The Obama Legacy in Milwaukee Policing

From Heather Mac Donald in City Journal: a discussion of how Attorney General Jeff Sessions is trying to undo the anti-police policies of the Obama Administration. Mac Donald specifically discusses Milwaukee:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has reoriented the [collaborative reform] program to help departments fight crime, rather than phantom police bias, without imposing a costly bureaucratic overlay. The changes come too late, however, for the Milwaukee Police Department, whose chief, Ed Flynn, was sweet-talked into collaborative reform by the former head of the COPS office. In 2016, Milwaukee’s collaborative-reform team produced a draft 243-page report, characterized by the usual Obama hallmarks—above all, a disparate-impact approach to finding police bias that measures police activity, like stops or arrests, against population ratios rather than against crime rates. The current DOJ lawyers agreed with Flynn that the draft report was seriously flawed and should not be released until its errors were corrected. But someone—whether an Obama aide, a member of the collaborative-reform team, or a Milwaukee police official—leaked the report to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and to the city council. The Journal Sentinel, which has waged a crusade against Flynn for years, splashed its nearly 3,000-word article on its front page under the unintentionally hilarious headline: TRUST IN POLICE DAMAGED, REPORT SAYS: DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE DRAFT SAYS MILWAUKEE CHIEF RELIES TOO MUCH ON DATA. Accusing a police department of relying “too much on data” is like accusing a doctor of relying too much on evidence-based disease markers in his diagnoses. Another term for “data-driven” is “victim-driven,” since crime data simply record the incidence of criminal victimization. The Journal Sentinel followed up with another front-page piece the next day: 9 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE DOJ DRAFT.

Predictably, the report criticizes traffic-stop rates, allegedly three times higher for blacks than for whites. The investigators concede that the department deploys its resources based on “data to identify neighborhoods of higher crime rates.” Race, in other words, has nothing to do with deployment or enforcement. But, the report goes on to explain, “community members have expressed concern that the areas identified as high crime are also more populated by minority community members. As a result, MPD’s data driven policing strategy has a disparate impact on minority community members.” This, in a nutshell, is the core dilemma facing police departments today. Given the huge disparities in law-breaking, the police cannot go to where people are most being victimized without generating racially disproportionate stop and arrest data. In 2016, blacks made up 89 percent of robbery suspects in Milwaukee, 85 percent of aggravated-assault suspects, and 81 percent of homicide suspects, though they are 39 percent of the population. Their victims were predominantly minority. The nonfatal shooting rate for blacks is over 15 times higher than for whites; the homicide rate is over 11 times higher than for whites. The only way to avoid generating racially disproportionate police activity data is to stop serving the minority victims of crime. No one has articulated this bind more eloquently over the years than Ed Flynn.

The dilemmas of policing in the Black Lives Matter era were put on vivid display this April, when Milwaukee’s city council voted to require the MPD to loosen its policy on car chases. The current MPD policy, instituted by Flynn, requires a high threshold of criminal behavior before officers can give chase; it represents the gold standard of “progressive” policing, because high-speed car chases are extremely dangerous. But the city council now wants officers to crack down on reckless driving because minority communities have complained about speeding, often by carjackers who zoom away after stealing cars. Nearly 90 percent of car-theft suspects are black, but the same municipal officials who routinely blame the MPD for high rates of black incarceration are now demanding that the department ramp up enforcement against the black population. “It’s more than a little baffling to me,” reports Flynn, “that the same city council that’s on the record as opposing putting people in jail for committing crimes wants us to engage in more pursuits that place innocent lives at risk to catch people they don’t want to see put in jail.”

The collaborative-reform draft cites MPD’s alleged failure to engage in community policing. In fact, Flynn has put so many officers on bikes to interact with the community that critics have accused him of letting patrol-car response times increase. The report also alleges that the department has a patrol workforce that does not “reflect the diversity of the Milwaukee community at large.” Like every other department in the country, Milwaukee tries to recruit as many minority candidates as possible. The Black Lives Matter narrative that policing is racist does not facilitate that effort; nor does the fact that minorities are more likely to have a criminal record and weaker test scores. It’s unlikely in any case that further racial engineering would improve policing: another Obama-era collaborative-reform report found that black and Hispanic officers in Philadelphia had a much higher rate than white officers of shooting unarmed black males. That disparity, which has been found elsewhere, undoubtedly derives from racial quotas in hiring.

As if the leaked report were not causing the MPD headaches enough, the Wisconsin ACLU is suing in federal court for a consent decree against stop, question, and frisk. The suit is based on the usual specious disparate impact analysis.

Law enforcement policy, better than almost anything else, shows how liberals are so attached to their narrative of black victimization at the hands of whites that they will harm black people to avoid admitting the flaws in that narrative.

Blacks are most certainly victims of crime, and they are by a vast disproportion more victimized than whites. But the idea that blacks are mostly victimized by other blacks is something that would create huge cognitive dissonance among liberals.

Liberals are, however, happy with the notion that black people are mostly the victims of white cops.  Thus we have a war on cops.  Which is also, de facto, a war on black people.

Incarceration Prevents Crime

Liberals have never liked punishing criminals. Oh, they have made exceptions, wanting harsh punishments for “hate crimes” against groups such as blacks and gays, and they really want rapists punished. But garden variety criminals doing garden variety crimes have been the object of a huge solicitude from liberals.

Of course, this attitude reflects the class interests of the sort of people who are liberals. Instead of punishment, liberals’ preferred anti-crime strategy has been a vast expansion of social programs (if we just spend enough money on social programs, crime will go away) and rehabilitation for criminals (administered, of course, by liberal professionals).

But in the real world, failure to keep criminals locked up has nasty consequences. One historic example is from Philadelphia, where a liberal judge imposed a “prison cap,” forcing the release of thousands of offenders based on the claim of prison overcrowding:

Mayor Edward Rendell, a former district attorney, has been battling for years to get the city out from under a devastating eight-year-old prison cap imposed by U.S. District Judge Norma L. Shapiro. . .

Judge Shapiro is one of the worst offenders among that influential cadre of federal judges who have substituted the ACL’U’s prisoners’ rights wish list for the Bill of Rights and have trifled with public safety concerns. She has used complaints filed by individual inmates to gain control over the prison system and empowered a group of court-appointed prisoners’ rights lawyers to micromanage the jails.

In effect, Judge Shapiro has single-handedly decriminalized property and drug crimes in the City of Brotherly Love. Some 67 percent of all defendants released because of her prison cap simply fail to appear in court. The number of outstanding bench warrants for misdemeanor and felony cases has soared to 46,637 in March from 16,595 in 1987. And in the past 18 months alone, 9,732 arrestees, out on the streets on pre-trial release because of her prison cap, were arrested on second charges, including 79 murders, 90 rapes, 701 burglaries, 959 robberies, 1,113 assaults, 2,215 drug offenses and 2,748 thefts.

Do Black Lives Matter?

It’s not so clear that they do to the activists who use that slogan.



We are not entirely sure that “broken windows policing” is quite as effective as the hype suggests, but there is no question that it’s a policy promoted by people who really do believe that black lives matter.

Interestingly, it seems that rank and file black people (as opposed to the race hustling activists) favor such policing.

Consider, for example, a poll of black people in New York City, as reported by the leftist outlet The Root.

Despite the looming specter of police brutality, which casts shadows over street corners, neighborhoods and homes across black America, 56 percent of black voters in New York City support “broken windows” policing tactics, compared with 61 percent of the city’s white voters, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

The controversial policing style frames community disorder and signs of neglect—such as broken windows, littering and loitering—as indicators of encroaching crime that will lead to more dangerous communities and must be addressed with the full force of the law.

In theory, broken-windows policing, and its variants stop-and-frisk, zero-tolerance and quality-of-life policing, are tactics used by officers who are hyperinvested in keeping communities safe, clean and crime-free. In practice, however, they provide opportunities for racial profiling and resulting antagonistic and abusive encounters between law enforcement and people of color.

Interestingly, when participants in the Quinnipiac poll were asked whether police officers should “actively issue summonses or make arrests for so-called quality of life offenses,” including selling small amounts of marijuana or making loud noise, 60 percent of black voters said yes, a negligible difference from the 59 percent of white voters who said the same.

“It’s different where you live from what you see in the media,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Assistant Director Maurice Carroll. “Overall, black New Yorkers are negative about cops citywide. White voters are positive. But looking at cops in their own neighborhood, the support turns positive among black voters and heavily positive among whites.

“Does it improve the quality of life in your neighborhood when police arrest someone for a low-level offense, or does it increase neighborhood tensions? New Yorkers decide for quality of life,” Carroll added.

