Photo credit: WUWM
Edward A. Flynn arrived in Milwaukee 10 years ago promising modern police reforms in a department with a history of racial discrimination including a then-recent scandal over the brutal, racist beating and torture of an African American man who made the mistake of showing up with a white woman at a drunken house party of off-duty police officers.
Ed Flynn was an eloquent advocate for community policing, an idea that at its best encouraged officers to develop a respectful, working relationship with citizens in the neighborhoods they serve. It was absolutely the right idea. It’s just the opposite of police as an occupation army or police so fearful of their own citizens they shoot first and ask questions later.
The irony was that, in dealing with the public during a decade of confrontation, Chief Flynn appeared to appreciate the concept of the community a lot more than many of its actual members. But I still would argue that more dramatic, important, positive changes took place in the Milwaukee Police Department during Flynn’s tenure than under any other police chief I’ve seen—and I’ve seen all of them since covering iron-fisted (and frankly racist) Police Chief Harold Breier in the late-’60s.
Few police chiefs anywhere escaped severe criticism in recent years as deadly encounters between police and unarmed black citizens gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement and long overdue protests from citizens of color who (imagine this) insist they be treated the same way in their communities by police as white citizens are in theirs.
To Flynn’s credit, one of his first media appearances as chief was on the interracial talk show I co-hosted with my partner, Cassandra, on 1290 AM, WMCS, which had a large African American audience. The callers’ angry concerns about policing were exactly what a new chief from out of town needed to hear. That’s why I was sorry we could never convince Flynn to return.
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Flynn reacted similarly before Community Brainstorming—the freewheeling, monthly gathering in the black community where black leaders and ordinary folks grilled community officials. Flynn came off as extremely self-assured (to put it kindly) but with little patience for being challenged. In a media course on police training at the Milwaukee Police Academy, I learned police are trained to totally dominate any scene when they arrive. They’re taught if they fail to do so, they will lose control.
Positive Achievements
I always thought Flynn’s superior attitude in public obscured many of his most positive achievements. Continued protests keep pressure on for change after deadly tragedies resulting from unequal treatment by police. But after an MPD officer shot and killed an unarmed, mentally ill African American man in a Downtown Milwaukee park, Flynn should have received more credit not only for firing the officer, but also for fully embracing body cameras and retraining all officers to de-escalate encounters with the mentally ill.
While Sheriff David Clarke promoted arming Milwaukee to shoot its own way to public safety, Flynn fought a sleazy suburban gun store that flooded city neighborhoods with crime guns endangering the lives of police and citizens. Flynn also opposed Clarke’s threats to immigrant communities, declaring police should protect and serve community residents, “and you can’t do that if you’re terrifying them and trying to round them up.”
Flynn was on the right side in his most public dispute with interfering local politicians. He defended his policy of discouraging high-speed chases of young car thieves that only increase the danger to the community, young offenders and to the police officers, themselves. Car crashes, in fact, traditionally kill more officers than guns do. Statistics show that 128 officers were killed in in the U.S. in 2017, with 44 by gunfire and 47 in vehicle accidents, the second-lowest death toll in more than 50 years. A 15% reduction in traffic deaths from 2016 to 2017 was credited to departments across the country discouraging high-speed chases.
Sure, Flynn sometimes defended totally indefensible behavior by his officers. The worst example was Flynn’s initial dismissal as simply “overzealous” the humiliating, violent and completely illegal anal cavity searches of African Americans by police on the street for drugs. They were literally sexual assaults that never would be tolerated in white neighborhoods. After further investigation, however, Flynn fired the most sadistic offender who was convicted of felony assault and sentenced to three years in prison. Milwaukee reached a $5 million legal settlement with 74 African Americans subjected to the brutal, illegal searches.
That was ugly. But during the most confrontational time of protest against police practices since the 1960s, the Milwaukee Police Department kept moving forward—making positive changes under Flynn instead of throwing up stubborn resistance as it always had in the past.
The end is nowhere in sight when all citizens in the community will be treated equally by their police. It’s even more important the next chief keep building on the progress under Chief Flynn with a president and justice department that continually roll back advances in civil rights and police reform.
