Madison Common Council adds 3 extra police officers
Spurns extra firefighters and ambulance
A downtown resident and business owner gave compelling testimony Tuesday night (11-12-19) urging the Madison Common Council to add more police officers. Her name is Saundra Meuer and she grew up in this town and also works at a downtown senior adult center. She was among the many who spoke Tuesday night urging more police, including Yours Truly, two students living on Langdon Street — now bereft of a Madison police officer — and a wonderful police officer named Nick Cleary, who said his family is considering moving out of the city:
Nobody should feel hostage in own city but my wife, the wife of a police officer, doesn’t always not feel comfortable taking our two daughters out in public. She has a fear of having purse taken from her shoulder, her car taken or even having our vehicle crashed into by reckless or impaired drivers. ... On a daily basis at work I am told how I am told by general public how unsettling basic errands have become in our city.
But Saundra’s Meuer’s testimony was the most compelling. This is a partial transcription:
Saundra Meuer:
I now live downtown, own a business downtown and work at a retirement center downtown. I have attended countless committees and task forces and have yet to see any substantial action taken by this chamber to address the decline in the quality of life — especially in the downtown.
Add more police officers to address the aggressive panhandling, the camping, the public urination and the dangerous thugs and gangs that haunt the Square, State Street, the end of the university and all of the Mifflin and Capitol neighborhoods.
What is it going to take before some action is taken? Are we going to let Madison slide to what San Francisco and L.A. has become? … Does it mean some innocent child, or resident, or visitor be at wrong place and time and be shot?
… (at a meeting) I was told by folks in this chamber … what do you expect? You live downtown!
I expect this body before me to take action, to give us public safety. To support the men and women in blue who put their lives on the line. Our officers need the handcuffs taken off them, give them the tools. Is it any wonder our police chief quit when the budget he was given looked like Wisconsin swiss cheese.
What do I expect? I expect the downtown neighborhoods and business owners get the same privilege you folks enjoy. You don’t have to walk over people, move trash bags, deal with aggressive panhandlers who come into your business and interrupt customers. We have squatters outside and have to moved them before we can open our business!
What do I expect? I expect downtown residents to have the same privileges that you do, that we walk out our front door and don’t have to wonder what is under that tarp. Is it a gun? Is it three people? Do they want my money? Do they want my wallet? Do they want to ‘cap me’ because they’re trying to get their gang initiation in Chicago?
I am confronted 4, 5, 6 , 7 times a day by aggressive panhandlers and thugs walking down State street and the top of Mifflin.… and I worry about the retirees I work with and wish they only had to fear the ice and snow on the sidewalk — not the drug deals, and the panhandlers, and the thugs out to hurt the most vulnerable populations in downtown Madison.
For further research: “Homeowner frustrated that man who burglarized his home continues to be let out of jail” — Channel 3000.
Blaska Policy Werkes 
19 responses to “What do I expect? Public safety”
Great speech by Saundra Meuer, too bad it fell on the ignorant deft ears of Madison’s ruling class, the elite pompous-ass progressives and their Democrat sheep.
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Didn’t State Senate republicans just end a session with no actions on helping the homeless? Republicans Pols, can’t live with them, can’t live with them. Just where are the police supposed to take these people?
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All you have is deflections and unethical rationalizations?
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This was posted to a different thread in response to my good friend Gotch. how it got here IDK. but the fact that one can even remotely think it’s a reply to your comment?
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No one thought it was a reply to my comment. What it was was a deflection from this thread and what appears to be a rationalization.
So where was it supposed to be posted?
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Your replies are often this dumb and pointless.
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Take Individual Responsibility For How You Debate
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”Just where are the police supposed to take these people?”
To be sponsored by hand-wringing brow-furrowing Lefties who should lead by example and Walk-the-Walk instead of Talk-the-Talk.
Next question?
The Gotch
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Listened to some of DB’s interview with Ali Muldrow on WORT that occurred today, 11-13.
Beginning at the 4:50 time mark Muldrow decided that Dave required correction for referring to Ananda Mirilli as Muldrow’s friend and doing that was the “flattening of a multi-dimensional relationship” and Dave should refrain from “oversimplifying things because this is a complex conversation.” Muldrow objected to Dave using the term friend instead of, “elected official” and “fellow school board member.”
Muldrow is very precise.
Dave apologized for using the word friend and that he would not do it again in this context.
Has Muldrow publicly chastised students when they express their innate cultural exuberance by telling teachers to fuck-off in the myriad ways they do.
https://www.wortfm.org/talking-across-ideological-difference-ali-muldrow-and-david-blaska/
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A Note Directly To Ali Muldrow,
Addressing Ananda Mirilli by name was completely appropriate, it would also be completely appropriate to include her elected title when talking about her in regards to her elected position but this is not a requirement in all discussions. The context in which Dave Blaska brought Ananda Mirilli’s name into the discussion was NOT in anyway related to her elected position. Blaska did nothing wrong.
Ali Muldrow, your understanding of logic and relationships is interestingly twisted. You said that saying Mirilli is a friend is “flattening of a multi-dimensional relationship”? Sorry Ms Muldrow but that statement is utter BS. The fact is that being a friend vastly EXPANDS what would almost certainly be a flat one-dimensional relationship.
