It can be argued that those paid to protect and serve know more about how safe we are in Madison than anyone.

Tonight police chief Noble Wray is talking about some of our biggest problems and what's being done about them.

The Chief spoke and answered questions with the common council for about 2 hours Wednesday night cutting through the rumors and perception and letting people know what's really going on.

Wray says, "As you can see in 2007 we were high. We were high for recent years."

As common council members turn an attentive ear police chief Noble Wray tells them exactly where Madison sits when it comes to public safety. Overall crime was up about 5 percent in 2007 but violent crime, like murder and rape, is down 14 percent.

The big problem, he says, is an increase in burglary and theft. It's something they're fighting with a new task force.

Alder Julia Kerr says, "The rash of burglaries hit my district very, very hard and I appreciate the work that the task force did."

Wray says, "Drugs has been right at the hub of this. We're seeing more heroin on the streets, obviously crack cocaine ."

It's just one area the department hopes to target with the addition of 30 officers. Among them, an extra gang officer, a training officer and the addition of patrol officers which will add an extra beat to every district.

Alder Thuy Pham-Remmele says, "So hopefully that would reduce response time."

Wray says, "It should. It really should. That is part of the reason we wanted to make sure we had enough officers to allocate to patrol."

Several much publicized murders in the last few years have generated a lot of public outcry and opinion and it's an issue Wray says the department is continually looking into.

He says, "We had such a major issue with our unsolved homicides that I elected to promote two acting detectives to assist with that and hold off for a salary savings issue with the lieutenant and the sergeant."

Wray didn't talk about any specific unsolved cases like the Brtittany Zimmermann or Kelly Nolan murders but did say he thinks his department's positives are sometimes overlooked.

Madison has had 32 murders in the last 5 years and only four of those cases are still active or have yet to be solved.

That leaves police with an 87 and a half percent solve rate which Wray says is much better than the 2005 national average of 61-percent.