While the city is mulling more restrictive ordinances controlling where registered sex offenders can live, Wauwatosa's getting some attention as the home of Joseph Hallows and Mark Lubinsky.

Hallows, a disbarred lawyer who looks like every mother's nightmare of a sexual predator, is facing charges for recent and past sexual assault and more. Lubinsky, a pediatric geneticist, was sentenced to 18 months for possession of child pornography.

Lubinsky is not so scary, either in looks or, I think, actions. He's a slight man with an odd gait who always seemed a little uncomfortable. I have a nodding acquaintance with him from my years of attending ethics seminars at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he talked with obvious concern about subjects like end of life rituals with families of dying patients.

While his access to children made him a greater potential threat than Hallows, who apparently got to kids mainly through their mothers, I'm willing to hazard that it's because Lubinsky knows right from wrong and feared going down the path to where child pornography can lead that he arranged to be "caught" downloading files.

But this isn't about trying to figure out why educated men, men who, despite their mug shots, are like the ones we are married or related to, work with, and live near, harm children or dream about having sex with them.

It's about reminding us that the creepy looking guys in the Family Watchdog are a very small percentage of the people who commit sexual crimes involving children. The ones on the map are easy to guard against, whether they're 500 feet or 5,000 feet away from your home or school.

Two things to keep in mind. All convicted offenders are not the same. A 17 year old boy who had consensual sex with a 15 year old girlfriend is not the same as someone who rapes infants. And a man who looks at child porn is not the same as someone who creates it.

Most important to remember is that, depending on whose statistics you read, 80-90% of child molestation is committed by someone the child knows, which means someone you know.  Someone who hasn't been convicted or even accused.

Strangers are at the very bottom of the list that includes:

-Relatives
-Caregivers
-Day care workers
-Teachers
-Babysitters
-Youth counselors
-Bus drivers
-Pastors
-Priests
-Bishops
-Clergy
-Boy Scout Leaders
-Team Coaches
-Counselors
-Doctors
-Friends
 

At around 9 am yesterday, I learned how to be afraid, something I’d nearly forgotten.

The lot behind my Walker's Point office was full, so I parked across the street behind the oldest Il Mito that’s about to become the newest Il Mito. At the sidewalk I ran into a man whose mouth and nose were streaming blood and whose shirt was blood-spattered.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said. Clearly, he was not, but he kept walking and so did I. Then he circled back toward me.

“Can I call someone for you?" I asked.

He shook his head no. “Is there someplace in there I can wash up?”

By this point my rusty street smarts ground into gear. “There’s a filling station two buildings down,” I said. “I’m sure the guy there. . .”

His eyes darted and then he sprinted toward The Timbers building. I turned around to see what he’d seen—two carloads of gang members being discharged 20 feet away. In an instant they surrounded me. There was no place to go: I was backed up against a wall.

But then they spotted their prey and most took off in pursuit. A couple hovered around me for a few seconds and then followed the rest.

I yelled to a man in the lower parking lot to call 911. But I guess he was scared, too, and he just left. Then a woman I hadn’t seen, parking behind me just before all the action started, rolled down her window and handed me her phone. “I’ve dialed 911: you talk to the dispatcher. And get in the car!”

I did and had a too long discussion with the dispatcher. Mostly she asked who I was. Finally she said, “do you need an ambulance?”

“No, but if you don’t send someone soon I will!”

She transferred me to the police, and I repeated the story.

The beaten man had run into a locked stairway. Trapped, he was beaten some more. Some men from one of the offices, buff guys in expensive clothes with the look of ex-marines, chased the gang members out and got the license number of one of the cars. Then the bloodied guy left, too.

It took 10 more minutes for the police to arrive. They were only blocks away when the call went out, talking to people who'd seen the original fight. In Tosa, I'm pretty certain they'd have responded first and returned later to question.

We all identified the beaten man as Latino, but when the police asked the race of the attackers, I was stymied. Their skin was dark, but were they African Americans or Cubans, Puerto Ricans, or some combination? I’m not that good at race identification in an increasingly mixed race world. And when you’re in the midst of 6-8 threatening men, the details flee.

The whole thing was shocking because unwritten territorial rules were violated. The gangs don’t bother the office buildings, especially during the day. They let us middle class working folks bask in the illusion of safety gentrification creates. This doesn't happen to us.

I couldn’t take my usual walk across the 6th Street Viaduct that afternoon. Didn't get much work done, either.

This morning I learned that I had starred in a security tape of the event. I also realized that two of us, the witness and the prey, were alive because that morning, no one had a gun. If they’d had one they’d have used it.

Instead of a modern tragedy, we had an old-fashioned broken nose, broken teeth, and a lost sense of freedom. But no one died.

Because bullets kill people more easily than fists do, and they come from guns, and people aim them and pull the triggers.