Two committees of the Dane County Board of Supervisors are meeting tonight to gather information on the performance of the Dane County 911 Communications Center in the wake of the murder of Brittany Zimmermann.

Board Chair Scott McDonell and others have called for an audit of the Center focusing on its procedures and whether its procedures are being followed.

It is suggested that such an audit be conducted by an outside firm, free of political considerations.

Good idea.

To complement this reasonable course of action, Dane County needs the establishment of a paid citizens' committee composed of broad communities of interests, devoid of elected officials, and certainly free of civil servants in Dane County, including those serving in the County Executive's office.

Such a committee ought to have as its deliverables:

- The establishment of specific directives to improve the performance of the 911 Communications Center

Amid the discordant political backdrop, recriminations abound about whether the murder of a 21-year-old UW-Madison woman could have been prevented.

Aside from proposed audits and spirited defenses of the Dane County 911 Communications Center and other Dane County officials, it's worth noting the priorities and policies of local law enforcement agencies here. [I hope not to read the word 'leadership' again; it doesn't exist on this matter.]

As the routine break-up of house parties and the pursuit by police of other frequent illegal college recreational pastimes continues apace here, one wonders if police officers foot-patrolling neighborhoods at night with the objective of protecting property and persons might be a better use of limited police resources vis-a-vis busting a 19-year-old for having a beer or smoking a joint on campus.

And one less parking meter boy (like that pathetic guy who wears the floppy safari hat), and one more officer walking on the street looking out for a female student walking home at night from the library would certainly do.

Progressives are holding Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk’s feet to the fire on the Brittany Zimmerman tragedy.

If Falk decides to run for reelection as Dane County executive in the spring of 2009, she will surely face opponents in a politically charged race, and one gets the impression Falk is abundantly aware of this fact.

From the Capital Times (aggressively on the Zimmerman story now and catching up to the first-rate reporting and insights by Isthmus, the Wisconsin State Journal and the Madison blogosphere):

A former dispatcher that answered a 911 call from Brittany Zimmermann's cell phone before she was allegedly stabbed to death in her West Doty Street apartment committed two different procedural errors in handling the call, according to Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.

Falk’s statement on the 911 call, "I do not believe, had the (911) errors not occurred, that her murder could've been prevented," amounts to a Bushian I-can’t-tell-you-anything-but-trust-me assurance.

Of course a gun didn't kill people at an Omaha mall, pro-gun groups will tell us.  A crazy person with a gun did it.

And that's true, to a degree.  Jim Rowen, who once covered the firearms issue for the Milwaukee Journal, doubts that a steak knife would have had the same impact.

The weapon in question, Rowen says, was

The SKS is a military weapon that is often called an assault rifle, though because it's not manufactured to fire selectively in single or automatic bursts, it's just a plain old vicious, terribly deadly, non-assault rifle.

A carbine. To the general public, it's an assault rifle because it's military and devastating, and to the dead Nebraskans, it's of no consequence.

Anyway...

There are many SKS variants, having metastasized from the Soviet Union to China and throughout other former Eastern bloc countries, as a cheap, durable deadly, mass-produced and exportable military weapon - - a staple of the world arms trade.

Not with the ugly cachet of the true assault rifle, like an AK-47, but available from Africa to Asia...to southeastern Wisconsin, aina!

Wisconsin Anti-Violence Educational Fund

10th anniversary dinner

Thursday, Nov. 8, 5:30-8:30 p.m.

Milwaukee Hilton Monarch Room, 509 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee

Inaugural Freedom from Gun Violence awards to:

Governor Jim Doyle

Milwaukee County D. A. John Chiaholm

Rita Martinez Community Activism Award to Cynthia Martinez

Tickets $125

Call WAVE 414-351-WAVE for more information.

Location(s)

The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute's article by John McAdams, defending the huge disparity in incarceration rates for blacks and whites, continues to spark debate.

We wrote about it yesterday, saying that McAdams's findings seemed to suggest a remedy like 40 acres and a mule.

Paul Soglin weighed in with the suggestion that McAdams's approach would also suggest that Milwaukee could tolerate more black murders.

Conservative Rick Esenberg responded to Soglin.

And Soglin offered a rebuttal to Esenberg.

And Esenberg volleys back.

It's an interesting back-and-forth, a much better exchange than the usual name-calling that takes place in the Cheddarsphere.

As every waitress/waiter seems to say these days, "Enjoy!"

Does Wisconsin lock up too many blacks?

When it's John McAdams asking that question, and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute is paying for the study* , you can be pretty sure what the answer is going to be.

Of course not.

In fact, McAdams, who holds the endowed Wingnut Chair of Political Science at Marquette University, seems surprised we aren't locking up more blacks for longer sentences than we do now.

Paul Soglin has already done an analysis and found that under the model used by McAdams, we are not only not locking up enough blacks, but are well below expectations for homicides in Milwaukee, too. There is room for quite a few more murders.

It's hard to know where to begin with McAdam's "study," funded by WPRI, a far-right "think tank." Perhaps here:

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who said a concealed weapons law would "jeapordize ths safety of my deputies and the citizens they represent," today said people of Milwaukee should be able to carry concealed handguns.

Clarke's complete reversal came, as his pronouncements frequently do, in a hysterical email to rabid rightwing radio talker Charlie Sykes, a major Clarke sycophant and publicist.

At the end of a long rant against Gov. Jim Doyle, Mayor Tom Barrett, and Milwaukee aldermen, Clarke says:

If the police are no longer able to guarantee the personal safety of citizens, then reconsider your opposition to allowing law-abiding people the means with which to protect themselves. Yes, Governor, that means carrying concealed handguns.

Here's a Journal Sentinel story from Nov. 4, 2003:

Clarke calls for veto of concealed weapons bill

Sheriff tells Doyle in letter that change would put deputies in danger

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. on Monday called on Gov. Jim Doyle to veto a bill that would make it easier for Wisconsin residents to carry concealed weapons.

In a letter to Doyle, Clarke says the change called for in the bill would jeopardize the "safety of my deputies and the citizens they represent" and says "there are better ways to fight crime than to flood the streets of Milwaukee with dangerous weapons."

Today, Clarke says the best way to fight crime is to flood the streets of Milwaukee with dangerous weapons.

My recent observations about the tremendous racial disparity in Wisconsin's criminal justice system -- which results in 10 times as many blacks as whites going to jail and prison -- has drawn its first pushback from the right wing.

Rick Esenberg, like John McAdams a member of the Marquette faculty (are there any liberals there?), actually concedes that I may have "a worthy point:"

I have a sense this is like walking into a minefield, but here we go:

John McAdams, the professor who holds the endowed Wingnut Chair at Marquette University, has gotten a lot of mileage on the Wisconsin Wingosphere, with his “report” on a hearing held by the Governor's Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System.

As McAdams tells it, the hearing – and probably the commission itself – was a farce.

Here they are, holding a hearing when they already think there is racial disparity in the system, without even waiting for McAdams’s opinion.

And when he gives his apparently compelling testimony: