Midelfort videotapes the license plates of cars with blaring stereos, then turns the numbers over to Madison police for follow-up.

Other cameras capture the rest of his property � a necessity, he said, now that crime is changing the character of his West Side neighborhood. Of nine houses near his home in the 5300 block of Hammersley Road, four have been burglarized in the last three years and another two have had burglary attempts.

Don't talk to him about the "perception" of increased crime.

"We're living it here," he says.

A Wisconsin State Journal review of five years of Madison police calls found that residents such as Midelfort are not imagining things. In the police sector that includes his home � one of 107 such sectors in the city � police calls for serious crimes such as burglaries, robberies and assaults jumped 59 percent between 2002 and 2004. They dropped in 2005 but rose again last year, up 28 percent since 2002.

"We've seriously had to consider a move to the suburbs where there's less crime," said Midelfort, echoing a sentiment that has surfaced at a series of well-attended neighborhood listening sessions on crime and safety this fall, putting city officials on edge.

To give residents another tool to measure the health of their neighborhoods, the State Journal analyzed police calls by sector � data not readily accessible to the public and a level of detail that often gets washed over in citywide crime statistics.

The maps that accompany this article show "calls for service." These are all of the police calls logged at the 911 center, both resident-initiated and officer-initiated, in various categories. The calls may or may not have led to arrests or other enforcement actions, so the resulting figures differ from the city's formal crime statistics.

The figures provide a broad look at the workloads handled by police, said Madison police Lt. Dan Olivas. "This is a measure of where the city's officers are being deployed," he said. "This is what they're spending their time on."

Types of calls changing

Overall, the number of police calls in the city has changed little over five years, hovering around 150,000 annually. But the nature of the calls has changed.

Calls for serious crimes are up 9.6 percent since 2002, a period when the city's population rose 3.8 percent. The increases were not universal � calls for serious crimes declined in 38 of the city's 107 police sectors.

However, police calls for quality-of-life offenses such as property damage, drug deals, graffiti and noise � the very offenses that many residents say increasingly plague their neighborhoods � have decreased three of the last four years and are down 4.2 percent since 2002.

The decreases were driven largely by declines in the city's Central Police District, where officers have made a concerted effort to rein in problems Downtown. But even in Midelfort's police sector on the West Side, calls for quality-of-life offenses are essentially unchanged from 2002.

Like many other residents interviewed for this story, Midelfort thinks the leveling off of quality-of-life police calls isn't due to an actual decrease in problems. Rather, residents may feel that reporting the lower-level crimes � often through the city's unpopular self-reporting system � is no longer worth the time and effort, he said.

"The police are so busy and understaffed, they simply don't have time to deal with these quality-of-life issues," he said.

The concerns raised at the community listening sessions have brought a quick response from city officials.

Police Chief Noble Wray has said he intends to make the self-reporting system more responsive and user-friendly. Currently, residents who call for help for low-level crimes such as thefts from cars or property damage under $2,500 are mailed a form to fill out.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz has included Wray's request for 30 new police officers in his 2008 budget proposal. The mayor's budget proposal also increases staff in the city's building inspection unit, adds a second graffiti reduction team and ups money for youth initiatives, all part of what Cieslewicz said needs to be a comprehensive response to crime problems.

He also wants to spend $40,000 next year for a "neighborhood indicators" pilot program that would create an early warning system for neighborhoods. Using crime, poverty and education rates, the program would develop comprehensive portraits of the health of neighborhoods, he said.

Although Cieslewicz maintains that Madison is a very safe city overall, the listening sessions convinced him that there are "some very dramatic increases (in crime) in some small areas," and that many residents are concerned and "sometimes outraged" about what is happening to their quality of life.

"I come away (from the listening sessions) encouraged, because the real sign of decline in a community is apathy, and we're sure not seeing apathy," he said. "People are very engaged and want to see things turned around."

A variety of challenges

To find out more about the state of Madison's neighborhoods, State Journal reporters interviewed the leaders of more than 60 neighborhood associations. The interviews documented serious problems in some places � home invasions, armed robberies � but also showed that most neighborhoods remain quite healthy.

In many areas of the city, concerns about crime are minimal and take a backseat to traffic and development issues, although there is unease among many residents.

"We really don't have much of a crime problem, but people are afraid we might be the next neighborhood," said Denise Lamb, president of the Midvale Heights Community Association on the West Side.

"I don't think there are any huge problems in this neighborhood," said Bob Kramer, president of the Sauk Creek Neighborhood Association on the Far West Side, "but we have had an increase in vandalism � minor stuff like car windows smashed, outdoor faucets being turned on in the winter, some graffiti."

Robert Sampson, chairman of the sociology department at Harvard University and a leading researcher on neighborhood crime, said residents are right to be concerned about "minor stuff."

"The biggest misconception about urban viability and crime is that it's all about the big stuff," he said. "But the low-level stuff is what people see. That's what they trip over every day. These incivilities are important. Cleaning these things up sends the message that the neighborhood is in control."

Sampson said people's perceptions about rising crime usually are accurate, up to a point.

He and fellow researcher Stephen Raudenbush surveyed Chicago residents, then evaluated videotape of thousands of Chicago city blocks for signs of "social disorder" � things such as public intoxication, loitering, graffiti and drug deals.

"What we found is that people are rational," he said. "Where they perceive more disorder, there is generally more disorder."

But Sampson discovered something else. As the concentration of blacks and Latinos in a neighborhood increased, people perceived more disorder, even when the disorder was not reliably observed.

Sampson doesn't blame personal racism or conscious prejudice. In fact, all groups, even blacks and Latinos, perceived more disorder as racial concentrations increased, he said.

Residents probably are supplementing their observations with beliefs about the social history of urban America, which links geographically isolated minority groups with greater levels of poverty and social disorder. These beliefs may be incorrect when applied to a specific neighborhood but are not necessarily irrational, he said.

"What I'd predict is that if Madison is becoming increasingly more diverse, this will be linked to more social anxiety about the changes, and that may drive up perceptions of disorder that are not attributable to actual changes," Sampson said.

Perceptions can fluctuate

The widespread discussion of neighborhood crime in Madison also may be altering people's perceptions, Sampson said.

"The more people know about crime, the more they perceive it," he said. "A lot of times, people don't know what's happening in a community, so giving people more information, at least in the short run, also drives up the fear."

Michael Scott, a clinical associate professor at the UW Law School and director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, is a former Madison police officer who recently moved back to the city after living elsewhere for many years, including Savannah, Ga. That city had a crime problem much more serious than Madison's, as did every other city where he has lived. But that's not the issue, he said.

"It's never fair to say Madison isn't as bad as other cities. That's irrelevant," he said. "The relevant comparison is 'Madison today' vs. 'Madison before' and what people have a right to expect."

Madison's crime problems are not so entrenched that they can't be turned around, Scott said, although he cautioned that there is no single solution. While 30 additional police officers sounds like a lot, only about six of them would be on the streets at any one time, and those six would be spread across a large expanse, Scott said.

"Many citizens don't have a good appreciation for the limited capacity of the police," he said. "People who are more knowledgeable would have to privately admit it's not going to have a tremendous impact."

Growing need for social services

While neighborhood crime and police staffing have largely monopolized community discussions, a parallel but less vocal discussion has emerged about the city's increasing population of people needing social services.

"When we pay for more police officers, we're paying for the social services and community building that we should have paid for five or 10 years ago," said Paul Terranova, executive director of the Wexford Ridge Neighborhood Center on the West Side.

Police officers are among the first to agree that they can't do it all, and that by addressing people's basic needs, crime usually drops. "We're dealing with more poverty in this city than people realize," said Wray, the police chief.

More than 40 percent of Madison School District students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, up from 25 percent 10 years ago. A family of four qualifies if its yearly household income is below $38,204. The number of families on public assistance in Dane County more than doubled from 2000 to 2007 � from 4,600 families to 9,700 � although some of the increase is due to expanded eligibility guidelines for medical assistance.

"What we're seeing in our offices is families more desperate and more agitated," said Ron Chance, who oversees Dane County's Joining Forces for Families program, which places social workers in high-stress neighborhoods in hopes of strengthening families before problems escalate.

This month, the county will open its latest Joining Forces for Families office in the Fish Hatchery Road area of Fitchburg, where children attend Madison's Leopold Elementary School. Social service caseloads have "exploded" in the area, Chance said.

The 14 social workers who staff the Joining Forces for Families offices tell a familiar story.

"Every year, the needs in neighborhoods like the one I serve increase, but the resources do not," said Fabiola Hamdan, a social worker in the Darbo-Worthington neighborhood on Madison's East Side.

"There is a constant increase in people using the food pantries, and we're seeing larger households as more families double up to save money," said Tom Duter, a county social worker in Verona.

Some of the low-income families are moving to Dane County from elsewhere for a better life, but others have been here a long time and are not able to climb out of poverty, Chance said. Many are making a tremendous contribution to the economy by staffing a low-wage workforce, he said.

Michael Bruce, a county social worker in Southwest Madison, said he's amazed when he hears people say Madison should try to make itself "less attractive" to low-income people wanting to move here from elsewhere.

"It's already a pretty darn hard place to be poor," he said. "The rents are very high, and the low-income jobs often aren't close to where people live. It's a real struggle for people here."

'People have to care'

On a recent walk down Hammersley Road, Mary Sullivan stopped to pick up trash near stairs that lead to Falk Elementary School. The litter is a small thing, Sullivan said, but it bugs her.

"The police and the mayor can't do it all," she said. "People have to care."

Sullivan, the project manager for an insurance company, has been a leader of the Prairie Hills Neighborhood Association for five years. The neighborhood includes many of the city streets that have been most in the news lately, such as Loreen Drive, where a man was shot and killed in July outside a duplex.

Sullivan has seen worrisome signs cropping up for years � young children playing in the streets, adults who won't get out of the way of cars, outdoor drug deals. Some of the problems fall under the heading of "anti-social" behavior, but others are much more serious, she said. A 17-year-old boy was accosted by two men with a handgun on a Friday afternoon in August while walking on Raymond Road.

Linda Cox lives a few blocks from Sullivan's home and is equally concerned. Hers is a voice that hasn't been heard much in the discussion of neighborhood crime. She is black and a renter. Many of the hundreds of people who have attended the listening sessions have been white homeowners.

"This used to be a really quiet neighborhood," said Cox, a certified nursing assistant who has lived in a duplex at the intersection of Prairie Road and Hammersley Road for seven years. "But the last three years, it's been really rough � murders, fights, drugs. This neighborhood just isn't safe anymore."

She blames bad landlords and tenants who bring with them troublemakers from other cities. She'd like to see police arrest more people. "Hammersley could be a beautiful place to live again," she said.

� Assistant city editor Phil Brinkman contributed to this article.