Contrary to the activist myth, black people don’t see the courts as excessively harsh on criminals. The following tabulation is from the National Opinion Research Center General Social Survey, combining polls from 2008 through 2012 (to get a reasonable number of black respondents).

Click on Image to Enlarge

The numbers show that while blacks are a bit more likely than whites to say the courts are “too harsh” (27 percent as opposed to 10 percent for whites) a robust majority of blacks (56 percent) say the courts are “not harsh enough.” Another sixteen percent of blacks say the courts are “about right.”

Given that rank-and-file black people don’t seem to agree with the race hustlers, how do the politically correct types respond?

The Root went to one Arlene Eisen to provide a politically correct gloss on the findings.

“If [we are to] assume the study is reliable, then you have to ask, ‘What black people?’ Generally, more middle class and professional people will prioritize protecting property,” said Arlene Eisen, the author and primary researcher of Operation Ghetto Storm, a frequently quoted study on the extrajudicial killing of black people. “Then, you need to consider the level of political education of whoever responded to the survey. This includes what a lot of people call ‘internalized racism’—where black people learn a lot of the same views of themselves as whites. Unfortunately, there is very little in the education system and corporate media to counter the hegemonic status of white supremacy.”

Thus politically correct people always end up demeaning the people they are supposedly championing. “Those ignorant blacks,” she seems to be saying, “are anti-black racists too. They just aren’t educated enough to see what’s going on.”

To whom do black lives matter?

To rank-and-file black folks, yes. To people who favor strict law enforcement, yes. To the race hustlers who would rather have a political grievance than to protect black lives, no.

Marquette Professor Makes Flippant, Innocuous Comment in Class, Is Banned from Campus

Sometimes, of course, professors make comments in class that are out of bounds.  And sometimes students get upset about comments that are, in reality, fairly innocuous.  A little of the former and a lot of the latter happened a few weeks ago at Marquette.

According to Marquette Tribune:

According to a call received by the Tribune, a criminology professor was asked to leave his class after a student reported feeling uncomfortable.

The caller said criminology professor Richard Zevitz patted down students as part of a demonstration, and then, when talking about the concealed carry law in Wisconsin, said if an active shooter came into the classroom, he would shoot the shooter and possibly a few students he did not like. Some students reportedly felt uncomfortable enough to report it to the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.

There was one clear error in what the caller reported. Zevitz did not pat down students. He had student volunteers pat down other students (males patting down males and females females). Quite obviously, in a Criminal Justice class, the proper procedures for a pat down are a legitimate subject. Further, that didn’t happen this semester.

More serious, potentially, was the talk about shooting people. If any student actually had cause to believe the instructor might shoot them, that would be a real cause for alarm.

But nobody could reasonably think that Zevitz might do that.

Bureaucrats often overreact to anything that even vaguely suggests firearms violence. Remember the case of the grade school kid who chewed a pop tart into the shape of a pistol and was expelled.

In this case, Zevitz’ last two classes were cancelled. He was put on paid administrative leave for the Spring semester, and he was banned from campus.  He was told he could not even visit his library carrel.

Most students, doubtless, put this in proper perspective.  According to the Tribune:

Keisha Harper, a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences, said although Zevitz might seem strange at first, he just has a dark sense of humor.

“I remember coming in freshmen year and thinking that this man is a little bit out there, kinda crazy, but then again, I was a freshman at Marquette, and I didn’t really understand the criminology department,” Harper said. “I came to the realization that (Zevitz) isn’t crazy, he just kind of has a sick sense of humor.”

Harper added that through working with police officers and those in the criminology field, she realized that a darker sense of humor is needed to be in that line of work.

Another issue here is the suspicion that the judgment of the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences might not be completely unbiased in dealing with this case.  Zevitz has been in conflict with some of the more politically correct members of the Department, and at least some of his “colleagues” might look favorably on tossing him out – or at least inducing him to leave.

Zevitz is certainly a leftist, but having been in law enforcement for several years, he simply doesn’t have the prissy sense of political correctness of many of his colleagues.

Indeed, one suspects that what they really didn’t like was his claim that he would be willing to shoot a maniac on a murderous rampage.  But in reality, since Marquette doesn’t allow guns on campus (except in the hands of Public Safety), his odds of being able to do that would be slim.

What combination of political bias, interpersonal conflict and bureaucratic timidity caused this fiasco is not entirely clear. But that this was an overreaction is entirely clear.

George Zimmerman: Another Political Prosecution?

