Meet Police Chief Ed Flynn: Milwaukee Crime Lord, Citizen Disarmament Advocate

by William Norman Grigg
Mar. 01, 2013

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.

Immediately after the assault, the woman -- barefoot and wearing tattered clothing -- ran screaming from the house. Cates stormed out of the building and grabbed the victim by the waist, causing her feet to strike his partner. This gave the officers an excuse to arrest the battered and traumatized woman for “assaulting an officer.”

The victim was taken to jail and held for 12 hours before receiving medical aid. After the hospital visit, she was sent back to jail for four days before being released without charges.

This was not Cates's first assault -- but the department wasn't willing to take disciplinary action of any kind until DNA evidence corroborated the rape victim's account. Instead of prosecuting Cates, Flynn fired him for "idling or loafing on duty.” In January 2012, Cates was convicted of federal civil rights charges and sentenced to 24 years in prison.

Flynn would insist that Cates isn’t representative of his officers. This is true, but not in the sense Flynn would have us believe. What makes Cates an anomaly is not the fact that he was a purulent thug, but rather that he was actually punished for his crimes: The Milwaukee Police Department holds down the number two spot in the national police brutality rankings. Its distinguished contributions in the field of state-sponsored crime include a lengthy and growing list of suspicious deaths of people in police custody.

Cates was not the only uniformed sexual predator in Milwaukee who earned headlines in 2012.

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.

After putting the terrified male dancer “on the ground,” the Punishers severely beat, kicked, and choked him – then put a knife to his throat and jammed a pen into one of his ears. The victim survived the assault, but was left with permanent brain damage. The officers later claimed that this amount of violence was necessary to “subdue” Jude – who was never charged in connection with the incident. The jury in the criminal trial accepted that claim and acquitted the officers – who were later found guilty of criminal civil rights violations.

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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William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.