MADISON, Wis. – It wasn’t a victory lap, but Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway did applaud city leaders Tuesday for their role in reducing crime in Madison this summer.
In a briefing with Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes and other Madison officials, Rhodes-Conway provided an update on their public safety efforts over the summer. Barnes reported a 21% reduction in the number of people shot and overall shots fired incidents.
Shots-fired incidents, along with stolen cars and traffic safety, have been the focus of MPD’s 2022 Summer Strategic Plan, and he said those efforts paid off.
“These are the things that our community is most concerned about,” Barnes said. “These are the things that people call about that they talk to me about.”
He reported an overall 5% reduction in the number of stolen cars. For Hyundai and Kia specifically, Barnes said those cars went from making up 45% of stolen cars in June to less than 10% in October, a change he credits to community outreach.
Madison police also reported a roughly 25% decrease in injury crashes on East Washington Avenue, Mineral Point Road and the Beltline as part of their Vision Zero efforts.
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“[It’s] not an accident. It’s a result of a lot of hard work by the Madison Police Department,” Rhodes-Conway said. “The fact that fewer people are being hit by bullets in our community is a result of good hard work by city staff and I want to thank all of them.”
She credits the city’s public health approach to safety for these improvements pointing to things like the Community Safety Intervention Team which steps in after violent incidents to prevent escalation.
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Gloria Reyes is a competing candidate for mayor. Reyes said she has been a part of those efforts for years but also said she’s not convinced the city is doing so well.
“It’s disturbing that we’ve had recent shootings in broad daylight in Madison recently and we have a mayor here who is, with her briefing, patting herself on the back,” she said.
Reyes also said the data collected between June and October of 2022 isn’t enough to paint an accurate picture of public safety in Madison.
MPD data from the past few years shows a mixed bag of improvements to public safety. Beginning in 2021, in the past three years robberies have gone down and so have assaults but car thefts have consistently increased every year between 2017 and 2021.
Homicides, however, have been inconsistent, with 10 each for 2021 and 2020, four or five in the two years prior to that and an all-time high of 11 in 2017. MPD is expected to release its 2022 annual report next spring.
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