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According to the book description of
M.P.D. Blue, “An autobiography of Detective Lieutenant David J. Kane and his thirty year career
on the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Police Department during the years 1970-2000. Ride along in his squad or walk a beat with him
as he takes you back to his early years catching street criminals. Travel back to many horrific homicide scenes and sit through
the interrogations of the suspects. There are many funny and interesting stories to keep you entertained as he goes behind
the scenes of the Jeffery Dahmer, Lawrencia Bembenek and many other high profile murder cases during the latter part of the
20th century.”
About the Milwaukee Police Department When Milwaukee became a village in 1834, it had a
town marshal; when it became a city, it had a city marshal appointed by the person in power at the time. The marshal was not
able to cope with the lawless element. Thieves, burglars and robbers were finding the rapidly growing Milwaukee a good, safe
place to ply their illegal trades. The county sheriff tried to keep the city crime down but did not have enough deputies to
handle the crime wave. One of the deputy sheriffs in the year 1851 was Herman L. Page. He had some success catching a few
robbers, and was elected sheriff in 1853. Page knew a farmer named William Beck living near Granville, and he also knew that
Beck had been a detective on the New York police force. Page made Beck a deputy sheriff and told him to get busy catching
thieves.
Beck caught a lot of them, and although his work eliminated many criminals, lawlessness
continued, and citizens began demanding a police force. On September 3, 1855, Alderman Powers introduced an ordinance for
the creation of a police force. The ordinance was printed in the official papers of the city the next day. The ordinance passed
after some amending, and on October 4, 1855, the Milwaukee Police Department began functioning. Today, the Milwaukee Police
Department employees nearly 2000 sworn police officers and is organized, broadly, into three bureaus: Administration; Patrol
and Criminal Investigations.
Source: city.milwaukee.gov
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