Hegerty Earns Praise From Many in First Year, But Others Say She Has Yet to Be Tested
By John Diedrich, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, Wisc.)
In 1976, a wall stood between 5-foot-6-inch Nannette Meier and a career in the Milwaukee Police Department.
A 6-foot wooden wall.
By her fingertips, the former secretary and flight attendant barely clawed up and over the obstacle to become one of eight women then wearing badges for the city.
Twenty-eight years later, Nannette Hegerty runs the department, the city’s 17th police chief and the first woman in charge of the 2,000-officer operation.
A year into the job as of Thursday, Hegerty’s tenure has been as remarkable for what hasn’t happened as what has. Despite a flurry of changes, she appears to have avoided storms that commonly beset the chief.
Some suggest she couldn’t help but look good compared to her embattled predecessor, Arthur Jones. Others argue if this is a honeymoon, it appears to have staying power.
Supporters describe her as an approachable and decisive chief, with a gift for balancing community concerns while backing her officers. Whether it’s a cop, neighborhood activist or union boss- they just seem to like her.
“She is just a breath of fresh air,” said Betty Grinker, a near south side business owner and activist. “No one is driving her. She is driving her own bus.”
Critics say she has made far-reaching decisions rashly and gets a pass on issues that would have hammered Jones. She also hasn’t faced a real challenge yet, they say.
“There have not been any situations to really test the mettle of her as a leader,” said Pastor Rolen Womack Jr., of Progressive Baptist Church on Milwaukee’s west side. “You can’t tell if someone has courage until there is a crisis.”
Hegerty chooses to focus on her bottom line: crime and money. Violent crime is down along with overtime, and she detects that officers and citizens both are more upbeat about cutting crime.
“I can’t worry about all that ancillary noise on the side. I need to stay focused and do what’s right,” said the 54-year-old Hegerty as she sat in her seventh-floor office looking over downtown.
Escape from boredom
The middle of three children, Nannette Meier spent her early childhood near S. 50th St. and W. Manitoba Ave. Her mother stayed home, and her father owned a gas station, which was leveled when the 6th Street Viaduct was rebuilt.
When she was 9, the family moved to Menomonee Falls, where her father, who died in 1990, opened an oil distributorship.
Theirs was a traditional 1960s family built around Christianity, which continues to play into Hegerty’s daily life.
The future chief loved animals and kept parakeets, bunnies and collies. She reared a robin named Chirp in her bedroom for a time. After her father insisted it go, the robin would fly to her finger when she went outdoors.
Though no one in her family was a police officer, as a child Hegerty saw them on duty and thought it was a fun job.
“I guess I just locked it away, and when the opportunity presented itself, I jumped at it,” she said.
Hegerty attended the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh with plans to go into education, but student teaching left her feeling she needed another career. She took a job as a secretary for U.S. Rep. Glenn Davis, a Waukesha Republican.
Hegerty later became a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines which, she said, “is not that different than being a cop. You are controlling people, some who have had too much to drink. You are giving first aid.”
She tired of the travel and worked in Delta’s Milwaukee office. The job kept her home - and bored.
One night, she saw a television ad encouraging women and minorities to apply at the Milwaukee Police Department. She did, one of six women in the class. They joined just two other women.
“I felt like I belonged,” she said. “I felt like this was my destiny.”
What she lacked in strength, the 26-year-old made up with quick thinking and a calm disposition. She said she was popular among veterans because she was an ace at dreaded paperwork.
She moved to the vice division, investigating drugs, prostitution and gambling. She worked undercover, posing as a prostitute and working on drug stings.
Hegerty became the department’s first female lieutenant in 1990. Seven months later, former chief Philip Arreola made her the first female captain.
But she left the department in 1993, when President Clinton appointed her U.S. marshal in the Eastern District of Wisconsin. She supervised a staff of about 45.
After President Bush was elected in 2000, Hegerty returned to the Police Department as head of sensitive crimes and last year beat out four other veterans for a four-year term as chief.
The Fire and Police Commission voted 4-0 for Hegerty, with one abstention; Carla Cross said she favored someone else but had nothing against Hegerty.
Cross sees positives, such as openness and decisive action, but she thinks Hegerty has been scrutinized lightly over flaps, including the case of six officers who were sledding on duty in a cemetery and faked a crime scene to cover up an officer’s injuries.
“Is she creating an environment where that kind of thing happens? No one asked that question. If it were Jones, they would be asking that question. There is a difference in how people are treated,” she said.
Pastor Bobby Sinclair, of Mount Herman Baptist Church, agreed that Jones had to dodge more arrows, but mostly because of bad blood with former Mayor John Norquist. He thinks Hegerty learned from Jones’ troubles.
“Jones spent a lot of time answering issues and not doing police work. It was a debilitating situation,” Sinclair said. “Because Chief Hegerty doesn’t have that baggage, they are letting her run the department without interference.”
Reshaping department
By the time Tom Barrett became mayor in April, Hegerty’s overhaul of the department was under way.
Using a corporate strategy, she put together a transition team, which developed a nine-point business plan.
Hegerty brought back the gang unit, which Jones disbanded because he said it was ineffective and might be abusive. She simplified the department’s structure and pushed more authority to district and division commanders.
Hegerty reached out to the unions, overhauled the discipline system and sought to make the department more open. She released more information about everyday crimes and assigned two sergeants to reach out to Latinos and African-Americans.
Ten hours after she was sworn in, Hegerty made her first public appearance and followed up with 246 more in less than a year, according to the department.
She put 32 more officers on the street and directed a major series of anti-prostitution sweeps that have netted more than 800 arrests.
