Edward A. Flynn

Edward A. Flynn (born 1948) is an American law enforcement executive. From 2008 until 2018, Flynn served as chief of the Milwaukee Police Department. Prior to assuming that position, he served as secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security and as police commissioner in Springfield, Massachusetts. Flynn was reappointed twice to the position of Milwaukee police chief before retiring in early 2018.

Early life and education Flynn grew up in Brielle, New Jersey, the only child of Edward, a paralyzed World War II veteran who died when Flynn was 12, and Constance, who worked part-time at the local library. Flynn attended St. Catherine's School in nearby Spring Lake, then graduated from high school at Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft in 1966.

From 1988 to 1993, he served as police chief of Braintree, Massachusetts.

From 1993 to 1998, he served as chief of police in Chelsea, Massachusetts. During his tenure, the police department adopted a community policing model, decentralized authority, recruited and promoted minorities, and encouraged inter-agency cooperation.

From 1998 to 2002, he served as police chief in Arlington County, Virginia, where he was responsible for leading the police department's responses to the September 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon, and to the 2002 Beltway sniper shootings.

He returned to Massachusetts in January 2003, when then-governor Mitt Romney appointed him as secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, the parent agency of the state police, department of correction, the National Guard, the department of fire services, office of the chief medical examiner, parole board, and the emergency management agency. Flynn was appointed Milwaukee chief of police on November 15, 2007, but remained in Springfield until the following January.

Milwaukee police chief

Flynn was sworn in as Milwaukee police chief on January 7, 2008. Initial claims by Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJS)—who penned a "Watchdog column" covering Wisconsin government entitled "No Quarter" —that the affair was ongoing or coincident with a McBride story on the police chief have been rebutted by Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy. Such coincidence would have implied conflict of interest, and so an issue of journalistic ethics, and Murphy, who edited the 5,400-word profile that McBride had written on Flynn, presented evidence to the contrary, and accused Bice of selective reporting of the facts of the Flynn-McBride case. Although Flynn claimed that the affair had ended in 2009, the scandal reemerged briefly in July 2012 when a letter written by McBride's husband to Flynn's wife asserting a continuing affair was submitted to the City of Milwaukee, and was thereafter released to the press.

In late 2011, his contract was renewed for an additional four years, marking the first time since 1863 that a Milwaukee police chief was reappointed. He was credited with crime reductions every year of his tenure in Milwaukee, as well as mending police-citizen relations.

In 2012, it was revealed that complaints were filed against seven Milwaukee police officers and a sergeant alleging that they performed unauthorized rectal searches during traffic stops. Flynn announced that all of them had been stripped of their police powers while the allegations were under investigation and urged citizens who felt that they had been subjected to an illegal strip search to come forward.

Flynn was reappointed by a unanimous decision of the city's Fire and Police Commission to a third four-year term in July 2015.

On January 8, 2018, Flynn announced his retirement as police chief effective February 16, 2018.

Personal life Flynn and his wife Susan have been married since 1973. The couple has two grown children.