This morning’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a local section story titled “Flynn’s focus is values”. This is not a good development. The story’s entire focus is how the new police chief is going to focus on “curing poor public perception of police, bridging the gaps in community relations, and fixing a culture among officers that pressures them not to report misconduct among the ranks.” Boy! That’s great news–if you intend to be a criminal in Milwaukee because it sure doesn’t sound like slashing Milwaukee’s staggering crime rate and near national leading murder rate is going to be any part of his focus. They might as well have asked him if he preferred chaise lounges or folding chairs on the fantail of the Titanic.
Earth to Ed Flynn: Milwaukee is very close to leading the nation in murder and other violent crime! Did you somehow screw up and think that you were given the job as head of the Milwaukee Department of Social Services???? I don’t care how you are going to make police officers all cuddly and squishy and concerned about people’s feelings. I want to know how you are going to make life so incredibly miserable for the criminal element that they tremble with fear and wet their pants every time someone says the word “police”. I want to know how you are going to turn our criminals into paranoid wrecks who check under their beds several times a night. I want to know how you are going to hassle, harangue, interrupt, bother, inconvenience and so disrupt the lives of the criminal element that they will go back to Chicago and Detroit where they will feel less heat from the cops.
Does anyone realize that the real problem isn’t rogue cops beating up a male stripper? It’s that we have rogue citizens killing people, selling drugs, burglarizing homes, and otherwise making a secure livlihood out of criminal enterprise without any fear of being caught! Go spend time on the North Side of Milwaukee. To me, it is totally unacceptable that people can’t have their shades open during the day, have to have 46 locks on every door, have to have fixed bars on their windows and pit bulls in the yard. The only people who should think that they need that kind of protection should be criminals!!! There is no way that a city resident should consider it even close to acceptable to have a cop tell a citizen that everyone knows that you should have at least 2 deadbolt locks on every door.
In short–tell us what you are going to do to turn the Milwaukee Police Department into the roughest, toughest bunch of crimestoppers in the country. Tell us how criminal rats are going to run over themselves trying to get out of Milwaukee when you take charge of the department.
You can worry about “curing poor public perception” after you change the very correct public perception that there is just too damn much crime in Milwaukee