A column by Alan Dershowitz in the New York Daily News:

A medical report by George Zimmerman’s doctor has disclosed that Zimmerman had a fractured nose, two black eyes, two lacerations on the back of his head and a back injury on the day after the fatal shooting. If this evidence turns out to be valid, the prosecutor will have no choice but to drop the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman — if she wants to act ethically, lawfully and professionally.

There is, of course, no assurance that the special prosecutor handling the case, State Attorney Angela Corey, will do the right thing. Because until now, her actions have been anything but ethical, lawful and professional.

She was aware when she submitted an affidavit that it did not contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She deliberately withheld evidence that supported Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. The New York Times has reported that the police had “a full face picture” of Zimmerman, before paramedics treated him, that showed “a bloodied nose.” The prosecutor also had photographic evidence of bruises to the back of his head.

But none of this was included in any affidavit.

Now there is much more extensive medical evidence that would tend to support Zimmerman’s version of events. This version, if true, would establish self-defense even if Zimmerman had improperly followed, harassed and provoked Martin.

A defendant, under Florida law, loses his “stand your ground” defense if he provoked the encounter — but he retains traditional self-defense if he reasonably believed his life was in danger and his only recourse was to employ deadly force.

Thus, if Zimmerman verbally provoked Martin, but Martin then got on top of Zimmerman and banged his head into the ground, broke his nose, bloodied his eyes and persisted in attacking Zimmerman — and if Zimmerman couldn’t protect himself from further attack except by shooting Martin — he would have the right to do that. (The prosecution has already admitted that it has no evidence that Zimmerman started the actual fight.)

This is a fact-specific case, in which much turns on what the jury believes beyond a reasonable doubt. It must resolve all such doubts in favor of the defendant, because our system of justice insists that it is better for 10 guilty defendants to go free than for even one innocent to be wrongfully convicted.

You wouldn’t know that from listening to Corey, who announced that her jobs was “to do justice for Trayvon Martin” — not for George Zimmerman.

As many see it, her additional job is to prevent riots of the sort that followed the acquittal of the policemen who beat Rodney King.

Indeed, Mansfield Frazier, a columnist for the Daily Beast, has suggested that it is the responsibility of the legal system to “avert a large scale racial calamity.” He has urged Zimmerman’s defense lawyer to become a “savior” by brokering a deal to plead his client guilty to a crime that “has him back on the streets within this decade.”

But it is not the role of a defense lawyer to save the world or the country. His job — his only job — is to get the best result for his client, by all legal and ethical means.

So the argument is that Zimmerman needs to go to jail to keep black people from rioting. Or maybe to keep black gangs from beating up whites in retaliation.

This thus begins to look a bit like the Duke rape case, where an elected prosecutor, needing the votes of the local black community, brought charges against white Lacrosse players. The entire case collapsed.

The argument, of course, is demeaning to the majority of black people who — while understandably sensitive about racial injustice — don’t embrace a lynch mob mentality, and will accept the verdict of a fair legal process.

As for the minority of blacks who don’t think this way: they are what cops and riot police (and concealed carry) are for.

Felons and the Right to Vote

Tonight, in Cudahy Hall, Room 001 at 7:00 p.m., there is a presentation by Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project titled “Losing the Vote: Felony Disenfranchisement and American Democracy,”

The Sentencing Project is a liberal operation that doesn’t like putting criminals in prison.

Which is to say that (although they would not admit it) that they don’t particularly mind people (particularly poor people in high crime areas) being victimized by crime.

Which is not to say that Mauer is wrong about giving felons the vote. Our view tends to be “if you let somebody out of prison, and you don’t think they have been punished enough, just keep them another six months or a year, rather than sticking them with lifetime disabilities.”

Good reading in preparation for the politically correct cant that Mauer is likely to produce is our own essay “Does Wisconsin Lock Up Too Many Blacks?” which deals not only with the racial issue, but with the advantages (now unquestioned by economists) of incarceration.

Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System: Report Not So Bad

We’ve blogged several times on the Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System, often noting some of the wilder and more extreme statements and views of some of its members, including especially Spencer Coggs and Tamara Grigsby.

We have also debated, in an exchange right here, Prof. Pamela Oliver, sociologist who is a member of the Commission.

The Commission’s Report was posted this morning, and it was pretty much what we reported it would be in a post last Thursday.

What is happily missing from the Report? Any blanket condemnation of the Wisconsin justice system as racist. Given that the Commission was appointed by Governor Doyle as a sop to some black legislators, and given that some of those legislators have a propensity to play the race card at any opportunity, we feared that this might happen.

