As many of you will remember a few weeks ago I wrote an article on MPD retired female police commanders who now have high ranking jobs in the police community. At that time, I advised I would do a deeper dive into a few of the women. This article will focus on the new sheriff Denita Ball who was appointed to fill the rest of Sheriff Earnell Lucas term since he left his job early. Sheriff Ball did win the election and will be sworn into a four-year term in January. Sheriff Ball retired from MPD as a Deputy Inspector of Police. We were partners supervising the entire department at night when the command staff was at home.
Denita is from Arkansas and came to Milwaukee in 1983. She had received her degree in criminal justice before leaving the state. I asked what led you to come to Milwaukee, and she stated her mother was here and was sick at the time. She wanted to keep an eye out for her mother, so it worked out. She had various jobs including a grocery store, Heritage Bank which later became Marshall and Ilsley Bank, and Milwaukee Plastics. Ball applied for a job with probation and parole but there was not a lot of turnovers. She applied to be a police officer in 1984 and went into the class of 3-85. The job was still male dominated at this time with not a lot of women working. I asked what guided her along the way and she stated the following: her grandmother, faith in the lord, hard work and education.
Education has always been important to her and after 10 years on the job she went back for her master’s degree. She initially thought she would do 5 years on the job then go to law school. Instead, she got her master’s in criminal justice administration. Eventually this led to her Doctorate in educational leadership. She became program director at Bryant Stratton. Sheriff Lucas asked her to come and work for him as his second in command so eventually she decided to come. She wanted to understand everything about how the department worked. The jail had a shortage of workers, which led to safety and security issues.
Her priorities now are the budget, jail staffing and working with the various municipalities to deal with crime. Working with issues to address reckless driving on the streets and neighborhoods plus parks. They will use data to where these incidents occur, time of day, etc. to see where the resources are needed. She stated we need to make sure we are working with the community and educating them on what we do. We will have more aggressive patrols on the expressway to monitor road rage incidents along with reckless driving. Her command staff are in acting positions right now but will be promoted in January when she officially takes over. Neighborhood involvement will really help and just recently they had a turkey give away for an inner-city community.