Tom Parr, a Madison police investigator, has been going to crime scenes for the past six years and has noticed a change. “What I?ve been noticing over the last year and a half or so is, when I get there, there?s a ton of people standing around (but) no one wants to talk to the police,” he says. “Nobody saw anything.” Parr continues: “I started (asking), ?Do we have a community apathy problem here in Madison??
…In May, members of the department’s Officer Advisory Committee, a 40-year-old council of employees charged with advising the chief, broached the issue with Police Chief Noble Wray. What they said is that a citywide partnership is needed to create strategies that involve the entire community, not just leave things to the police. So as a result, about 40 police officers, led by Wray as moderator, met at the department’s east-side training facility on Femrite Drive with four professors from the UW-Madison in September.