Such a “finding” would be highly damaging, since it would create pressure for an affirmative action program by police and prosecutors to “make the numbers come out right.” It’s clear who would be harmed by this: blacks in the inner cities of Wisconsin who are the most frequent victims of black criminals.

Indeed, the Report admits this possibility:

One on-going form of discrimination in United States history has been the under-protection of minorities in the criminal justice system. The Commission notes that progress in avoiding over-incarceration of minorities should not be made at the expense of victims of crimes. Protection must also remain for those victims who live in challenged neighborhoods.

The one area where the Report comes closest to asserting an actual bias against blacks concerns drug crimes.

The evidence is that in some areas, particularly enforcement of the drug laws, some disparity results from policies and practices that have disparate impacts on people of color – most heavily on African-Americans – and these policies and practices should be carefully reviewed and could be improved by police, prosecutors and defense attorneys, judges, corrections officials, social workers, and others who work in and influence the operation of the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems.

Note, however, that even here, the charge is not flat-out racial discrimination but rather a disparate racial impact of policies that aren’t discriminatory on their face.

We stated as much in our article that came out this past September in The Wisconsin Interest, although we added that the black community has been in the forefront of promoting tough drug enforcement, and that there is a rational basis for tough drug enforcement where drug trafficking can be viewed as a community problem, and not a mere private vice.

Where the Commission looked at new data, they pretty much found no evidence of racial discrimination. For example, a report on the treatment of inmates in an Appendix to the Report (pages 77-83) shows only minor and inconsistent differences between the treatment of blacks and whites.

Recommendations

The recommendations of the Report, which span pages 5-22, are numerous and mostly benign. From example, the last one says:

DOC [Department of Corrections] should work collaboratively with the faith communities to provide services that would assist in the rehabilitation of inmates and prepare them for release from prison. The networks built through this interaction will assist in the maintenance of strong ties and supervision once the inmate returns to his or her community.

OK. Sure. We are all for that.

One large class of recommendations calls for gathering more data. For example, we get this:

Currently, there is a lack of data and/or lack of tracking data by race at all stages of the justice system, from initial law enforcement contact through probation, incarceration, and parole. Local jurisdictions need to have data so they have an understanding of what is happening in their communities and can begin the discussion locally.

This sounds benign enough. But it could actually be damaging if it becomes an unfunded mandate in which agencies are required to devote scarce resources to gathering data and producing reports, as opposed to actually doing their jobs.

It could also be damaging if it leads to a preoccupation with “getting the numbers right” and a sort of affirmative action program where blacks get treated more leniently so that they won’t appear to be “disproportionately” punished. But this latter possibility is mitigated by the lack or rhetoric about racial bias in the system. People having to collect and report such data won’t face a situation where they are presumed to be racist until they prove otherwise.

The Report is particularly concerned about revocations of probation and parole, which have an effect on the disproportionate imprisonment of blacks. Is this evidence of racial bias? The Report doesn’t assert such, but does call for collecting data.

The Report does show a sensible concern with offenders who have been released and need to rehabilitate themselves with a job or education or both. For example:

Active efforts should be made to change prohibitions against financial aid for education and housing for convicted drug offenders.

And there is this:

The State Department of Transportation and Department of Corrections program should be expanded to serve inmates at all Department of Corrections facilities and aid inmate reintegration by ensuring that inmates who request them have a valid identification card before they are released.

Although we are very hard-nosed about the value of incarceration (the one “social program” with a consistent track record of reducing crime), when an offender has “paid his debt to society” we see no need for artificial barriers to rehabilitation.

Even where the Report seems to embrace mushy liberalism, the practical effect of doing what they recommend would probably be small. Making more drug treatment available, for example, doesn’t seem so lenient when one understands that simple users rarely get prison time anyway. Then there is this:

Consistent with the results of the January, 2008 Legislative Audit report, legislation should be introduced to return jurisdiction of 17 year olds alleged to have violated state or federal criminal laws to juvenile courts. Current waiver provisions should be maintained.

So long as particularly dangerous 17 year-old offenders can be waived into adult court, the practical effect of this is likely to be small. Simply being in adult court doesn’t guarantee tough punishment.

Conclusion

No doubt the Report does have a bit of a mushy liberal ambience, with about every feel-good idea you can think of thrown in. But some of the ideas are good ones, and excessive racial rhetoric has been avoided.

