Hello Everyone.
This is the 7th East District Newsletter for 2003.
Residential
Burglaries
Commercial Burglaries
Thefts
Damaged Property
Are You Inviting
Someone to Steal Your Car?
An East side resident recently left her house one morning,
only to find that BOTH of her cars had been stolen. Both cars were unlocked and both had an extra
key concealed inside the car. A few years ago, we had a rash of stolen cars on
the East side. All but one car had been
unlocked with extra keys in the car.
When we eventually caught one of the young people involved in the
thefts, he said that when they wanted to go somewhere, they simply tried car
doors until they found an unlocked car.
He said lots of people leave an extra key in the car, so they just
searched around until they found it.
Sometimes these keys were laying in plain view. Please.....lock you cars
and don't assume that someone else can't find a key hidden inside.
Arrested Armed Robber
On 4/6, at
Juveniles Arrested
for Damaging
On April 4 at
Suspicious phone call
On 3/19, we took a report from an East side resident who
received a phone call from a female indicating she was Off.
Lynn Brown from the Madison Police Department. The caller had a Hispanic accent and
appeared to have some difficulty with the English language. She told the resident that he and his wife
had to come to CCB (
The residents did a great job of handling this call. They asked many questions of the caller, trying to verify the information the caller was giving. In the end, when the caller was unable to give satisfactory answers, the residents reported the phone call to the police.
If you receive a phone call from someone identifying
themselves as a police officer, and you feel the call is suspicious, don't
hesitate to tell the caller you want to verify that they are an officer. If the caller is actually a police officer,
they will assist you with this verification.
For a caller who claims to be a City of Madison officer, you may call
the Officer In Charge at 266-4923 or the non-emergency Dispatch number 255-2345
to verify the officer's identity.
Shots Heard in
On
The comment about shooting potatoes is of interest. Several years ago, there were a few incidents
in the City, of people making a gun that would launch potatoes. It involved a length of PVC pipe, hair spray
and a potato. When the hair spray was
ignited, it shot the potato out of the pipe.
It made a loud noise that might sound like a gunshot. It is possible that this unusual device is making
a come back.
Shots Fired, Man
Arrested
On Friday, 4/11, shortly before
Officers attempted to call the man, but he immediately hung
up the phone. After several hours, we
believed the man was most likely passed out for the night. We learned that the man had a morning routine
of riding his bicycle to a nearby store to buy a newspaper. Two officers were left in the area overnight
to watch the house. At approx.
How Should Police
Respond?
The above incident illustrates another situation where the
police must make difficult decisions.
Once the police have arrived and the man would not come out, what action
should the police take?
Often times, our ERT (Emergency Response Team) (known in
some departments as
SWAT) responds to these types of calls where a person has used or
threatened to use a firearm and is a danger to others in the area. Once deployed, this team of about 40 officers
(tactical and negotiators) typically works on the situation until the person is
taken into custody. When the person
refuses to come out of the building, the team will continue to try to negotiate
and out wait the person. Sometimes the
situation may call for
gas to be deployed into the building to force the person
out. Having officers enter the building
to take an armed person into custody is a last resort because of the
dangerousness to the officers.
In this case, I made a conscious decision to not deploy
ERT. I did not feel that this man was a
threat to others at this time. Neighbors
reported that the man had been firing shots into the back yard since last
summer. Some reported that this happened
about twice a month. These neighbors had
never called the police, even though they were fairly certain that the shots
were coming from this house. Based on
this information, it seemed reasonable to just have two officers watch from
near by for the man to leave the house on his bicycle and take him into
custody.
But what if we had no idea when the man would leave his
house? One option would by to wait until
morning when the man was less intoxicated and try to call him on the phone and
ask him to come out of the house. But
what if he refused? The likely option,
under these particular circumstances, would be for the police to walk away and
apprehend the man at a later time. We
knew he would go to work on Monday morning and could be arrested at work. We knew he frequented a particular bar in the
area, and could ask the bartender to call us when he went to the bar. If you were one of the neighbors, how would
you feel about the police leaving the man in the house?
What is the most responsible action for the police to
take?
That's all for now. Be
safe. Be careful.
Captain Jilene Klubertanz