Here’s the third post in a trilogy about residential housing in Whitewater. For the first two posts, see, Old Whitewater Dreams of a Student Rez and The University’s Role in Town-Gown Issues.
Recap: (1) pointing to the northwest corner of the city for student rentals without actual, additional housing in that area is an empty solution, and (2) the university’s planned poorly and focused on the wrong priorities.
But, let’s now be candid: when residents rightly complain about damage to properly, loud noise in the early morning, and public indecency, they’re not raising mere zoning issues, they’re raising criminal ones.
(I’ve been clear that these are crimes, and are wrong. See, for example, The Crude Illegitimacy of Vandalism.)
There are hundreds of millions of Americans, and thousands of campuses, with high-density neighborhoods, and many of them are doing far better than Whitewater’s doing on town-gown issues. It’s simply false – and nutty, actually – to pretend that (1) there’s nothing locally that can be done, (2) it’s all a consequence of high-density housing, or that (3) other college towns aren’t doing better.
Zoning’s often a fig leaf for a real problem that Whitewater simply has not solved, but many other communities have: holding to a failed criminal enforcement strategy leaves the city and campus fighting a losing effort against these crimes.
And yet, and yet, Old Whitewater, that unreconstructed, Old Guard, can’t bring themselves to state this simple truth. They’re so worried, or so doctrinaire, about seeming anti-police that they can’t admit a distinction between choosing among strategies and abject support or opposition to any decisions police leaders make.
So, it’s easier to pretend it’s a civil zoning problem than to admit it’s a failure of criminal enforcement strategies and leadership.
These are leaders who will try the same, attrition-based, keep-them-in-their-place numbers game that hasn’t worked, isn’t working, and won’t work.
It’s not community policing, it’s talking about community policing while treating others as inevitable problems and threats, seeing the world as full of adversaries, relying on raids, ineffectual undercover operations, and having no real rapport with large swaths of the city’s population.
They’ve only more of the same (or worse) to offer.
How do I know this?
Because, by the widespread claims of residents, themselves, conditions are as bad as ever.
Current police leaders have no effective solution, except to (1) insist all is well, (2) complain when residents voice their concerns, and (3) double-down on yesterday’s mistakes and ineffective efforts.
They don’t see critics, they see enemies, problems, threats, etc. They don’t see fellow residents and citizens of the community, they see newcomers, supposed transients, and outside influences.
It’s a hunkered and bunkered leadership mentality – it cannot be concealed believably behind photo ops, press releases, and staged events.
In the clips below, Whitewater Chief Otterbacher and UW-W Chief Kiederlen express their views.
From Chief Otterbacher, her presentation is a combination of grousing that a victimized resident wrote to Common Council and the press, and an evident weariness that this is a long, endless slog with no imagined resolution.
From Chief Kiederlen, it’s almost a speaking-through-gritted-teeth presentation. (Oddly, it’s a presentation where Chancellor Telfer appears and simply introduces Chief Kiederlen, but says nothing of substance otherwise.)
I’d guess neither police leader understands how he or she comes across outside of his or her small circle of like-minded people.
From Common Council on 11.8.12, with Chief Otterbacher (speaking from 5:43 to 11:08):
Common Council Meeting 11/08/2012 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.
From Common Council on 5.21.13, with City Manager Clapper (speaking from 6:00 to 7:09), Chancellor Telfer (speaking from 7:10 to 8:00), and Chief Matt Kiederlen (speaking from 8:01 to 13:00):
Common Council Meeting 05/21/2013 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.