We see little harm in it, and maybe at least some good.

Final Report of the Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities Will Be Released Thursday

It’s a story we have been following: Wisconsin’s Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities, which was supposed to release a Final Report today will in fact (they say) be released on Thursday.

There appears to be no large-scale rewriting going on, rather a bit of quibbling about language.

Our prediction last Thursday that the report will be relatively sensible and moderate appears to hold.

Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice: Report Delayed Again

We have been following with considerable interest the work of the Wisconsin Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice, including run-ins with a couple of the more extreme members: State Senator Spencer Coggs and Tamara Grigsby, State Representative.

The report, the release of which was delayed once, was supposed to come out today.

But in fact it has been delayed until Monday. As of right now, no commission member (and this includes co-chairs Coggs and Madison Police Chief Noble Wray) has seen the final report -- the version they are supposed to sign off on.

This is symptomatic of a general lack of organization that has marked the Commission’s work.

People who are hoping for a broad gage attack on “racism” in the Wisconsin criminal justice system are going to be disappointed. Although the Commission got a lot of anecdotal testimony about this or that instance of racial unfairness, they had no good evidence of widespread and systematic racism, and a sensible majority refrained for making any overblown claims.

The unwillingness of the Commission to make overbroad claims of systemic racism was a matter of some disappointment among some members. Judge Maxine White and Grigsby (who wanted a strong statement she could carry back “to my community”) fall into this category, as does (to a somewhat lesser degree) co-chair Coggs.

That Grigsby seems to define the “community” as people with a grudge against the cops, as opposed to people in her district who are afraid to go outside for fear of being robbed or assaulted is a matter of considerable interest.

If some of the black members acted like race hustlers, several others did not, including co-chair Wray, lawyer Stan Davis and WHEDA Executive Director Antonio Riley.

Add to this people like Brian Blanchard, Dane County District Attorney and John Chisholm, Milwaukee County District Attorney, and you get a moderate and relatively sensible majority.

As for recommendations, look for some very mildly liberal and sensible ones. For example, expect considerable concern for helping recently released offenders get back into the workforce. One impediment to this is their difficulty in getting a driver’s license, a situation that deserves to be addressed.

We also wouldn’t be surprised to find a recommendation to beef up public defender’s offices, and to likewise improve the system of probation and parole.

Further, expect a call for better monitoring and data collection, along the lines of what the Vera Institute has been doing in the office of the Milwaukee District Attorney. Vera found no racial bias in decisions to prosecute, but continued monitoring, and extending monitoring to other jurisdictions, is clearly a good idea.

We have long said that the worst case scenario would be for the Commission to claim sweeping racial bias in the system, which might produce strong pressures (formal and informal) for a kind of quota system to “get the numbers right.” That would hurt people in Wauwatosa and Glendale a bit, and hurt people in Mequon and Waukesha hardly at all. But it would devastate Milwaukee’s inner city.

That “worst case” appears not to have happened.

Milwaukee’s Top Cop: Chief Ed Flynn at Marquette

It was the latest in a series of talks given at the Marquette Law School: Milwaukee Chief of Police Edward Flynn. After a light lunch, provided by the Law School, we settled in and looked up our computer and the room filled up.

[Live Blog Begins]

12:15 -- Mike Gousha introduces Flynn.

Gousha: “give us your impressions of our city”

Chief: There is a “communal will” to make things better.

Gousha: Why Milwaukee? A lot of people would want to flee.

Chief: I “want to be somewhere that all you abilities will be throughly challenged.” Quotes English scholar who says that how the laws are written is less important than how the laws are enforced.

Milwaukee a city with “significant challenges” and “significant opportunities.”

Gousha: Is this a “daunting task?”

Chief: You should have the opportunity of having daunting tasks. Challenges of this community are not unique, the are part of the “urban fabric of America.”

Big challenge is winning the confidence of communities that need them the most. There are issues to overcome in those communities.

Gousha: Do you feel pressure?

Chief: my job is to be an “enabler.” Responsibility both to motivate and to restrain. We have a culture with very many positive attributes.

There is an imbalance in perceptions. People who have good experiences with the cops tell six people. People who have bad experiences tell 17 or 18 people.

Gousha: Define “success” for me.

Chief: numbers are important, but they only tell about the end state. Somewhere in the accounting we have lost track of the real purpose: an “orderly civic environment.” Wants “orderly public places.” A decrease in arrests can mean you are succeeding. You may have reduced crime (“suppression”) which has reduced arrests.

