Police Chief Ed Cronin Discusses the Topic of Police Reform

Ed has worked in the law enforcement field for over 35 years. His career includes experience as a Police Chief in two cities in Massachusetts. He holds a graduate degree in Criminal Justice Management along with an advanced graduate degree in Organizational Development and Systems Thinking from Suffolk University.

As a Detective Sergeant with 15 years experience, he took courses at Queen’s College in Oxford, University, England as part of his Master’s program at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. As Chief of Police in Fitchburg, Massachusetts in 2006, he co-developed a task force that employed a systems approach to address crime and educational failures of Latino students. Fitchburg was experiencing a higher murder rate per capita than the City of Boston (mostly within the Latino community) and a high school dropout rate for Latino students of over 40%. His ground-breaking work brought the police, minority community and the greater community at large together to engage in a process that identified the root causes as systemic racism, mostly unconscious, and lack of economic opportunities for at risk youth. This work resulted in Ed receiving the 2011 Individual Achievement Award in Civil Rights from the International Chiefs of Police. This effort refocused the community to address these deep seated issues that eventually brought about systemic and political change. These efforts were followed up by excellent and progressive future political and police leadership. Today the City of Fitchburg experienced one murder in 2021 and a Latino dropout rate of less than 8%.

He also has extensive international experience having worked in Cairo, Egypt at the U.S. Embassy as a police advisor and three years as Sr. Police Advisor to the police of the country of Moldova in Eastern Europe. While working there he assisted in bringing democratic policing practices and empowerment of women that has assisted in the formation of a strong western leaning government.

We got to discuss some important topics regarding meaningful police reform, systemic racism in policing, empowering woman in the community to combat crime and corruption.