"Shooting at Madison's Shake the Lake sparks panic, 'stampede.'"

The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

Neither Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway nor Madison police chief Mike Koval would go into detail Sunday about what kinds of security were in place for Shake the Lake...

“It is entirely unacceptable that someone brought a gun to ... an event enjoyed by thousands of people, including many children,” [Rhodes-Conway] said.

Brought a gun.... Not used a gun.... That's Madison.

Rhodes-Conway used the incident to blame the Republican-controlled Legislature for its failure to pass tougher gun laws. “Our job is made more difficult by a state Legislature that advances reckless gun laws and at the same time curtails the rights of cities to take further action,” she said.

A "Madison, Wisconsin man" crime makes it into the Washington Post.

"A man put a camera in his shoe for some ‘upskirting’ shots. It exploded on his foot."

It's the lamest sexual offense imaginable — looking for women in skirts and trying to get a glimpse at what's up under there, but only in the form of a photograph. The man never got a photograph before the battery malfunctioned, injuring his foot. In fact, he hadn't even left his home. So he wasn't caught, he turned himself in. He turned himself in because he'd sought counseling from "a clergyman" who told him that's what he should do.

Here's how the story appeared on the blog of the Madison Chief of Police, Mike Koval:

5) WEST: Information/Sex Offense – 5:24pm. Officers at the West Police District station were contacted by a subject (32-year-old HM) who wanted to turn himself in to police. The subject reported he had purchased a shoe camera that he intended to use to take "upskirt" videos of females, but the camera battery had exploded prior to obtaining any video, injuring the subject's foot. The subject was counseled on his actions and released from the scene as no illicit video had been taken. Investigation continuing.

I'm glad this man is not named. This is a real "go and sin no more" situation.

"Madison high schools are erupting in chaos. Three high schools in one day, Monday, February 19, over the noon hour."

"Bad enough for the cop on duty to call for reinforcements. Police responded to melees at Madison West, Madison Memorial, and Madison East high schools. From what we can determine, the misbehaving students were not peacefully protesting for gun control, social justice, or better cafeteria food. They were just fighting."

Writes David Blaska, with a "barebones" report from the police chief, a note to the parents from the West High School principal, and a letter from an unnamed parent. Excerpt from the parent's letter:

My son said this was a very loud and aggressive happening involving a subset of the student population that he cannot help but notice and comment has also coincidentally been involved in all other altercations (including not just “verbal altercations” but also actual physical assaults and various melees including ones with torn-off hair strewn on the floor and a vast crowd of students teeming at the edges, filled with adrenaline, watching and getting thrills from the witnessing thereof).

… These altercations are seen as the NORM because students engaging in them are coddled and the peaceful majority of students are the real victims— living in constant awareness that for reasons unknown to them and that can and will never make sense to them — West High and the District are engaging in experimental, ill-advised, and dangerous tactics to essentially bend over backwards to not “offend” the OFFENDERS.

My son is also aware of and afraid, as are most students, that at any given moment, the PARENTS of the violent pupils can and HAVE enjoined the fray themselves, coming upon school grounds....

Read the whole thing.

"Madison do-gooders haggled over shootings police stopped."

Writes Chris Rickert in The Wisconsin State Journal.

Madison’s mayor and City Council spent valuable time this spring and summer feuding among themselves and with local activists over how to respond, ahem, quickly to a rash of shootings.

Madison Police Chief Mike Koval on Aug. 9 announced plans to round up those suspected in the violence and two weeks later announced that the shootings had largely stopped — at least for now....

Meanwhile, the latest incarnation of Madison’s softer-side approach to alleviating violence — a 15-point-plan by a group called the Focused Interruption Coalition — is just getting underway, more than a year after it was proposed...

I have no idea whether the people targeted for this kind of non-law-enforcement attention have enough better angels left for the attention to make any difference. These are people, after all, who apparently haven’t been helped in any meaningful way by any of the millions in donated and taxpayer dollars spent every year on welfare, community development and educational programs....

I got there through David Blaska, who writes "Welcome to the dark side, Chris Rickert."

[Rickert] is throwing off the Madison liberal torpor. Renouncing the creed of collectivism. Escaping the Cult of Victimhood.... Brother Rickert, you will be called a racist. Comes with the territory.... Yes, Chris Rickert, you are ruined in Madison.

Blaska observes that the on-line headline — my post title — does not appear in the print version. There, it's — incredibly — "Peer support, policing not either-or."

