Edward A. Flynn

Edward A. Flynn (born 1948) is an American law enforcement executive. From 2008 until 2018, Flynn served as chief of the Milwaukee Police Department. Prior to assuming that position, he served as secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security and the police commissioner in Springfield, Massachusetts. Flynn was reappointed twice to the position of Milwaukee police chief before retiring in early 2018.

Edward Flynn
Chief of the Milwaukee Police Department
In office January 7, 2008 – February 16, 2018
Preceded by	Nannette Hegerty
Succeeded by	Alfonso Morales
Secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security
In office January 2003 – March 2006
Governor	Mitt Romney
Preceded by	James Jajuga
Succeeded by	Robert C. Haas
Personal details
Born	Edward A. Flynn Brielle, New Jersey, U.S.
Nationality	American
Spouse(s)	Susan Flynn
Alma mater	La Salle University (BA) John Jay College of Criminal Justice (MA)

Early life and education

Flynn grew up in Brielle, New Jersey, the only child of Edward, a paralyzed World War II veteran who passed away when Flynn was 12, and Constance, who worked part-time at the local library.[1] Flynn attended St. Catherine's School in nearby Spring Lake, then graduated from high school at Christian Brothers Academy in 1966.[1]

Flynn earned a BA in history from La Salle University in 1970 and a master's degree in criminal justice from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 1976.[1]

Career

Early career

After college he worked for the New Jersey Department of Public Welfare. In 1971, he joined the Hillside Township, New Jersey police department. From 1973 to 1988, he was a member of the Jersey City, New Jersey police department, rising to the rank of inspector.[1][2]

From 1988 to 1993, he served as police chief of Braintree, Massachusetts.[1] In Braintree, Flynn developed a reputation for using high-quality equipment. He was responsible for computerizing the department.[3]

From 1993 to 1998, he was chief of police in Chelsea, Massachusetts.[3][4] During his tenure, the police department adopted a community policing model, decentralized authority, recruited and promoted minorities, and encouraged inter-agency cooperation.[5][6]

From 1998 to 2002, he served as police chief in Arlington County, Virginia, where he was responsible for leading the police department's responses to the September 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon,[1][7] and to the 2002 Beltway sniper shootings.[8]

He returned to Massachusetts in January 2003, when then-governor Mitt Romney appointed him as secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, the parent agency of the state police, department of correction, the National Guard, the department of fire services, office of the chief medical examiner, parole board, and the emergency management agency.[7]

Flynn resigned from Romney's cabinet in March 2006, when he was appointed police commissioner in Springfield, Massachusetts. Eighteen months into his five-year contract there, Flynn became a finalist for the chief of police position in Milwaukee. He was criticized by elected officials in Springfield, including mayor Charles Ryan and city councilor and mayor-elect Domenic Sarno for seeking a job.[9][10][11] Flynn was appointed Milwaukee chief of police on November 15, 2007, but remained in Springfield until the following January.[12]

Milwaukee police chief

Flynn was sworn in as Milwaukee police chief, on January 7, 2008.[10] He was only the second outsider in the history of the Milwaukee Police Department to be named chief.[1]

In late 2011 his contract was renewed for an additional four years, marking the first time since 1863 that a Milwaukee police chief was reappointed.[13] He was credited with crime reductions every year of his tenure in Milwaukee, as well as mending police-citizen relations.[14]

Flynn was reappointed by a unanimous decision of the city's Fire and Police Commission to a third four-year term in July 2015.[14][15]

On January 8, 2018 Flynn announced his retirement as police chief effective February 16, 2018.[16]

Controversies

Relationships with colleagues and lawmakers

In June 2011, Flynn criticized the state's proposed concealed-carry bill, saying that the bill did not provide enough supervision.[17] In December 2011, Flynn and Milwaukee County sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr engaged in a war of words over bus safety in Milwaukee after an increase in the number of reports of fighting incidents on buses. Clarke also attacked Flynn for rising response times to crime and for bringing the culture of another area to Milwaukee.[18]

Response to strip search complaints

In 2012, it was revealed that complaints were filed against seven Milwaukee police officers and a sergeant alleging that they performed unauthorized rectal searches during traffic stops. Flynn announced that all of them had been stripped of their police powers while the allegations were under investigation and urged citizens who felt that they had been subjected to an illegal strip search to come forward.[19]

Crime statistics reporting

In May 2012, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker joined state and city officials in calling for an independent audit of Milwaukee police crime data,[20] after a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigative report alleged that more than 500 cases of beatings, stabbings, and child abuse cases were mischaracterised in the city's violent crime rate data between 2009 and 2012, and so were misreported by the Milwaukee Police Department to the FBI as minor assaults.[21] The errors in reporting, if substantiated, would have forced a change to the claim by Flynn of a decrease in violent crime in 2011 (by 2.3%), to an increase (by 1.1%).