Crime dropped 16.3% from last year, and the city is on track for fewer than 100 homicides, which would be the first time since 1988. Meanwhile, officer overtime is $17million so far this year, compared with $22 million at this time last year.
Hegerty said the new gang unit and hard-working beat officers are having an effect on crime, but she noted crime is cyclical.
“I really don’t know. I certainly would like to take credit,” she said, “but there are many factors which we have no control over.”
Mac Weddle, who directs Northcott Neighborhood House, a social service agency, thinks it is too early to credit Hegerty’s programs for the drop. He said Jones should get at least part of the credit.
“He was always blamed for crime going up. Now that there is all this talk about crime going down, I think no credit has been given to Chief Jones and the programs he implemented,” he said. “To be perfectly honest, it is a double standard.”
Personnel moves
Hegerty made two major personnel moves that made news. In December, she reassigned Capt. Glenn Frankovis after a memo was leaked in which he urged his officers to “send a clear and convincing signal to the thugs.” It came after Hegerty had transferred an officer who was threatened after he had shot and paralyzed a suspect.
Today, Hegerty said the removal had nothing to do with the word “thugs.”
“Read the rest of the memo. It was insubordinate. It challenged my authority to transfer, and it gave tacit approval to heavy-handedness,” she said.
Pastor Harold Moore, of Mercy Memorial Baptist Church, liked Frankovis’ no-nonsense approach but supported his removal.
“She was letting people know it would not be business as usual,” Moore said.
Last month, Hegerty fired Assistant Chief Leslie Barber, amid an investigation into whether he was following residency rules.
Four black aldermen and a black officers’ organization demanded an explanation, but Hegerty has remained silent, citing advice from the city attorney. She appointed Joseph Whiten, who also is black, as the new second-in-command.
Several observers said it is still unclear if the move will create lasting damage for Hegerty in the African-American community.
Johnnie Ferguson, who works with youth at Lisbon Avenue Neighborhood Development Corp., is angry about it.
“That was one that boiled me over,” Ferguson said. “Personally, I would like to see that handled a great deal more gracefully, for someone who dedicated a great deal of his life to this department.”
Barber’s case again raised the issue of Hegerty’s residency. She and her husband bought a home in Washington County where they lived when she was U.S. marshal. When she returned to the department, they rented an apartment in the city and later bought a condominium but kept the Washington County home.
Hegerty, who was investigated three times on her residency before becoming chief, said she is complying.
Hegerty’s most far-reaching decision was to end automatic response to burglar alarms and require some proof of an actual or attempted entry before sending officers. She made the change with 60 days’ notice and without consulting the mayor or council.
Ald. Tony Zielinski said the department could have charged alarm owners a fee to keep officers responding while providing an infusion of cash.
Hegerty said a permit system would be bureaucratic and continue wasting officers’ time. Some 96% of alarms that officers responded to last year were false, she said.
Hegerty said she often acts as a “consensus builder” but that some issues need decisive action. Opening the issue to discussion would have played into the hands of the alarm industry she called “a 900-pound gorilla.”
Zielinski said Hegerty made a bad call and then refused to admit she made a mistake.
“She has done some good things, but this has been a major disaster,” he said.
Problem officers
To officers, Hegerty has provided conditional support.
“I believe in aggressive policing. ‘Aggressive’ does not mean heavy-handed,” Hegerty told a group of Hispanic leaders in July. “I’ve told officers, ‘If you stay on the right side of the line, I will support you 100 percent. If you cross that line, I won’t support you. . . . There will be a price to pay.”
She quickly fired an off-duty rookie accused of drunkenly pointing a gun at a bar bouncer downtown and using a racial slur.
In the sledding flap, Hegerty acted against all but one. The officer who was spared punishment cooperated with investigators.
“It brings shame on the entire department, and I won’t tolerate that,” she said.
Bradley DeBraska, president of the Milwaukee Police Association, which represents 1,800 officers, applauded the trust and the lines of communication that Hegerty has built over the past year. But he questioned the amount of time the department spends on internal investigations for what he called minor incidents, and he also said Hegerty hasn’t faced a true crisis yet.
Christopher Ahmuty, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, doesn’t see much difference between Jones and Hegerty. The ACLU still gets anecdotal evidence that Milwaukee officers frequently stop people based on race, and Ahmuty is alarmed at how often officers are using stun guns.
In first four months, 14 officers used them an average of five times a week, which concerned Ahmuty.
“You can talk to community leaders,” Ahmuty said of Hegerty’s many public appearances, “but how does that translate into better interactions between officers and individual citizens?”
Oscar Cervera, executive director of the Federation for Civic Action on the south side, said when allegations of police brutality at three south side events arose, Hegerty responded with an investigation and community meetings.
Cervera said officers treat Latinos better since Hegerty took over.
“It shows she has character and the integrity is there. She is trying to be fair,” he said.
Despite her public persona, Hegerty guards her privacy. She doesn’t make appearances on the weekend, spending time with her husband, George Hegerty, a former police captain who retired seven years ago. She has two grown step-children.
The couple enjoy pheasant hunting. She keeps pictures of their two yellow Labradors on her desk along with family photos.
She said becoming chief has meant sacrificing her privacy. It’s not uncommon for strangers to approach her and her husband at dinner. She takes it in stride.
“They say, ‘Has anyone ever told you you look like Nan Hegerty?’ ”
Nearing her one-year anniversary, Hegerty can be found speaking to groups. In late September, it was a women’s group at the Basilica of St. Josaphat. Afterward, an elderly woman hugged Hegerty.
“I am just so proud of you and what you are doing,” she said.
Then the woman noticed Hegerty had come alone. Why no body guard or driver, she asked.
“My officers have better things to do,” the chief said.