"Race is intrinsic, pervasive and part of all our meaningful discussions in modern times, and I don’t think any group ... is going to find any respite from having to grapple with those difficult issues."

Said Madison's police chief, Mike Koval, quoted in "Mike Koval, Samba Baldeh feud comes full circle after Dallas shootings."

It was just a month ago when Ald. Samba Baldeh, who is black, leaned over his microphone in the Madison City Council chamber and said that he didn’t feel safe with Madison Police Chief Mike Koval, who is white, sitting behind him with a gun during the meeting.

Koval, a few days earlier, had published a lengthy blog post, laced with sarcasm and frustration, chastising council members for considering spending $400,000 on a review of his department’s operations and accusing them of not supporting police. The tone of the chief’s post and his behavior at the June 7 council meeting drew widespread criticism from elected officials.

"I really resent the inference that you thought that someone sitting behind you with a gun was going to be a clear and present danger to you."

Said Madison Police Chief Mike Koval at last night's Madison City Council meeting, after Alderman Samba Baldeh, 17th District, said that "based on the chief’s comments, he did not feel safe with Koval sitting behind him during the meeting with a gun."

I'm linking to Madison.com, which gives a verbatim quote from Koval but not from Baldeh.

The City Council vote 19-1 to approve of spending $350,000 from the city's reserve fund to hire to hire another expert to study the Madison police, which — as we discussed here yesterday —Koval strongly opposed. Koval had written:

(To [vote against the spending] would be tantamount to "treason" for those who wring their hands worried about currying favor with a small group of people who protest/blog/criticize the MPD at every turn.  The "perpetually offended" of Madison who use their small but vocal numbers to dictate agendas has an incredible grip on this City... but no one dares to raise a voice lest they be marginalized in the PC world of Madison....)...

To the Common Council:  You are being watched.  And be on notice:  this is a pre-emptive first strike from me to you. I am going to push back hard when MPD is constantly used as a political punching bag and you are nowhere to be found....

At my age and at this stage of a sun setting  career, I am not checking my polling numbers.  I am doing my job and trying to live up to my credo to "GSD!'  (Get "Stuff" Done)!

Then, at the meeting, Baldeh said he felt unsafe because the Chief of Police had his gun.

ADDED: I transcribed Baldeh's statement myself, from the video (beginning at 4:59:30):

So, I, first of all, just want to say that for my one year and a couple of months I have been in this council, this is the first time I've seen it so tense. And so this is the first time, actually, I've seen the police chief behave in a way that, in my opinion, I felt kind of not feeling comfortable with him sitting behind me with a gun....

I have the utmost respect for the police chief.... But the behavior of the chief tonight, honestly, is unimaginable. I was totally afraid for him to be behind me with a gun. I have said to some of my colleagues, if... we have to question him, then we better ask him to hand in the gun until when we are done.

ALSO: At 5:13:45, we hear Alderwoman Rebecca Kemble questioning Koval about his use of the phrase "pre-emptive first strike":

When you tell an elected body you are doing a "pre-emptive first strike" against us... I'm just asking you to really think about how that felt to us, when some of us are out there promoting and supporting the work of your department and you're using this military language as if we're your enemies.

Koval's response is that he's familiar with the way the council meetings go, with the members allowed to make their "cut-and-run comments" and he has no opportunity to respond: "I'm tired of always being on the recipient end, without any sense of cover or timely rebuttal."

Kemble responds: "You are the guys with guns, and it's up to us to interpret" what pre-emptive first strike means. And: "Quite frankly, in this era of Trump, that's chilling."

"With investigators set to turn over reports to Dane County’s district attorney Friday on the controversial police shooting of 19-year-old Tony Robinson..."

"... law enforcement and protesters are preparing for what will happen after the prosecutor announces whether he will charge the officer involved...."

As the investigation wraps up, protest leaders are already planning their response to Ozanne’s decision, and Madison Police Chief Mike Koval says his department has also been working on how it will manage demonstrations following the announcement.....

The chief asked for 24 hours’ notice before Ozanne publicizes his decision, Koval said, so police could reach out to community groups and have officers in place ahead of the announcement....

Madison’s Young, Gifted and Black Coalition... members say they don’t expect Kenny will be charged....

Koval said Thursday he believes Ozanne will likely wait until toxicology test results from Robinson are available — a process he estimated could take another two weeks....

The roll-out of information and decisions is, I take it, an aspect of the management of demonstrations.