The perception of the public, including Dave Blaska and myself, is that Ali Muldrow and Ananda Mirilli are friends, including being “friends” on Facebook, and it was NOT inappropriate for Dave Blaska to reference the relationship that you two have as being a friendship. Ali, if you’re honestly not friends with Ananda Mirilli then you should have had the intellectual fortitude and personal character to publicly say so, you did not say so. What you did to Dave Blaska on your radio show was a petty gotcha ad hominem and was a direct reflection of your character not Dave’s character.
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Steve, your entire (7:19am) comment is true/accurate/insightful.
Interestingly, at the 5:31 time mark, Muldrow calls DB a friend right after explaining how that same characterization diminishes (flattens) her relationship with Mirilli.
Muldrow is either none too bright, informing her guest their relationship is strictly mono-dimensional, or perhaps the entire exchange was meant to establish how woke PC she is but instead she comes across as condescending and petty.
Dave, you should be fine as long as you remember your proper place when interacting with Ali.
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When listening to Muldrow drag the goalposts all over the playing field and out into the parking lot when intellectually challenged, it struck me that Muldrow appears to only have a superficial overview of the issues she talks about and when she can’t go toe-to-toe on an issue she starts dragging the goalpost around. It’s as if the only thing she knows about the issues are the parroted propaganda talking points.
I encourage Ali Muldrow to go read the blog post Should Congress enact, and the President sign, a carbon tax? and please follow the link to the very informative (but long) blog post called “Climate Change”, it’s worth the read.
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I also encourage Ali Muldrow to stop rationalizing abortion with ridiculous apples to oranges comparisons and read the blog post When Is “Abortion” Not Immoral?.
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The Gotch listened to the whole thing, Blaska in a hilariously even-keeled, spectacular rope-a-dope TKO; WELL worth the time!
Muldrow is a deflecting weasel/typical Lefty, and that “flattening the relationship” horse hockey wasn’t the worst of it; not by a long shot!
Sure, the weepy homage to the “caste system,” the ”Central Park Five,” and pregnancy being “monitoring the tissues” are eminently worthy of a GOTCHIE, but pale in comparison to the winner.
And that would go to possibly THE stupidest, THE most imbecilic (which means that @AnonyBob, et al, will see it as sheer genius!) false analogy/equivalence of all time: Equating the denial of anything but up to full term/on demand abortion to Big Gubmint forcing Blaska to donate a kidney to a needful child.
HeyZeus Alou & SMFH! I felt stupider just listening to it.
The Gotch
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I’ve seen and heard this ridiculous comparison before, it’s not logical and it’s an unethical rationalization.
If having one’s kidney inside another person is analogous to being pregnant, then donating the kidney is analogous to becoming pregnant. Thus, all it proves is that the government should not forcibly impregnate anyone—an assertion with which everyone agrees. In general, there’s a HUGE difference between killing and letting die; specifically, there’s a HUGE difference between choosing to kill a completely helpless and legally unprotected human being and letting a human being die because it puts your own life at risk.
There is a common theme to pro-choice advocates rhetoric, they won’t discuss the choices that women make to engage in sex that literally put the woman in the predicament of being pregnant – even if they use protection which is not 100% effective. What they will do when a pro-life advocate brings up the choice to engage in sexual activity that might make them pregnant, they start dragging the goalposts around the field and try to shift to things like rape and rape already has a near immediate solution to pregnancy. The morning after pill will entirely eliminate the possibility of becoming impregnated by a rapist or even bad choice for a one night fling casual sex. With the availability of contraceptives and the morning after pill, the justifiable reasons that women “need” an abortion in today’s society are dwindling down. Choosing to have sexual intercourse has consequences and those consequences are well known unless the woman and man have lived under a rock their entire life, it’s as if pro-abortion women want to freely sex without any consequences and then reality smacks them in the uterus, so what do they do, they choose to kill a human being.
If a woman doesn’t want to get pregnant and a man doesn’t want to become a father then they need to do the things necessary to prevent pregnancy, period!
Killing a completely helpless and legally unprotected human being in utero after choosing to engage in the one activity that can make a woman pregnant might be legal in our current society but it’s IMMORAL! Anyone that professes that that statement is false is morally bankrupt.
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@Steve Witherspoon;
“I’ve seen and heard this ridiculous comparison before”
Then the staggering imbecility of it’s been softened.
I hadn’t, so on first blush, I found it particularly idiotic.
I’d go so far as to say OCRAZYo-Cortez level stupidity; something so suffocatingly ignorant and yet avowed with such unerring conviction.
The Gotch
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Sounds pretty stupid to say “she’s not my friend”, but that’s pretty much par for the course, given their cozy picture on the rainbow flag for the school board election…oh wait, sorry I said stupid – I guess only Tony Evers can say that. Do I remember Mr. Walker saying something like that?
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Someone or more will die. A burglar shot. A Mom carjacked, a gang banger who was dissed. Maybe one of each given time and the current governance. Many wrong things will be blamed, many pointless studies, panels and experts will wring their hands and fail to acknowledge their guilt, blame or complicity.
Because they are good people……. ask them.
Madison has just too much money and too many highly credentialed experts to ever function.
Form is all.
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Officer Nick Cleary responded to a “theft from vehicle” burglary at The Gotch household in May 2017; good cop, professional and personable.
Someone else has suggested here that Commonsenseless Council/County Board members and the Mayor be required to do regular ”ridealongs” with LEOs; I say make it mandatory going forward like Continuing Ed.
The Gotch
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