Milwaukee, Wis., Police Chief Ed Flynn said urban police chiefs combat the majority of the country’s violent crime and also face the most distrustful communities during an ABC forum on race relations Thursday evening.
He also echoed President Obama’s comments from Tuesday, which the president repeated in response to Flynn, that most Americans don’t want to address underlying societal problems that exacerbate crime rates and prefer to pretend that crime-ridden communities don’t exist.
“All there is is the police in the community; there’s no cavalry coming,” Flynn said. “Many of our cities are in states that are dominated by interests that act like cities are the enemy.”
Flynn then pleaded with lawmakers to change local, federal and state gun laws to prevent incidents such as last week, which saw a sniper fatally shoot five Dallas police officers.
“Help us do something about guns,” he implored. “What was that man doing with an assault rifle?” he asked, referring to the Dallas sniper.
“I mean, fine, go to the funeral of the five cops but how did that guy get that assault rifle and why did he walk down the street with it and then use it?”
Stopping or changing that “requires some political courage,” Flynn added.
He then asked Obama to use his bully pulpit to continue the national conversation about gun violence and minority community-police mistrust.
“I don’t think things are going to get enlightened in this election,” he said. “So that conversation is going to have to take place parallel to the election.”