At the Madison mayoral debate, the crowd chanted "Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail, the whole damn system is guilty as hell."

"Thursday night's mayoral debate between incumbent Paul Soglin and challenger Scott Resnick was marked by sharp hostility -- both between the candidates, and the candidates and the crowd," Isthmus reports.

When Resnick said "We need to come together in this community," there was laughter.

Soglin tried: "I find it very, very difficult to address this subject in the context of a mayoral debate, of the context of some of the anger in this room.... The larger concern in the community, where parents are concerned about well-being of children, we're all concerned about our neighbors."

The crowd shouted him down — "What about Tony?" — and Soglin sat down without finishing.

I don't know who to vote for in the mayoral election. How does one decide between Resnick and Soglin? Some people are deciding based on their different positions on — of all things — Uber, as Larry Kaufmann explains here:

Leading the charge is Mayor Paul Soglin, who treats Uber as if it were the spawn of Satan, or at least the Koch brothers. The Paul Soglin for Mayor website describes Uber as a "company headed by a devotee of Ayn Rand" that makes "conscious decisions to destroy full-time jobs." The mayor likens Uber to a "new form of serfdom," which might be accurate if medieval serfs used smartphone apps and complex, back-end routing algorithms to find rides to their masters' fields.

His mayoral challenger, Scott Resnick, takes a different view. The first item on his campaign's site declares that Uber, Lfyt and other ridesharing firms "are here and they are not going away." Resnick believes cutting-edge ridesharing technology can help "devise innovative solutions that meet our city's transportation needs." Nevertheless, he wishes to load a number of regulations onto Uber and similar firms that currently apply to taxis, including licensing by the city, background checks on drivers, insurance requirements and restrictions on "surge" pricing during high-demand times.

Keep Uber out or let it in but regulate the hell out of it.  That's the choice in Madison, Wisconsin. I'm thinking of protest-voting, writing in the name Mike Koval.

A county official is caught on surveillance cameras letting protesters into the City-County Building (which houses the Madison Police Department).

Dane County Board Sup. Leland Pan has had to give up his pass card and keys after what he did on the night a Madison police officer shot and killed a young black man:

“Our resources were stretched extremely thin, yet the protesters grew in numbers and their anger increased as they neared the police department,” [Madison Police Chief Mike Koval said in a letter of complaint]. “In addition to commissioned officers working in this building 24 hours a day, there are civilian employees. Quite frankly, these civilian employees were very scared for their safety.”

Building surveillance video doesn’t show much emotion on the faces of people coming into the building shortly after midnight on March 7, but Koval said the protesters were heard yelling things such as “kill the cops” and “we have guns too.”...

This makes me think about the way — back in March 2011 — protesters got into the Wisconsin State Capitol, entering through a window of the offices of one of the Democratic legislators. Meade was there and filmed it:

"We know the facts, and when they come out, this city will erupt. This city will f-ing erupt."

"And the blood and whatever takes place after that will be on your hands and the mayor’s hands," said Brandi Grayson, the leader of the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition, at the Madison City Council meeting Tuesday night. She was addressing Police Chief Mike Koval, and the subject was the death of Tony Robinson.

The next morning Koval emailed the members of the council:

50 years ago today: Lorraine Hansberry died at the age of 34.

The author of "A Raisin in the Sun" — an alumna of the University of Wisconsin—Madison — succumbed to pancreatic cancer.

James Baldwin believed "it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man."

Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, recited messages from Baldwin and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. which read: "Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn."

Her writings were adapted into a play with the title "To Be Young, Gifted and Black." I was researching that phrase today because there is an organization here in Madison now that calls itself the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition. Last Friday, they sent a letter to the Madison Police Chief Michael Koval, demanding, among other things, "the immediate release of 350 Black people from the Dane County Jail, with the ongoing demand to keep this number out of the jail." They say:

Although Madison's model of community policing and attempt to build trust between the community and police, even acting as “social workers,” may be a step above certain other communities, our arrest rates and incarceration disparities still top the nation. The relationship that we desire to have with the police is simple: no interaction. Our ultimate goal is to be able to hold our own communities accountable and to expel what we consider an occupying force in our neighborhoods. Our people need opportunities for self-determination, not policing.

I assume the group chose its name to honor Hansberry, but wonder if many who see the name will recognize the source.  David Blaska riffs on the name in the title of his new column: "Who will call out the Young, Foolish and Racist of Madison?"

Here's Nina Simone: