The Capital Times has an article this afternoon covering Madison Police Chief Noble Wray’s heavily attended breakfast with Downtown Madison Inc. In the article Wray acknowledges what many have suspected based on news reports concerning brawls and group muggings around town - gangs are making a comeback in Madison.
“We still have the African-American gangs that arrived in the first surge of gang activity here in the late 1980s and 1990s,” he said. “We have Asian gangs. The latest surge that began in 2004 and is still continuing has brought an increase in Latino gangs and young girl gangs, with girls more violent than they used to be.”
He says there is a great deal of gang activity in the schools - which could explain all of the reported violence at our area schools in recent months. Madison Parents’ School Safety Site has been doing a good job covering this end of violent crime in Madison. As MPSSS pointed out on the 24th <i>Isthmus</i> recently ran a short piece concerning school violence by the numbers. MPSSS broke it all down by school and incident using Dabble (note: this is all violence, not specifically gang violence).
Wray also tied the rise in gang activity to the increase in graffiti. He said the police only have two categories for graffiti, “gang and tagging.” He encouraged business owners and citizens to report the graffiti as soon as possible and to remove it if possible.