Citizens attitudes are important. Neighborhood cohesion is good. In some of the worst neighborhoods, nobody is out on the street with a baby carriage because it isn’t safe.

Gousha: What was your reaction to FBI statistics released yesterday? [These showed violent crime nationwide to be down, but Milwaukee crime to be up.]

Chief: Points to lag in FBI statistics. Numbers just released show the picture the first half of 2007. They may not compare Milwaukee to comparable cities. In Springfield, there was a dip in violent crime, and he [Flynn] was a hero. Then there was an upward spike. Bad news.

Gousha: A big problem here, petty disputes that escalate.

Chief: Some things that “only stable families and stable communities” can achieve. It takes a village to raise a child, but the police can help produce the “village.” Local organizations can function well if the community is safe.

Mentions out of wedlock birth rate. Poverty rate.

But these are not an excuse for misconduct.

Cops need to “take on the generation of young men who are creating the problems.”

Maybe the next generation can be helped.

Gousha: You said “you want to get beyond the stale debate of police versus community.”

Chief: Society has changed dramatically since I was in grade school and high school. Things have gotten better. Cops are better trained and more diverse than ever before.

He objects to scapegoating cops based on one or a few examples of misconduct.

There is a lot of community demand for tougher policing. Neighborhoods say “give us more cops,” but then cops do something people object to and “all of a sudden it’s 1965 and I’m Bull Connor.”

For example: cops are taught to keep themselves safe, but this can be scary if you see it.

Gousha: are communities going to interact more with cops on the beat.

Chief: Demands for service make this hard. “Wholesale” vs. “Retail” policing. The former involves keeping public spaces safe. The latter involved calls for service from individuals.

Community needs to understand that there is a tradeoff. People may have to understand that they may get less in personal service if they want gangs on corner, graffiti, etc. taken care of.

Gousha: What should you do about illegal immigration.

Chief: “Stick our fingers in our ears and do our job.” Caring about border security is certainly legitimate, but on the other hand immigration has been good for America.

If I find somebody bleeding that speaks Spanish in the street, is my first question “what is your immigration status?”

[Flynn seems less the politically correct liberal than a bureaucrat who wants to get his job done, and resents external demands that interfer with his core task.]

Flynn adds that were actual criminal activity by illegals is at issue, he’s happy to cooperate with whoever can get the person off the street. [Implicitly including Federal immigration officials.]

Gousha: Is this a “springboard job?”

Chief: I’m committed to stay here for four years. Why did I consider leaving Springfield? “It’s your fault!” Milwaukee people came to me.

Gousha: What about your experience going to Catholic schools.

Chief: It made you very disposed to feel very guilty, and inclined to accept people in police uniforms telling you what to do. [laughter]

Important to have an ideal. Important to have a noble purpose. “When I looked a policing I see a noble enterprise.”

A liberal arts background is a great preparation for dealing with people.

Not a fan of Criminal Justice undergraduate majors.

Enjoyed graduate school. Danger of cop work, you can become “a burnt out cynic.”

Faced a lot of hatred as a cop in the early 70s. Came to understand that cops bond because of common danger.

[Audience Questioning Begins]

Question: Common Grounds initiative

Chief: An experiment in one district right now. We as an agency haven’t embraced it as much as we might. Involves “negotiating” with trouble makers in neighborhoods, but this doesn’t involve making concessions to them. [It sounds more like laying out consequences.]

Question: What about training for community policing?

Chief: Police need problem solving training. Need to get behind the incidents. If a given bar is a source of continued trouble, maybe the owner needs to do some things differently. Cops need to understand neighborhood norms. “Law enforcement” is just part of the job. More of the job is “policing.”

[He seems to mean that the latter involves the totality of keeping neighborhoods safe.]

Question: poverty is high in Milwaukee.

Chief: It’s more likely for crime to cause poverty than for poverty to cause crime. [!!!]

Kids are afraid to go to school (dangerous), afraid to appear “smart” in class. People do not take jobs after dark because it’s unsafe to get to work. We can have an impact on that.

Can we have an effect on the “macro situation” – people having babies, guys abandoning their families, etc. ?

Question: How much doing your own thing, and how much following the lead of other agencies.

Chief: “one of the great things about crime in Milwaukee is that there is enough for everybody.” [laughter]. What we are doing is both.

“We are going to be pushing authority down to the district.”

