The Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission has exactly one month to name an acting replacement for Police Chief Edward Flynn. Flynn recently announced that he will retire from his position on February 16. Now, the Commission must name an acting chief, even as it goes about the business of hiring a new chief for a full four-year term.
George Kelling will likely watch this search from a distance, but with interest. Kelling is a retired police researcher and professor emeritus at Northeastern University and Rutgers University, and a fellow for 20 years at Harvard University.
A decade ago, he was brought in as a consultant for the last commission search and advocated hiring Flynn as Milwaukee's police chief. When Flynn was first hired, the department had not yet moved from a “detective model” to emphasizing community policing.
"Ed was, in my mind, a great candidate for that," says Kelling. "And Milwaukee was sorely in need of somebody like Ed at the time, who really understood community policing and all the difficulties of trying to implement it."
While Chief Flynn was hired, in part, because of his dedication to community policing, his dealings with the Milwaukee community has also been his greatest source of criticism. The killing of Milwaukeean Dontre Hamilton by MPD officer Christopher Manney, led to protests and accusations of police misconduct. Hamilton's death caused a rift between Chief Flynn and the community, as well as a rift within between him and the rest of the police department.
Kelling says that part of the success of a police chief is dependent on the kind of good will they've built in their community, because these kinds of incidents are "going to happen."
He explains, "What you have to do is to make sure that you don't see working with the community as going out and being... a nice person a couple of times, and then that's taken care of. Every day you have to work to develop the community, so when something happens you're credible."
