Get ’em young before they graduate to maximum security!
Madison’s Office of Independent Police Monitor is hot and bothered that its nemesis, the Madison police department, charges disorderly conduct 50 times more often (it claims) than cops in Milwaukee. To which Blaska Policy Werkes says: GOOD! Well done! Keep it up!
In its still shrouded annual report, the OIPM praises Milwaukee for “nearly eliminating disorderly conduct arrests through deliberate policy reform.” As if Madison should emulate Milwaukee, where crime per capita is worse than Chicago!
• Milwaukee recorded 4,164 serious crimes per 100,000 population. Madison’s rate of serious crime to person and property was almost half that, at 2,124.
• Milwaukee recorded the 12th highest rate of murders in the nation in 2024, according to the FBI. Madison is way down the list of America’s 200 largest cities at 151.
• Property crime: Milwaukee 82nd, Madison 139th.
But Madison is supposed to emulate Milwaukee?
Once again, Aeiramique Glass and Greg Gelembiuk play the race card: “Black juveniles receive the civil citation at 6.9 times the rate of white juveniles.” The monitor’s office jumps — pole vaults — to this conclusion: “The 6.9 to 1 black-to-white citation ratio for juveniles is not explained by behavior alone.” On what basis does the monitor dismiss behavior? OIPM offers only this:
One plausible interpretation: black juveniles are being cited at a lower threshold of behavior — penalized for conduct that would not trigger enforcement against white peers. — OIPM annual report 2025-26
In so many words, on no basis other than statistical disparity!
Hear their dog whistle?
The average progressive cockapoo hears it loud and clear: must be that old debble racism! The argument may be plausible to the cadres at Progressive Dane, but it is not dispositive and hardly probable. OIPM makes no representation that those cited or arrested for disorderly conduct are blameless — that the conduct was not disorderly — only that the numbers by race were (wait for it!) DISPARATE! That argument is desperate!
Proof, as Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes put it once safely out of town, that OIPM “is fishing through research papers to find a methodology that you think will give you the answer that you want so that you can create some kind of sanction or punishment for the police department.”
We say again, the operating bias of the Office of Independent Police Monitor is that police are the problem, not crime — that Madison’s young’uns should be spared their baleful presence, less they be traumatized for life. Policy Werkes argues with considerably more evidence that Madison’s prolific ticket writing forestalls graduating to crime’s big leagues. Indeed, Dane County’s crime rate has been declining, according to the County Community Justice Council. A little Scared Stiff works wonders. Yeah, it’s the Broken Windows theory, to which more cities are returning after first dabbling in “reimagining law enforcement.” Like Minneapolis.
Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. … One unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. …. “Broken Windows” — George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Same way with kids. One kid not arrested for the small stuff is a signal that no one cares.
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