Question [public defender]: many times young Hispanics and blacks are stopped by police, sometimes without good reason. Perception: “police are an occupying force.” Admits a police interest in maintaining public order is legitimate.

Chief: You have outlined the trade-off here. One of the tools we have is approaching people and asking “who are you and what are you doing here.” We get calls all the time from people saying “I’m afraid to walk down the street because of those guys hanging around.” We have to be professional, but protect public order.

Intervening in minor misbehavior has an effect on street crime. Writing a lot of traffic tickets reduces crime.

Encourages cops to say “hello” to people who are known to be offenders. Encouraged that in Springfield. Wants more interaction with people who make cause problems – but in a respectful way.

Question: what about young people. I’m a mentor of a young kid in the inner city. What do I do encourage him to go into law enforcement.

Chief: I can only say what his mom says: “stay in school, get a diploma.” Maybe technical school is good, wakes up the brain and good things happen.

Policing is the “constant exercise of decision under stress.” We need a maturity of judgment beyond the years of young cops.

Neighborhoods need to reach out to cops just as cops need to reach out to neighborhoods..

Education is essential, it’s a judgment job.

Question: what kind manager do you intend to be? Do you delegate, or do you expect to be out on the street?

Chief: somewhere in the middle. I want to delegate. But I want to see people working too. Wants authority to be delegated down to the level where judgment is made.

Question: Packers or Patriots?

Chief: “You’re asking me whether I’m going to be rooting for the world champion . . . ”

Gousha: “The honeymoon here [in Milwaukee] could be short!” [laughter]

[End Live Blog]

Evaluation

Flynn is basically conservative, and highly sophisticated. He doesn’t seem to care for race hustlers (remember the “all of a sudden it’s 1965 and I’m Bull Connor” comment), but is intensely concerned with the quality of life in “the communities that need [the cops] the most.” He sees getting the respect and cooperation of high crime communities as a “challenge,” but has no illusions about who the good guys and the bad guys are. The cops are the good guys. Law abiding citizens are the good guys.

He passed up several opportunities to agree with simplistic platitudes. He insisted that crime can cause poverty, contrary to the politically correct doctrine that anti-poverty programs rather than cops are what we need more of. He insisted that people who want cops on the beat and highly visible in public spaces may have to accept a lower level of personal service. Maybe people shouldn’t call 911 for every little problem. He could have blandly promised that citizens can have it both ways.

He seemed to understand the role of family structure in producing crime, and even the role of what political scientists call “social capital” -- a network of robust community institutions.

Overarching all of this was a concern for police professionalism.

Can he make things better? Who knows. He’s a guy at the top of a large bureaucracy in a city with large swaths of territory dominated by a culture that creates crime. But if anybody has a shot at it, it’s Flynn.

[Update]

Here, courtesy of the Law School, is the podcast of the talk.

Milwaukee’s Top Cop to Speak at Marquette Tomorrow

From the Marquette Law School, and Mike Gousha’s “On the Issues” series:

Thursday, January 10—Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn—Here’s your opportunity to meet the city’s new top cop. Chief Ed Flynn left Springfield, Massachusetts, to come to Milwaukee, where he faces a persistent violent crime problem and high expectations. Learn more about the new Chief’s crime-fighting strategies. January 10, 2008, 12:15 to 1:15 p.m., Sensenbrenner Hall, Room 325.

The series, so far, has been excellent. And anybody interested in Milwaukee criminal justice issues will probably find this event worthwhile.

Note: do not just show up. Registration is required, and is easily done via this web page.

There is ample space at the moment, and people from the community are welcome.

How Dangerous is Milwaukee?

Congressional Quarterly has released rankings of the “safest cities” in the United States.

Inverting the list, we find that the most dangerous city is Detroit (number 378), followed by St. Louis, MO, Flint, MI, Oakland, CA, Camden, NJ, Birmingham, AL, North Charleston, SC, Memphis, TN, Richmond, CA and Cleveland, OH.

Milwaukee is rated 343. Not good.

Among the most dangerous cities above 500,000 population, Milwaukee is ranked seventh behind: (1) Detroit, MI (2) Memphis, TN (3) Baltimore, MD (4) Philadelphia, PA (5) Washington, DC and (6) Dallas, TX.

In terms of safety, the Milwaukee metropolitan area ranks 230 out of 333. Not terrible. The worst problems are in the City of Milwaukee.

Can we now get past political correctness, and start taking crime seriously?