Photo Credit: Tom Jenz
Acting Police Chief Jeffrey Norman’s sense of humor is delightful and disarming, but beneath the wit, he comes across self-assured, his opinions backed with careful deliberation. Norman holds a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from UW-Milwaukee, a Master of Public Administration from Kaplan University and a law degree from Marquette University Law School.
I’d like to talk about what your views are on policing in Milwaukee. But let’s start with your background. Are you a Milwaukee native?
Yes. Born and raised in Milwaukee. Our family home was on Capitol Drive right near Messmer High School, and I lived on that block until I graduated from the Police Academy.
Where did you go to high school?
I was a Chapter 220 student, Black kids getting bussed to the suburbs. I attended the Wauwatosa schools and Wauwatosa East High School for a year, but my father pulled me back, and I ended up graduating from North Division High School.
How did you decide to go to the Police Academy?
It’s always been my dream to be a cop. When we kids played cops and robbers, I played the cop. Nowdays, I tell kids listen to your heart, listen to your soul, do what speaks to you. That’s what I did, and this was all part of a greater strategy of what I wanted to do, police work. I attended UWM right out of high school. In my last semester of college, I was accepted into the Police Academy.
Could you take me through the progress of your career, step by step how you ended up being acting police chief? You started as a patrolman on the South Side, right?
That was a huge learning curve for me because if you know the history of Milwaukee, few African Americans live on the south side. After that assignment, I moved to District 1 Downtown. From there I went to the technical communications division, which involves the call center and dispatching. In 2002, I was promoted to detective in violent crimes.
That’s a risky job, detective in violent crimes. What does that entail?
We were given a lot of different experiences, whether it’s property crimes, burglaries, criminal damage or robberies. Back then, we had a lot of challenging crimes, a lot of long hours and a lot of court appearances. It was a humbling experience. The bread and butter of detective work is being able to communicate and connect. Being able to use the gift of conversation because you can’t browbeat or force someone to compliance. Building rapport is about building connection. Whether you are talking to a suspect or a witness or a victim, the approach is the same. Humanizing conversation, respectful behavior, dealing with their actual needs. Even the suspects have a need for understanding. You don’t need to kick a person who’s already down. Too often cops rely on their position of strength of authority to gain compliance or to exert power. I feel this attitude has no place in a democratic society.
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Along the path of your early police career, you also advanced your formal education.
During my later patrolman experience, I was part time at Marquette University Law School. I acquired my law degree in 2002 and went over to the DA’s office. For about a year I was a prosecutor for the Milwaukee County District Attorney office. But I soon realized my calling was police work. I was allowed to come back to the police department in 2003 and continue on as a homicide detective. After that assignment, I was promoted to property lieutenant before becoming a homicide lieutenant for the bureau. Then, I got promoted to captain and started my career in the Inspection Division where I learned the true power working with numbers and working with documents—operating procedures come out of administration, and you have rules, training, you have accountability with the Internal Affairs Division. Eventually, I was transferred from the Inspection Division and became the District 3 Commander on 49th and Lisbon.
District 3 is tough, like 100,000 residents, many of them inner city Black folks who have to put up with a fair share of crimes.
I always talk about having robust conversations and consistent interactions with the community residents, and that is the management approach I brought to District 3. After that assignment as commander of District 3, I got promoted to Assistant Chief before becoming Acting Chief on Dec. 23, 2020.
Let’s move on to some current Milwaukee law enforcement issues and how you feel about certain controversies. For example, recently you said about the police, “We need to ensure that we are going to hold people accountable who don't embody accountability to the public.” You were talking about the police being accountable. Can you elaborate on that?
Law enforcement is expected to uphold the laws and respect the community. We must have legitimacy as officers to hold our own selves accountable. I always start out by telling the public that I as executive leader hold myself accountable. So if I’m accountable, everyone under me is just as accountable. Troubling things that we’ve seen across the nation indicates we have come to the watershed of police officers’ activities. The bad officer who disrespects someone’s liberties or rights, well, behind every bad behavior there is either a supervisor or commander who is either turning a blind eye or is accepting bad behavior.
Whenever I speak to my people, I make it clear that my expectations are high. I tell them if I find you are less than responsible, you will be held accountable. Sometimes, they say, “Why do you act like you’re a scary dude?’ It’s not that I’m really a scary dude. It’s that I never waver from the message, I never waver from the expectations. I think the public needs to hear that, and our city leaders need to hear that. The public wants to find trust in their police force.
I’ve heard Vaun Mayes and other street leaders say they’d like to see more police-community relations, more communication. I’ll give you an example. I was in District 3 not long ago near 47th and Lisbon, and I was talking to some African American residents who were helping clean up their streets… and there were three policemen on the street helping them clean … and I thought now that is good community relations.
I’m proud to say that District 3 was my former district. In that headquarters, there’s a roll call room in which every shift enters to get the day’s directions. On that wall there’s sign that says, “What have you done for your community?” The police should follow that lead, and this is where we can take community engagement to a macro level of making this approach part of our culture in every department,
Vaun Mayes says he wants more community engagement. Good, then talk to us, talk to the police. We think that any person is worth engaging in conversation. Doesn’t mean I agree with you all the time. Maybe we have different opinions of how to get here but in the actual goals, for instance, safe neighborhoods, who disagrees about that? Or we don’t want bad cops. Who disagrees about that? These are things we can start with as points of agreement and work off from there. We have to be genuine collaborators. Public safety is a team activity.
