TCD Podcast: Ed Cronin, Retired Chief, Fitchburg, MA Police, Ep 86

Ed Cronin has over 35 years experience in policing. 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. He is also a certified executive coach. (Institute of Professional Excellence in Coaching)

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. During this time, he also worked with the Thames Valley Police exposing him to new ideas and methods of policing practices. While there he was also enlisted and assisted in bringing the first group of US police officers to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s that was featured on National television in the US. This trip was followed up by the first Russian delegation of police officers to come to the United States eventually meeting with then FBI Director Louis Freeh and subsequent meetings with the US State Department who agreed to fund future delegations to the US.

While acting in his first Chief’s position in Gardner, Massachusetts he co-created a highly competitive grant application that resulted in an award from the US Department of Justice using an innovative community approach to combat domestic violence.

After three years in Gardner, Ed was hired by a Vermont based International NGO, called Project Harmony. He was appointed as Director of a US State Department funding program called Domestic Violence Community Partnership Program to Russia, Ukraine and Georgia that was based on the model he used in Gardner, Massachusetts.

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 has written a book entitled Just Policng: My Journey to Police Reform. 

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