• Neighborhoods around Marquette to get increased police presence
• Attempt to reduce disorder through community policing
• Focus on drug dealing — "root cause" of disorder, alderman says
• Police say they want community to get to know officers' names

Earlier this month, new Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn spoke about community-oriented policing at the Marquette Law School.

Last week, one of Flynn's district commanders gave details on how that strategy would be implemented in the neighborhoods surrounding Marquette.

District Three Capt. James Harpole's plan concentrates on the Avenues West and Historic Concordia neighborhoods, with special attention given to Wells Street west of campus. Some residents have called the corridor "crack alley" in reference to the high amount of drug dealing that takes place there, Harpole said.

The plan, announced last Wednesday, aims to reduce disorder in the dense crime area, focusing on drug dealing, prostitution, loitering, public drinking and loud music. But Harpole said drug dealing "brings and drives" some of the other crime.

Harpole said he was personally at a stop when police questioned an 18-year-old man and his girlfriend from central Illinois who had come to Wells Street to buy drugs. They had heard about the area on the Internet, Harpole said.

"When you're coming that far away to buy drugs on Wells Street, we know we have a problem," Harpole said.

Alderman Bob Bauman, a resident of Historic Concordia, said drug dealing is the root cause of most of the area's disorder. The area's proximity to highways makes it easy for local, suburban and out-of-town drug buyers to come to the neighborhood, he said.

That's why Harpole said he is starting a Web site with links for neighborhood organizations and contact numbers for officers and Marquette Public Safety. Harpole said he hopes a potential drug buyer will stumble across that Web site when they are looking for places to buy drugs.

Harpole said police intelligence learned one drug dealer has already left the area because he said it was "too hot" with the high concentration of police in the neighborhood.

One way to better connect police to the neighborhood, is through foot patrols and "park and walk" activities. The squad car is a "barrier to interacting with the community," Harpole said, so officers will be on the streets talking to people to address disorder.

"If you can rid the neighborhood of visible signs of disorder, people feel safer," Harpole said. "The foot patrol doesn't reduce crime, but it increases feelings of safety."

June Moberly, executive director of the Avenues West Association, said collaborative relationships between the police and the community will continue the trend of decreased neighborhood crime.

"To me that's always been the heart of getting people to report problems," Moberly said. "They need to get to know the police."

While neighborhood crime overall has gone down since its height in the early 1990s, Bauman said he was surprised to see a 2006 analysis showing the highest density of all violent crime in the city was centered around the corner of 27th and Wells Streets.

As a response, the community held a series of meetings between April and August 2007 to address crime in the neighborhood, Bauman said. When Flynn became police chief earlier this month and looked to his district commanders for crime fighting strategies in their districts, Harpole had one ready, Bauman said.

"This was a collaborative thing that had a critical mass of neighborhood involvement and support that this could be successful," Bauman said.

Some community members have expressed concern that focusing on crime in one area would displace it to other areas. Harpole said if displacement does occur, the goal is to have it occur not too far out of the area, in other high-density populations with high pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

"Displacement of crime is always a concern," Harpole said. "We are very focused on the possibility that will occur and then taking care of that."

Harpole also said all areas of his district will be policed equally.

Thad Nation, spokesman for Historic Concordia Neighbors, said the police department has been very responsive to issues in the neighborhood and hopes the strategy on the near west side will be pursued citywide.

"We're very encouraged by this new initiative," Nation said. "We view this as a very positive sign coming from the new chief that he's going to take neighborhood crime issues very seriously."