Madison had two capitols!
Sometimes one CAN judge a book by its cover. According to the annual report of the city’s latest independent police monitor, Madison has not one but two capitol buildings, within blocks of each other.
Sure, the monitor is only four months in town but might she have questioned the likelihood of two identical capitols? Did she even look at the damn thing (since scrubbed from its website)? Mizz Aeiramique Glass apologized (after a fashion), saying she didn’t account for “how much the skyline means to this community.” It’s not the skyline, dear lady, but credibility. She expressed wonderment that using artificial intelligence, which she blamed for the cover, “was a negative thing here in Madison.”
That’s got to rank right up there with George Costanza explaining to his boss that no one told him engaging in sexual intercourse with the cleaning lady on his office desk was against company policy at that particular workplace. “If I had known …”
Mizz Glass doth protest that the contents of the report should be taken seriously. But how likely is it that black kids (we do not capitalize) are 25 times more likely to be cited for disorderly conduct than white? Twenty-five times! Work out the math involved in that. If 100 white kids were cited for disorderly that equates to 2,500 black kids; or 100 black kids hit up 25 times each. At 7.2% of the city’s population! A-I could have done better.
Gobbledygook
However disordered, the real brains behind this enterprise is the office’s data cruncher, Greg Gelembiuk, aka Doctor Gobbledygook. (Seriously, listen to this guy some time serve up one of his Thousand Island word salads! Those of a certain age will recall Dr. Irwin Corey, the master of double-talk.) Being detained by police is hurtful to kids, says Dr. G, thereby capitalizing in bold print THE ANTI-COP BIAS of this entire enterprise. How about hurtful to public safety? Talk to the staff at Sennett middle school, bitten and punched by a 14-year-old kid 03-19-26. Or the 16 year old causing trouble and concealing a firearm on State Street. (No, we do not care to know the troubled kids’ race. Immaterial.)
The monitor and its Police Civilian Oversight Board were created during the Defund the Police madness after the George Floyd killing in 2020 and predicated by the police shooting of a violent drug abuser, Tony Robinson Jr., 03-05-15.
Thanks to reporter Chris Rickert, we learn that — five years after its creation — the monitor completed its first eight investigations. Blaska Policy Werkes has submitted a Freedom of Information request seeking those findings. Did they find Madison police racist or not? Presumably, Mizz Glass is still probing the arrest of her chairman, Maia Pearson, for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. (“The absurdity of the damn thing won’t stop.”)
Of 20 alders only three, all black — Isadore Knox, Barbara Harrington McKinney, and Joann Pritchett — voted to defund this running joke. The monitor is now asking for an annual budget of $1.97 million — five times its current $405,964. (Not 25 times?)
Blaska’s Bottom Line: A report this slapdash and wrong-headed is only the latest argument for deputizing building security to hustle Mizz Glass and her sidekick, Dr. Gobbledygook, off the premises. Use their offices for storage.
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