Tonight the City of Madison’s CDA (Community Development Authority) will decide if they will continue to have armed security guards patrolling their public housing units. Why do the security guards need guns?
MEETING TONIGHT
The CDA is meeting at the East Madison Community Center today in the Multipurpose Room. Here’s the agenda. Their first agenda items is:
NEW INFO SINCE LAST BLOG POST
When I started writing this post I had not much to reports, since no new information had been provided by the Community Development Authority staff since I last wrote about it (article contains details of the contract.) But then this popped into legistar. The document has an overview and an onboarding training plan. Plus it has this interesting information.
- From the resident survey conducted Jan. 7 – Feb 4 to 538 people, with a 28% response rate:
- Question 4: In your opinion, should the CDA hire armed or unarmed security?
- Armed: 47%
- Unarmed: 31%
- Not Sure: 22%
- Question 5: Have you felt more or less safe without security over the past year?
- Less Safe: 50%
- More Safe: 12%
- The Same: 38%
- Question 4: In your opinion, should the CDA hire armed or unarmed security?
This doesn’t seem to be an overwhelming outcry for ARMED security guards.
Here’s the police data on calls to the properties – of course, this could be to check on a person or respond to an accident or show up with an ambulance, so I’m not sure what this data really tells us in this form, except that between 2018 and 2019 when there were no security there, there was only a very slight increase in police calls.
RECENT NEWS
However, yesterday in the news there was this story about an armed robbery suspect who ran off with a security guard’s gun here in Madison.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
- Attend the meeting today at 4:30 and either
- register against the item
- speak against the item
- Email the CDA commissioners and staff
- Committee members
director@khcommunitycenter.org
gregoryr.reed@gmail.com
sariahdaine@yahoo.com
district14@cityofmadison.com
district13@cityofmadison.com
mstrickland@rwbaird.com
keldahelenroys@gmail.comStaff
DRakowski@cityofmadison.com
NFey@cityofmadison.com
mwachter@cityofmadison.com
- Committee members
This is a CDA resolution, so it won’t go before the City Council, so today could be the last chance to speak to this issue.
