Los Angeles Times Looks At Madison, Crime, and Homeless

As the morning's temperatures cracked 40 degrees, Tuesday's Los Angeles Times greeted readers with:

Madison, Wisconsin, casts a cold eye on its homeless

- In the college city known for its liberal values, the transient population comes under suspicion in two unsolved slayings. It's causing some soul-searching.

P.J. Hufftutter brought an accurate assessment of the situation at a time when less reasonable accountings of a difficult criminal and social challenge are nationally recounted.

The article reports the three highly visible, downtown related unsolved homicides and the tensions we face in confronting the task of tending to,  and yet, regulating homeless living.

• Distinctions need to be made between homeless families seeking shelter, homeless individuals seeking shelter, and homeless individuals not seeking shelter.  The latter are mostly men, many are veterans and a very significant number have drug and alcohol related problems.
• The right to speak to someone on the street and ask for money is constitutionally protected but it can be regulated as to type of behavior and in some instances, place.
• It is often ignored, but Madison has an ordinance that prohibits panhandling in the street right of way.  That means cars cannot be approached from curbs or medians.
• It is likely that a handful of drifters are responsible for as much as 50%, or more, of the public safety calls to Peace Park and the surrounding area.
• For those who are concerned about the homeless, I would recommend working directly with Porchlight, Madison Urban Ministry, Interfaith Hospitality Network, and other organizations rather than a do-it-yourself approach.

 

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Comments

[George Hesselberg]

I am surprised. I found the LATimes article to be partly cliche and same-olds, but much more lucid than recent mutterings and unattributed incoherencies on national cable. Nature of the beast, I suppose, is that what is new to others elsewhere seems so redundant to others in context.

[George Hesselberg]

I am surprised. I found the LATimes article to be partly cliche and same-olds, but much more lucid than recent mutterings and unattributed incoherencies on national cable. Nature of the beast, I suppose, is that what is new to others elsewhere seems so redundant to others in context.

[antpoppa]

It's a predatory means to an end. Our culture has championed a leadership of conscienceless people engaged in self promotion, greed and violence. Our ideology, our American Dream, is success no matter what the cost, what the hurt imposed. If the President of the United States can lie about matters of life and death, a Vice President can profit from war, and an electorate chooses to endorse these pathological values, then how can we judge this small environment of homeless people. We have sown the seed now we reap the crop.
I think as a society we recognize this shadow side of ourselves and are not proud of it. Because we have this sense of hopelessness and an inability to bring ourselves to task, we tend to project our circumstance on others identifying a small ineffectual group as not normal or pathological.
This projection is a fatal mistake.
There is a big difference between a person on the street having a heated argument with violence ensuing, and cold-blooded, calculated, attack on thousands or millions with death and greed as it's goal.
Put the collar around the dogs head to lead it, the tail will follow.
Power comes from lying, lying big and getting the whole damn world to go along with you.

"Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain't true, you got 'em by the balls."
SIN CITY

[Brian]

WHAT liberal values? We have low wages, wide disparity in wealth distribution, low levels of unionization and under-funded schools just like any other city our size. Apathy, ignorance, and commercialism dominate here only to a slightly lesser degree than you might find in Green Bay or Oshkosh.

Soon our schools are going to look like Milwaukee's: starved for funding, overwhelmed by ridiculous curriculum mandates, bludgeoned with stupid standardized tests, and majority non-white.

Thousands of people who want full time living wage employment cannot get it.

Scot Klug was our Congressman, for what, six years?

On any given Saturday when any well-organized liberal or progressive or left group manages, through tireless, well-planned organizing to put 500 to 1,000 people at a badly needed Capitol rally, tens of thousands of Dane County residents are out in the malls or sitting at home watching 22 guys pound the crap out of one another on a field of grass on the one-eyed baby sitter.

Sure we vote more liberal than the rest of the state, but that's a low standard.

[carol]

There is a tolerance for misbehavior among the 'loitering' that is disturbing. My 22 year-old daughter has been followed for blocks, harassed when she crosses the street to mail letters, and now I consciously have altered my evening walks near the Capital to avoid the massive gauntlet on West Washington Ave. I believe the murder of a co-ed occurred only blocks away. Causality--no...correlation--possibly. Please reevaluate the policies for gathering/loitering--or better, suggest the decision-makers walk home from work each night (alone) at 10:30 PM through the 'loitering' group of 20+ gathered on any warm Madison summer eve.