Note to Police Chief Flynn: Don't Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out

Just a few days ago an unexpected, wonderful event
took place in Milwaukee: Police Chief Ed Flynn
announced his retirement, ending the puppet show
that has featured Flynn and Mayor Tom Barrett
which had run since 2008.

A career cop with a heretofore sterling service record,
Flynn came from Massachusetts when he applied for
and was offered the post of Milwaukee Police Chief
by Mayor Barrett. Not long upon assuming his duties,
he entered into an extramarital affair with Jessica
McBride, a journalist, having publicly fessed up
when word got out. The illicit activity having made
for, among other things, a sticky PR situation, Mayor
Barrett was able to exert some leverage on his new hire
to get him to make Milwaukee's finest go easier on
criminals, especially those involved in car thefts.
Barrett had Flynn institute a no-chase policy regarding
them, including car-jackers. The resultant policy also
called for lenient treatment for first- and second-time
offenders, especially if they were juveniles; never mind
that the car-jackers oftentimes forced people out of
their vehicles at gunpoint. Barrett said that first-time
car thieves were most likely just going joy-riding (?!)
and that second-time offenders were not much more,
if any more of a problem than the first-timers. But the
third-timers and other multiple-time offenders, Ah!
THEY would be dealt with most severely. All this
made for some fodder for some stand-up comics
in the local night clubs, but had perplexed and angered
many Milwaukeeans, making them wonder what kind
of fool they have for a mayor, never mind for a police
chief. And to avoid getting chucked out no sooner than
getting started in his position, Flynn dutifully went along
with everything Barrett wanted him to do. Why, when
you saw them together at press conferences, whenever
Flynn spoke you never saw Barrett's mouth move at all;
a most convincing ventriloquist act, with Flynn being
Charlie McCarthy to Barrett's Edgar Bergen.

Along the way in his time as Milwaukee's top cop Flynn
also had the department massage the statistics related to
police efforts to investigate crimes and make arrests, to
make it look like the police were performing much more
effectively than they actually were. Whether this was
Flynn's or Barrett's brainchild is not clear, but it certainly
caused a loss of confidence that the public had for the
controversial chief. Flynn also had his officers take
possession of guns used by law-abiding gun owners
in self-defense and/or defense of their businesses
or other property supposedly to aid in their investigations
of these incidents, and taking forever to return them to
their owners after the guns' owners were found to be
innocent of any wrongdoing. Some of these gun owners
have been waiting months, even years, for the return
of their firearms. Seems that Barrett and Flynn don't care
for the recently enacted laws regarding carrying firearms,
and this is their petulant way of dealing with it.

And when Mayor Barrett pushed for his trolley project,
a folly which hizzoner claims will enable more people to
get around Milwaukee and its immediate suburbs more
easily, never mind that similar transportation schemes
in other major US cities have not resulted in the forecasted
riderships and resultant revenues, oftentimes diving deeply
into the red ink from their implementation, resulting in
among other things more and higher taxes for the taxpayers
in those cities. Local opinion polls have consistently shown
that Milwaukeeans opposed the building of this system
by large margins. In fact, many of the local citizenry have
instead stated that the mayor should instead beef up the
police and fire department budgets and hire more police
and firefighters to station in or to dispatch to their neigh-
borhoods, especially those with high rates of crime.
Barrett turned a deaf ear and gave the one-fingered salute
to these citizens, and Flynn obediently went along with
his boss.

Your observant Peasant is delighted to see Chief Flynn
go; I just wish that Mayor Barrett would have the decency
to announce his departure as well, so that both parts of this
sorry show would finally fade away. But Barrett will,
of course appoint another chief that will be his willing
toady, being the Mortimer Snerd replacing Flynn's
Charlie McCarthy in the act. However, there is a ray of
hope: the police department and its union, along with
the backing of the few members of Milwaukee's
Common Council that are not cohorts of Barrett's can ---
and certainly shall --- demand a say in who Chief Ed Flynn's
successor will be, and what they require in their next
chief. Perhaps they can muster and apply some pressure
to Mayor Barrett to get the right candidate. But with a
mayor who treats our city like his own little fiefdom,
surrounding himself with his deep-pocketed supporters
and political hangers-on, listening to them and the
sycophants in the local newspaper The Milwaukee 
Journal Sentinel who never write anything less than
glowing about their elitist hero, the situation is a
sticky one to be sure. Your faithful Peasant will keep
you, my fantastic readers, apprised.


MEM