I find that 98% of the people are law abiding residents and not criminals or drug dealers. But they seem to be reluctant to call the police sometimes, call 911. Maybe they don’t trust the police because of the bad publicity a few bad cops get.
What’s the number one challenge of the police department? Is it violence, is it reckless driving? I say, “No, it’s trust.” Trust is the biggest challenge. We don’t have a stellar history in regards to our police-community relations. We have outside forces and incidences of police misconduct across the country. We also have the issue of social media. We are held to a high standard because of what is out there in the media, true or false. Individuals’ perceptions are their reality. We have failed to build trust deposits in the community. It’s not a matter of if the police department will mess up. It is a when. And when that happens, how does the public react?
I see what you mean. Often, the public overreacts.
We’d like to have the many good things we’ve done controlling the narrative. When we do have that mistake because we’re human, we have the chance to say, “Can you talk to us first?” People tend to adopt other people’s stories. I tell people all the time, but what is your own story? Don’t use someone else’s experience to embody your own experience. You get a bad hamburger at McDonald’s, do you write off all McDonalds? It seems we have one bad experience with a police department member, everyone is painted with that broad picture. We as leaders have to give you the verbal bonding, let you get the anger off your chest and be able to spew all those things you’ve heard, true or not. Some of the best conversations I’ve had with residents is me shutting up and just listening
I could almost globalize this notion and say that white suburbanites and ex-urbanites have an exaggerated perception of the central city. They automatically assume that central city Black folks are either committing crimes or Black juveniles are violent. In reality, the criminals are only a very small percentage. There are outsider whites sympathetic with Black Lives Matter, but they do not want to get involved in the inner city because they have this perception that it’s incredibly dangerous, it’s crime ridden. I find that most unfortunate.
We have to be more optimistic. Everybody asks me what do you see happening in 2021? We have to think of the glass as half full, not half empty. There is a lot of beauty in our central city neighborhoods. There are kids who need us, see examples of leadership and see people who look like them in positions of influence. The strategy behind my communication is two-fold. One is that we interact with the people who we serve and also that the people see us in a different light. I tell my people when we interact with residents, we do it in a uniform. We have to assign a different experience to this uniform. If it’s only seeing citizens in crises and emergencies, there is a negativity attached to the uniform that’s gonna garner all the worst reactions. They need to see an officer reading a book, an officer cleaning up the neighborhood, an officer spending time in a soup kitchen. It’s definitely a level of passion you gotta bring to continue to be that cheerleader, to be that person of hope.
One issue that is universal in all of Milwaukee is reckless driving, particularly in the inner city. I’ve got this system. If I see a driver in the rearview mirror behind me speeding, I think, “Oh, oh, this is an aggressive driver.” So I just pull over. And here’s another thing I do. If I’m at a stoplight, and I hear somebody revving an engine or blasting a boom box, when the light turns green, I give it about three seconds before I go for fear of someone running the red light. But we shouldn’t have to do that. I know you’ve got this safe driving task force. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
The traffic safety unit is seven days a week, several shifts a day, of having officers specifically addressing reckless driving. There are areas where we have concerns from reports on traffic, data, violence, where we are making sure we have visibility there. We have marked squad cars on the streets that you can see.
It seems like North 27th Street and maybe North 35th are probably the most dangerous streets to drive on in the city. Does that mean you have police in patrol cars sitting there watching ?
Yes, they are looking for behaviors. There is a multi-faceted strategy to curb reckless driving. There are street signs out there to signal that this is an area of motor vehicle enforcement. There is a website for the community to tell us the areas where they are seeing these problems. And we will respond. We are utilizing traffic data, accident data. There’s a thing called DDACTS strategy where there is an interaction of violence and traffic issues where you see car jackings and shootings. Community engagement is how to communicate to our public and how can they communicate to us to be the most responsive.
So if you get enough calls about reckless driving at, hypothetically, say, 27th and North, then you will put someone on that corner?
Oh, absolutely. We are a service. This is about being responsive to what the community wants and needs. I think too often we’ve been wrong in our dynamic of how we deal with the community. We’re gonna tell you what to do, we’re gonna tell you because we know best. That shouldn’t be how it works
The residents are going tell you, and you’re going to respond.
Absolutely. As long as it’s lawful and legitimate. I tell people all the time when we as a legitimate representation of the law go outside of that circle, then we’re not law enforcement anymore. We’re rogue. We don’t want rogue departments or officers. The majority of men and women in this department I’m very proud to be their leader, proud to serve with them and proud to support them.
Is it true that because of budget constraints there will be reduction in the number of policemen in Milwaukee? Is that actually happening in 2021?
Yes, there is a reduction of 120 police personnel, what we consider attrition.
Over one year?
Yeah, 120 is to be reduced for the police department. I know there’s a lot of talk about re-imagining or defunding the police. I’m not afraid of those conversations. But what I am afraid of that people want their cake and eat it, too. It’s gonna take a little bit of recalibration of the public’s expectation, and we have to be careful of how we are going to dispense services if this is the path we’re going down.
I wouldn’t want to finish this interview without the readers wanting to know… are you married? Do you have children?
My wife was born and raised in Milwaukee. She is a practicing physician. I have two kids. One is in high school. One is in elementary. I’m very proud of them. And you know what? I’ve always surrounded myself with influential good people. I do a lot of motivational speaking, and one of things I say is that you’re judged by the company you keep. You should be around people who are doing as well as you or better.
