LOITERING LAW URGED AS ANSWER TO CITY CRIME

The grass-roots Common Sense Coalition and a majority of Madison City
Council members want to reinstate the city's controversial
anti-loitering law to help stop a surge in serious crime.

But Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said the move is divisive, politically
motivated and distracts from an important community conversation on
public safety.

The effort "is designed to pull people apart," he said.

The original law, passed in 1997 and dropped over concerns about
discrimination in 2002, made it illegal to loiter for the purpose of
selling drugs.

A revised law - with civil liberties protections - is needed to help
police cope with rising crime Downtown and in neighborhoods, said
Michael Quigley, spokesman for the coalition, which is spearheading
the effort to revive the law and marshaling council support.

"The City Council is looking to give the police the tools it needs to
start dealing with some of these issues," Quigley said. "It's time to
get going."

Although the coalition is not yet offering specifics, such laws
generally let police contact and issue citations to people who gather
at places when they have no reason to be there.

A revised law could be crafted to include "criminal intent" and be
used to help quell violence Downtown, Quigley said.

Ald. Tim Bruer of the South Side's 14th District, where the law was
most used in the year before it was dropped in 2002, intends to be a
prime sponsor.

The former law, he said, helped efforts to revitalize troubled South
Side neighborhoods and a revised version would benefit other parts of the city.

The coalition, Quigley said, intends to sponsor a community forum
near the end of the month to help shape a detailed proposal to be
introduced by council members in September.

So far, 11 of the council's 20 members support the effort, Quigley
said. The coalition, he acknowledged, has not contacted any of the
seven members belonging to the grass-roots, leftist political party
Progressive Dane, which opposed the law in the past.

The coalition's initiative presents a political challenge for
Cieslewicz and liberal council members who want to be tough on crime
but face pressures from constituencies to protect civil rights.

"I don't support an anti-loitering ordinance in concept," Cieslewicz
said, reserving judgment on a veto. "We don't know what they're going
to propose, but I'd be a tough sell."

Cieslewicz, who had not been contacted by the coalition, said that
fact "lends credence" to the idea the proposal is political.

Ray Allen, who is running against Cieslewicz for mayor, led the
coalition before he announced his candidacy this spring.

Allen could not be reached for comment.

Ald. Mike Verveer, 4th District, a Progressive Dane member and
assistant district attorney who represents the core Downtown, said he
had not been contacted either and opposes the move.

"This is absolutely not the solution to solving the Downtown's public
safety dilemma," he said. "It is largely symbolic and political."

Bruer, who said he was contacted by the coalition about supporting
the proposal, acknowledged the political implications but said his
personal motivation is about public safety, not politics.

Quigley said he hopes Cieslewicz and members of Progressive Dane will
eventually support the move on its merits.

The proposal comes as public safety becomes an increasingly hot topic.

On Aug. 3, Police Chief Noble Wray voiced the need for a special plan
involving more officers, different strategies and environmental
improvements such as lighting to stop an increase in violent fights,
muggings and robberies this spring and summer around Downtown.

The city, meanwhile, has seen a 76 percent rise in robberies for the
first six months of this year.

The chief's proposals have also come amid chaos and violence erupting
at bar time on the 100 block of King Street the past two weekends,
and a double murder at a South Side apartment building last weekend.

Wray could not be reached for comment on the coalition's proposal.

Scott Favour, the police union president and a coalition member, said
the union would support adding another crime-fighting tool.

The former law, backed by police, generated controversy.

The council voted 11-7 to extend the law when it was set to expire in
2002, but the former mayor, Sue Bauman, vetoed it over concern it
wasn't working and discriminated against blacks. The council voted
9-6 to override the veto, falling short of the required 14-vote
"supermajority."

Of the 77 citations issued in 2001, the final year of the law, 80
percent were to blacks; 55 were in the Burr Oaks neighborhood around
Cypress Way, Magnolia Lane, Hughes Place and West Badger Road, the
area where last weekend's double homicide occurred. Most citations
were to people who lived out of the neighborhood and had a history of
drug use, violence or both.

In fact, neighborhood leaders, including many minorities, testified
in favor of the law.

But opponents said the council should find a nondiscriminatory way to
fight drug dealing and crime in neighborhoods.

Those supporting a revised law, according to Quigley, are: Alds. Jed
Sanborn, Lauren Cnare, Zach Brandon, Paul Skidmore, Isadore Knox,
Jr., Bruer, Larry Palm, Judy Compton, Paul Van Rooy, Noel Radomski
and Cindy Thomas.