Timothy Hughes
The city is in the throes of what might be the most serious challenge to our police department since the protests of the 1960s.
And the man who might know more about that than anyone is Paul Soglin, a student protest leader before he became an alder and mayor.
And yet where is Soglin? He’s nowhere to be found. In the wake of the video gone viral of the arrest of a young black woman at East Towne Mall, Soglin has made no public statements, and there is no reporting that he has been at any of the meetings with the woman’s family members or Chief Mike Koval that took place after the arrest. There is nothing on his public calendar that indicates he’ll conduct any meetings this week related to this. The mayor’s current blog boasts that we can “eat out all summer long” at food carts throughout the city.
However, his schedule does show that he’ll leave town today for yet another conference. Soglin has broken all known records for junkets by a Madison mayor, and he’s not about to let a tense, racially charged situation involving his community and the police department he is responsible for change his travel plans.
This is a consistent pattern. A couple of weeks ago there was a raw, emotional confrontation between Koval and the Madison Common Council at a regular meeting at which the mayor is expected to preside. Only Soglin wasn’t there. He was in New York.
At that meeting the council approved another $350,000 (for a total of $400,000) for a study of the police department, the issue that caused Koval to fire off a controversial and ill-considered blog, which sparked the angry confrontation. Soglin, who routinely lectures the council on fiscal discipline, could have vetoed the expenditure. Or he could have explained why he wasn’t going to veto it. Instead, there was just more silence from the mayor.
And we can go back further. When Paul Heenan was shot and killed on Madison’s east side in 2012, there was a tense neighborhood meeting. Television cameras showed then Police Chief Noble Wray sitting at a table at the front of the room, taking the tough questions. Mayor Soglin was shown sitting in the crowd as if he were just another concerned neighbor and not Wray’s boss. (Yes, police chiefs are hired and fired by the Police and Fire Commission, but they are supervised, their budgets are controlled and their salaries are determined by the mayor.)
Other public officials, with little or no responsibility over the police, have stepped up to be at meetings and make public comments that express concern but are also measured in their tone. So, why isn’t the man elected by the community to speak for it speaking at all? Where’s the leadership?
Paul Skidmore, the only council member who is reported to be a close ally of Soglin, calls him “the consummate politician.” He is most certainly that.
