Madison Chief Noble Wray “Gang activity surging”
Posted by CometStarMoon on June 28, 2007
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.
Chief Wray on gangs in schools « Madison Parents’ School Safety Site said
[...] the topic of gang activity in Madison schools during the program, as reported in The Capital Times (via the MadCrime101 blog, a welcome and valuable new resource focusing on concerns and issues relating [...]
What a bad week for the kid … and kudos to the Badger Herald editorial board « said
[...] – Kumar was the only person on the Public Protection/Judiciary committee to vote against Res. 50, 2007-2008, which funded an attorney position in Dane Countyand as Sup. Bayrd noted, “this particular money is for gang crime enforcement too.” It was over $80,000 of funding. This occurred as Madison Chief Noble Wray noted gang activity is surging in Madison. [...]
I don’t get it. « said
[...] That’d be funny, except, gang membership and related violence is “surging” in the … It’s naive to suggest these new police will not be in areas or on projects specifically designed to deal with such an important and growing threat. Not to mention, the WSJ article referenced in the BH post paints this picture: The Central District, with the fewest sectors, fewest street miles and most officers, generally had the lowest minimum response times, it says. The West District, with the most sectors, most street miles, highest workload and second-highest number or officers, suffered from long travel times. [...]