A cop on every corner?

Stealing a beat from the recovery community, which often recommends that addicts and alcoholics go to 90 group meetings in 90 days, attorney general wannabe Paul Bucher has proposed his own 90-90 plan.

Bucher wants 90 more cops on the street in Milwaukee for the next 90 days, he announced in an attempt to cash in politically on a tragic weekend of gun violence in Milwaukee.

Why 90 cops for 90 days? The number's arbitrary, Bucher told the Journal Sentinel. It's just a number.

If more police officers is the answer, why stop at 90?

Why not 365 more cops on the street for 365 days?

Of course, these aren't really "more" police officers. It's not like there are a lot of unemployed cops sitting around that the city or county can hire or call back to work.

Bucher's brainstorm is to have the city and county pay enough overtime to let the existing officers work enough extra hours to be the equivalent of putting 90 more cops on the street. That's another 3600 hours of overtime a week, by my reckoning. Bucher says it's a mere $3-million.

How's he going to pay for it? Not his problem, Bucher says. The state -- as in Democrats Jim Doyle and Peg Lautenschlager -- should cough it up. He doesn't know where it is, but there must be some extra money lying around, maybe in the reserve funds of the Dept. of Waste, Abuse, Fraud, and Mismanagement. He's just the idea guy.

The city doesn't have any extra money; it's gone to pay the salaries of police union officers and fired cops, both mandated by Republicans. (The police union is about to endorse Mark Green, who has no doubt promised them he will maintain the status quo or worse.)

There is, of course, no reason to think that having 90 more cops on patrol last weekend would have prevented any of the 28 shootings that occurred in the city. You can't have a cop on every corner or at every picnic table.

But Bucher's had his 15 minutes of media, which is all this was about anyway.

Bucher's primary opponent, J.B. Van Hollen, at least recognized that guns are a problem, calling for a crackdown and harsh penalties for those who use a gun to commit a crime. But he focused his wrath and blame on AG Peg Lautenschlager, who has the job he wants. Funny how neither one of those guys blames anyone in Milwaukee. It's those Madison Democrats who are to blame -- the ones that happen to be on the ballot this fall.

Nice try, no cigar.

AFTERTHOUGHT: While firing at the Democrats, Bucher and Van Hollen have failed to mention that President Bill Clinton's COPS program put 100,000 more cops on the street. George W. Bush cut the funding and is taking them off. Washington Monthly: Bush's war on cops.

Dave Diamond: Bucher throws money at social problem.