI A BLACK man could evar win!!1!”
stfu with your insider ward break down bull as if anyone but a handful of political masturbators will follw. If the right mayoral candidate is out there against someone who apparently cares little about student votes, I have no doubt organizations could turn out a few thousand votes on a campus of 42,000.
July 21, 2009 at 8:39 am
Kristin,
I liked the secondary research, but I don’t understand why bar time police levels are something you feel weakens my argument. I don’t base specific claims off *bar time* policing, nor were many of the arguments made by the ALRC. It’s something mentioned in the quote from your story, but the trade off isn’t in a vacuum happening only at 2AM.