Police Chief Ed Flynn of Milwaukee believes that his department is at war with the gun-owning public. In his February 27 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Flynn claimed that “in the last 20 years we’ve been in an arms race” with private citizens who supposedly out-gun the police. 

Flynn testified in support of a proposed federal ban on so-called assault weapons. But in the past he has made it clear that he considers a Mundane carrying a firearm of any kind is an unlawful enemy combatant subject to detention and forcible disarmament. 

“My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away, and then decide whether you have a right to carry it,” Flynn said a few years ago in response to a statement from Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen recognizing that residents of the state have a right to carry firearms openly. 

Flynn clearly sees himself as commanding an army of occupation. In practical terms, he is less a warlord than a crime lord who presides over an officially sanctioned street gang. 

Like most petty dictators of his ilk, Flynn is protected by a praetorian guard that will retaliate against people who speak ill of their dear leader. In November 2009, his “troops” arrested a local gadfly named Bob Braun, who had committed the unpardonable sin of publicly embarrassing Commissar Flynn. 

Braun and a friend picketed Milwaukee Police headquarters carrying signs describing Chief Flynn, who admitted to an extra-marital affair with a sycophantic reporter, as an adulterer. Citing the relevant section of Wisconsin law, Braun demanded that Flynn be prosecuted – a sentiment shared by many Milwaukee residents. Instead, Braun was arrested by Sgt. Mark Wagner and charged with disorderly conduct. The citation falsely claimed that Braun, a devout Christian, repeatedly told Sgt. Wagner to perform an anatomically impossible sexual act. 

When the case was heard before a jury, the only witnesses the prosecution could produce were Wagner and two fellow police officers – whose travel and subpoena fees were paid by Braun. The jury quite sensibly concluded that the officers – who are, let us not forget, trained liars — were perjuring themselves in the service of the adulterer who commands them.  

Given the abysmal character of the chief who commands the Milwaukee PD, it shouldn’t surprise us to learn that the department has been a haven for uniformed sexual predators. 

 In July 2010, a single mother in Milwaukee (whose name has not been publicly disclosed) was raped by Officer Ladmarald Cates. After someone vandalized the woman’s home, she made the common mistake of calling the police in the entirely unfounded belief that they would be of help. Cates was the first on the scene. 

Acting on instinct and experience, the predator recognized an exploitable opportunity. The officer ordered the boyfriend to go to a nearby convenience store to buy some bottled water. Once he had isolated the victim, Cates maneuvered her into the bathroom, where he put her “on the ground” by forcibly sodomizing and raping her.

 Last September, four of Flynn’s “troops” who had followed his orders with exceptional zeal were charged with felonies for assaulting and strip-searching citizens both in the street and in district stations. In one case, three officers restrained a victim – one of them putting him into a choke hold, while another held a gun to his head – while a third jammed a hand into his rectum. 

The ringleader of this rape gang, Officer Michael Vagnini, was charged with 25 counts of sexual assault and related crimes.

In a press conference after charges were filed, Flynn professed to be “disgusted” by the conduct of his minions. 

“Crime cannot be fought with criminality,” warbled the costumed functionary who had publicly abetted criminal violence against innocent citizens – and who has actually protected an undisguised street gang within his department. 

This hyper-violent clique adopted the logo of a nihilistic comic book character called the “Punisher,” and they brazenly displayed the insignia on their police vehicles and their uniforms as they prowled the street in search of helpless people whom they could “put on the ground.” Among the formidable figures targeted by the Punishers was a male dancer named Frank Jude, who was nearly beaten to death in October 2004 because he was suspected of stealing a badge. 

Former Milwaukee Police Officer Jon Bartlett, the ringleader of the gang beating, was eventually convicted — along with six others — on federal civil rights charges. An internal affairs investigation conducted by MPD Commander James A Galezewski produced a detailed description of the Punishers in official reports filed on two separate investigations — one in 2005, the other in 2007. He also described his findings at length in a sworn deposition in November 2010. 

One training supervisor and at least one active-duty police officer were identified as current members of the gang. Nonetheless, as late as January 2011, Flynn insisted that the existence of the gang was merely a matter of “rumor.” A reasonable surmise would be that Flynn wasn’t engaging in conscious deception; after all, the moral gradient separating his normal “troops” from the berserkers who belong to the “Punishers” gang isn’t very steep. 

Every city police department is an armed gang organized to implement the will of the municipal corporation that employs them. Under the rule of Ed Flynn the Milwaukee PD has become one of the most malodorous outfits of its kind in the Midwestern United States. He and his “troops” appear to be determined to validate every syllable of Albert Jay Nock’s famous capsule description of the State:

“Everyone knows that the State claims and exercises [a] monopoly of crime … and that it makes this monopoly as strict as it can…. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien…. Of all the crimes that are committed for gain or revenge, there is not one that we have not seen it commit – murder, mayhem, arson, robbery, fraud, criminal collusion and connivance.”

If Ed Flynn presided over a police agency in Latin America or Africa, his deeds would be chronicled in the annual human rights reports issued by the State Department, which diligently catalogs the offenses of every regime but the one ruling us. 

Flynn’s misbegotten reign in Milwaukee reminds me of a comment made by Isaac Lappia of Amnesty International in Sierra Leone at the 2001 UN Small Arms Conference at the world body’s headquarters. 

The UN’s proposed international firearms treaty – which, in updated form, will likely be signed later this year by Barack Obama – was intended to disarm civilians. However, as Lappia pointed out, his organization’s studies proved “incontrovertibly that small arms are … used in many more countries to facilitate serious crimes by law enforcement personnel – including police, prison authorities, paramilitaries, and the army – where they commit persistent human rights violations, including rape, torture, `disappearances,’ and arbitrary killings.”

This reads like a profile of the department Ed Flynn commands – and it’s on the basis of a record of this kind that Flynn was invited to testify on behalf of the Obama regime’s citizen disarmament initiatives. Res ipsa loquitur. 
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(The original version of this post mistakenly reported that the Milwaukee PD was responsible for the persecution of gun owner Brad Krause, who was arrested and chaged with “disorderly conduct” after being spotted carrying a gun in his backyard. Mr. Krause is a resident of West Allis, which is part of the Milwaukee municipal area but has its own police department. I regret the error.)

 

 




Dum spiro, pugno!