McBride affair

In 2009, Flynn admitted to an affair with journalist Jessica McBride.[10][22][23] In response to these allegations, he was quoted as saying "I have done my wife and family a great wrong, and I profoundly regret the hurt I have inflicted on them and others affected by my conduct [...]".[10][22][23]

Initial claims by Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJS)—who pens a "Watchdog column" covering Wisconsin government entitled "No Quarter"[24]—that the affair was ongoing or coincident with a McBride story on the police chief have been rebutted by Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy.[25] Such coincidence would have implied conflict of interest, and so an issue of journalistic ethics, and Murphy, who edited the 5,400-word profile that McBride had written on Flynn, presented evidence to the contrary, and accused Bice of selective reporting of the facts of the Flynn-McBride case.[25][26] Murphy, who terms Bice's MJS coverage of the Flynn-McBride affair a "hatchet job,"[25] further reports having removed negative content regarding Flynn from early drafts of the McBride piece (in order to shorten it), and otherwise argues that representation of the piece using terms such as "glowing" by Bice and other follow-on reporters since news of the affair broke is a misrepresentation—stating instead, of the McBride profile, that

On balance, the story [on Flynn, in Milwaukee Magazine, by McBride] was positive, but in the storied career of Flynn, which had generated nothing but adulatory press, it was the toughest profile any reporter had ever done.[25]

Although Flynn claimed that the affair had ended in 2009, the scandal reemerged briefly in July 2012 when a letter written by McBride's husband to Flynn's wife asserting a continuing affair was submitted to the City of Milwaukee, and was thereafter released to the press.[27]

Personal life

Flynn and his wife Susan have been married since 1973. The couple has two grown children.[1] Susan has remained in Virginia while Flynn has worked in Massachusetts and Wisconsin due to her career and desire to stay close to family.[22]

Flynn was a 1996 National Institute of Justice Pickett Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.[28]

References

1. Borowski, Greg (January 6, 2008). "Ideals Bind History Major to Urban Policing". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Archived from the original on April 26, 2014. Retrieved October 8, 2020.
2. "The Cop Who Can't Stop". Milwaukee Magazine. 2009-06-26. Retrieved 2020-05-18.
3. McGrory, Brian (April 11, 1993). "New police chief in Chelsea seen as 'new breed'". Boston Globe. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
4. McGrory, Brian (April 7, 1993). "Chelsea names new police chief for its beleaguered department". Boston Globe. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
5. Lupo, Alan (May 1, 1994). "Chelsea Police Chief Ed Flynn is Running a Community-Based Force That May be a National Model". Boston Globe. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
6. Lupo, Alan (January 9, 2003). "Chelsea Roots Remembered Crime Fighter Ahead of his Time". Boston Globe. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
7. Flynn, Edward A. & MPD (2013). "Edward A. Flynn—Chief of Police". Milwaukee Police Department (MPD), City of Milwaukee. Archived from the original (professional autobiography) on February 14, 2012. Retrieved March 3, 2012.
8. Gunn, Erik. "How Milwaukee Went Soft on Crime". POLITICO Magazine. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
9. Goonan, Peter (October 16, 2007). "Sarno calls for Flynn to resign". The Republican. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
10. Barry, Stephanie (June 19, 2009). "Former Springfield Police Chief Edward Flynn admits having affair in Milwaukee". The Springfield Republican. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
11. "Mayor: Commissioner free to leave for Milwaukee". Associated Press. November 23, 2007. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
12. Goonan, Peter (December 12, 2007). "Officials bid Flynn depart". The Republican. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
13. Gozun, Matt. "Police chief Flynn appointed to historic second term". Marquette Wire. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
14. WISN Staff (January 6, 2012). "Milwaukee Police Chief Sworn In For Second Term". WISN TV. Hearst Television Inc. Archived from the original on January 24, 2016. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
15. Luthern, Ashley (July 2, 2015). "Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn wins reappointment". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
16. Luthern, Ashley. "'A lifetime in policing': Chief Ed Flynn retires having radically changed the Milwaukee Police Department". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
17. Laasby, Gitte (June 3, 2011). "Chief slams firearm measure". Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
18. "Sheriff Clarke attacks Chief Flynn over response times, not knowing Milwaukee". 620 WTMJ Newsradio. WTMJ. Archived from the original on 8 January 2012. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
19. Laasby, Gitte (March 22, 2012). "Flynn Urges Strip Search Victims to Come Forward". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Archived from the original on December 30, 2014. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
20. Poston, Ben & Walker, Don (May 24, 2012). "Walker Joins Call for Outside Audit of Flawed Crime Data". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved February 14, 2017.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
21. Poston, Ben (May 22, 2012). "Hundreds of Assault Cases Misreported by Milwaukee Police Department". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
22. "Ex-Mass. public safety secretary, now Milwaukee police chief admits to affair". Boston Herald. June 19, 2009. Retrieved 25 February 2012.
23. Bice, Daniel (June 19, 2009). "Flynn Had Affair With Journalist Who Wrote About Him". Journal Sentinel. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
24. Bice, Daniel & MJS Staff (February 14, 2017). "Daniel Bice". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
25. Murphy, Bruce (June 24, 2009). "The McBride Affair". Milwaukee Magazine. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
26. The selective reporting by Bice, alleged by Murphy, specifically included "ignor[ing] information proving the contrary" to Bice's assertion of the affair being coincident to the McBride piece, including timeline evidence—dates of submission of the piece's drafts and final form—that were supplied by Murphy to Bice. See Murphy, Milwaukee Magazine, op. cit.
27. WISN Staff (July 30, 2012). "Chief Flynn Refuses Comment on Letter About Affair". WISN TV. Hearst Television Inc. Retrieved February 14, 2017. [Quote:] McBride's husband, former Waukesha District Attorney Paul Bucher, told 12 News he sent the letter to Flynn's wife. Copies were received by both the mayor's office and the Fire and Police Commission, which released it to WISN 12 News.
28. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/203983.pdf

External links

• Appearances on C-SPAN

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