Springfield Police Commissioner Edward Flynn was quoted in an article in today’s Financial Times, "Police chief points to risks of US-style focus on terrorism." The comment appears to capture an example of the type of one-liners Flynn produces so easily in media-ready sound bites. This one was apparently memorable enough for the Scotland Yard chief to repeat. From the article:
Some British officials have tended over the last ten years to look to the US as providing important examples to follow. …[T]he Washington-based Police Research Executive Forum (Perf) [showed] that many US cities experienced big increases in murders and other forms of violence last year.
Perf is a research and discussion group of senior police chiefs, sheriffs and other state and law enforcement leaders. … In a Perf report published in October, one US police chief, Edward Flynn of Springfield, Massachusetts, was quoted as referring to homeland security as "the monster that ate criminal justice."
The report said there needed to be a more coordinated approach between homeland security and neighborhood safety. It noted that terrorist attacks in London in July 2005 and the March 2004 attacks in Spain had "taught many in the law enforcement community worldwide to pay more attention to the important role that a local police officer plays by engagement with the community and ethnic groups."
