Madison School District Safety Coordinator Luis Yudice (Luis is a retired Police Officer and a East High Grad) at a recent West High School neighborhood crime discussion (10/18/2007):
“Big picture perspective:
Our community really has changed a lot within the past five years. I sense a great deal of stress within the police department.
Citywide issues
Increasing violence involving girls. He has looked at a lot of data with the District Attorney’s office. Girls are extremely angry.
Angry parents are coming into the schools.
Increasing issues in the neighborhood that end up in the schools. Mentioned South Transfer Point beating and that Principal Ed Holmes mediated the situation at an early stage.
Growing gang violence issue particularly in the east side schools. We do have gang activity at Memorial and West but most of the issues are at Lafollete and East. Dealing with this via training and building relationships
What the school are experiencing is a reflection of what is going on in the community.”
Madison Police Chief Noble Wray, via Bill Lueders @ Isthmus (7/30/2008):
He (Wray) began by talking about perceptions of crime, and especially the notion that it’s getting worse in Madison. He stressed that it wasn’t just the media and public who felt this way: “If I would ask the average beat cop, I think they would say it’s gotten worse.” But, he added, “Worse compared to what?”
The absence of local safety data spurred several SIS contributors to obtain and publish the police call data displayed below. Attorney and parent Chan Stroman provided pro bono public records assistance. Chan’s work on this matter extended to the Wisconsin Attorney General’s office.
A few important notes on this data:
- 13% of the records could not be geocoded and therefore are not included in the summary information. The downloadable 1996-2006 police call data .zip file is comprehensive, however.
- Clicking on the numbers below takes the reader to a detail page. This page includes all matching police calls and a downloadable .csv file of same. The csv file can be opened in Excel, Numbers and many data management tools.
- This summary is rather brief, I hope others download the data and have a look.
Police Calls within .25 miles of: | |||||
Madison East Area | Edgewood Area | LaFollette Area | Memorial Area | West Area | |
1996 | 1285 | 392 | 324 | 869 | 728 |
1997 | 1351 | 455 | 403 | 896 | 750 |
1998 | 1340 | 343 | 488 | 875 | 703 |
1999 | 1281 | 352 | 477 | 969 | 772 |
2000 | 1391 | 300 | 528 | 888 | 933 |
2001 | 1476 | 305 | 480 | 769 | 1034 |
2002 | 1470 | 363 | 491 | 886 | 1019 |
2003 | 1362 | 349 | 403 | 865 | 921 |
2004 | 1455 | 346 | 449 | 989 | 1012 |
2005 | 1311 | 325 | 465 | 994 | 917 |
2006 | 1221 | 330 | 389 | 1105 | 838 |
Weapons Incident / Offense | |||||
Madison East Area | Edgewood Area | LaFollette Area | Memorial Area | West Area | |
1996 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 6 |
1997 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 0 |
1998 | 10 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 1 |
1999 | 10 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 0 |
2000 | 4 | 0 | 6 | 2 | 5 |
2001 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
2002 | 11 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 5 |
2003 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 5 |
2004 | 4 | 0 | 9 | 7 | 4 |
2005 | 9 | 0 | 6 | 6 | 2 |
2006 | 10 | 1 | 5 | 7 | 3 |
Drug Incident | |||||
Madison East Area | Edgewood Area | LaFollette Area | Memorial Area | West Area | |
1996 | 10 | 0 | 10 | 9 | 7 |
1997 | 16 | 0 | 7 | 6 | 4 |
1998 | 12 | 1 | 8 | 10 | 6 |
1999 | 18 | 0 | 7 | 18 | 4 |
2000 | 16 | 2 | 13 | 17 | 12 |
2001 | 18 | 0 | 10 | 20 | 12 |
2002 | 22 | 0 | 14 | 16 | 12 |
2003 | 23 | 2 | 18 | 15 | 8 |
2004 | 26 | 0 | 20 | 17 | 7 |
2005 | 19 | 0 | 17 | 20 | 12 |
2006 | 24 | 2 | 11 | 15 | 8 |
Arrested Juvenile | |||||
Madison East Area | Edgewood Area | LaFollette Area | Memorial Area | West Area | |
1996 | 59 | 1 | 35 | 28 | 38 |
1997 | 72 | 0 | 83 | 52 | 29 |
1998 | 21 | 0 | 34 | 17 | 14 |
1999 | 16 | 0 | 29 | 24 | 7 |
2000 | 42 | 0 | 76 | 14 | 15 |
2001 | 52 | 0 | 66 | 19 | 15 |
2002 | 51 | 0 | 69 | 13 | 12 |
2003 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 9 | 3 |
2004 | 8 | 0 | 8 | 9 | 4 |
2005 | 11 | 0 | 10 | 7 | 3 |
2006 | 6 | 0 | 21 | 11 | 4 |
Bomb Threat | |||||
Madison East Area | Edgewood Area | LaFollette Area | Memorial Area | West Area | |
1996 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
1997 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
1998 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
1999 | 7 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 1 |
2000 | 4 | 0 | 17 | 2 | 1 |
2001 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 10 | 11 |
2002 | 2 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 4 |
2003 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 11 |
2004 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 6 |
2005 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
2006 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
Related links:
- 1996-2006 Madison Police Calls 20MB .zip file
- Externalities in the Classroom: How Children Exposed to Domestic Violence Affect Everyone’s Kids
- Parents Seek Safety Report Cards
- Educating the Community on Gangs in Madison
- Madison School Board Discusses Discipline, Safety, Cell Phones and Code of Conduct
- Gangs & School Violence Forum: Audio / Video
- Madison’s public high schools feature an “open campus”
- The Madison School District & Corwin Kronenberg
- It is important to remember the event coding “assault, battery, information, etc” may vary from day to day and person to person.
- The last two digits of individual street numbers was removed by the Madison Police Department. Those interested in geocoding the data can substitute “99” for the “xx”.
- I have requested an electronic copy of the 2007 data and will update this information upon receipt.