Friday, January 11, 2008

Milwaukee's New TopCop--Interesting Stuff!

Gousha got him to show up at the Marquette Law School, and the Warrior live-blogged.

Interesting snips:

Question: poverty is high in Milwaukee.

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

I will second the [!!!] from our Warrior-correspondent. Facile, maybe. Very perceptive in any case...

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. ?

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

For that, you can thank his Catholic school education. It's called "subsidiarity."

Warrior opines:

[Flynn] 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 people who want cops on the beat and highly visible in public spaces may have to accept a lower level of personal service...

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

I don't really care how Milk-Carton Tommy found this guy--whether he was TOLD to hire him, or not is irrelevant.

This is promising.

1 comment:

GOR said...

I agree that he looks promising and I was impressed by his speech when he was installed. It wasn't the usual 'blah' 'blah' stuff you hear. He appeared to have really thought things out. It will be an uphill battle for him and time will tell.