Raw Video
Flynn storms out when Journal Sentinel reporter presses him for open records
Click on the link under Associated Videos to see the entire end of a news conference between Flynn and the Journal Sentinel reporter.
MILWAUKEE- Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn stormed out of a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
Milwaukee's police chief admits there have been errors in crime reporting, but insists it is by mistake and not deliberate.
During a press conference a Journal Sentinel reporter asked when the department will release more records.
"When are you going to give us your notes? When is Ben (Poston) going to give us his notes about the overcoding errors?" said Flynn.
Flynn had told the Journal Sentinel to pay $10,000 for more records.
This came at the end of a late afternoon press conference on accuracy in reporting crime statistics.
"When it costs us thousands of dollars to feed you, we don't think your allegedly for profit enterprise should get that for free," said Flynn.
Flynn was standing up from his chair when pressed about the Journal Sentinel's request for records. "Is this in court… we're getting nowhere buddy."
The chief invited reporters to his conference room to defend his department. A Journal Sentinel investigation revealed 500 assaults first logged as violent, but were downgraded to simple, less serious crimes in the reporting system.
TODAY'S TMJ4 got a demonstration of the crime report software. The chief blames the changes on human error and insists there was no attempt to mislead the public about crime rates.
"We ended up with a series of articles that would lead people to think that there was some sort of calculated effort to mislead them," said Flynn. "That's false."
The Journal Sentinel reporter, Ben Poston, who wrote the investigative report joined Newsradio 620 WTMJ. "We found crimes are misreported and we want know how it's happening, why it's happening, we're just going to continue to report on that."
The chief insists violent crime is down.
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