Efforts to curb aggressive panhandling on State Street have shifted some of that activity into residential neighborhoods such as the one where a 21-year-old UW-Madison student was killed last week, Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said Tuesday.
While investigators have not identified a suspect or a motive in the death of Brittany Zimmermann, police say they have arrested “a couple of dozen of people, ” most of them transients who frequent the Bassett neighborhood, on warrants and probation holds, as well as for trespassing, menacing, panhandling and having open intoxicants, in the course of the homicide investigation.