Safety Committee Meets With Area Officers
Kathi Bresnehan, TLNA Safety Chair
The newly authorized Safety Committee met with Captain George Silverwood,
Patrol Officers Sue Armagast and Dan Olivas on Monday, January 22, 1996.
Captain Silverwood is the new Commander of the Central District, replacing
outgoing Captain Jeffrey Frye on January 2, 1996.
Silverwood believes in a "customer service approach" to the neighborhood.
He came to hear what we see as neighborhood priorities and to work with
us.
Madison is below the statewide staffing average of police officers per 1,000
people. In 1996, the MPD will be adding six new officers to the force, and
eight in 1997. Twenty-five percent of the funding for new officers is provided
by the federal government, the remaining seventy-five percent comes from
the city.
We talked about the problems we perceived in the Neighborhood. We discussed
transfer of information between the MPD and the Dane County drug and Task
Force. Officer Armagast gave us a description of how she handles various
problems on her beat. She also told us how information is handed down shift
to shift. Different shifts have entirely different problems and players.
It sometimes seems that rather than working the same streets while on patrol,
the officers are working entirely different areas.
We were given this brief description of the differences between theft burglary,
and robbery:
- Theft A person enters an unlocked door or removes items from
an open garage or front porch;
- Burglary Forced entry through locked door, porch, window, etc.;
- Robbery Threat of bodily harm (armed robbery, knife or gun used,
physical violence) in conjunction with taking something.
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