Anne E Schwartz
With more than 40 years’ experience, Anne E. Schwartz is a best-selling author, award-winning print and broadcast journalist, and an internationally recognized trainer and advisor on strategic communication and public relations practices for Law Enforcement, Prosecutors, Tribal Police, Fire/EMS, and others in Criminal Justice and Public Safety. With hundreds of presentations and training seminars internationally, Anne has a unique background as a subject matter expert providing communication strategies to the public sector in officer-involved deaths, uses of force, civil unrest, and mass casualty incidents. She provides counterterrorism training to foreign governments on using strategic communication to combat violent extremism.
Anne is the Chief Communications Strategist at the Wisconsin law firm Crivello, Nichols & Hall S.C. She heads up a unique division of the firm that assists public sector entities with strategic communications during critical incidents. She is an instructor in critical incident communication strategies for first line police supervisors at the Wisconsin Department of Justice, where she previously served as Communications Director. She serves on the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Policy Center’s working group on Investigating Deaths in Custody.
She is a Law Enforcement Advisor for the U.S. Department of Justice International Criminal Investigation Training and Assistance Program (USDOJ – ICITAP). Together with the Engaging Multinational Policewomen on Equality and Rights (EMPoWER) program she helped create Albania’s first women’s law enforcement network within the Albanian State Police. In addition to Albania, Anne has advised and trained police from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Ghana, Kenya, Kosovo, Montenegro, Niger, Senegal, Somalia, Tunisia, and Ukraine on strategic communications.
She recently returned from Albania, where she partnered with the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) to develop and set up a public relations operation for the newly created Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Organized Crime and Corruption (SPAK). She completed similar projects for the Office of Special Prosecutor in the Republic of North Macedonia, and the Office of the Prosecution in Armenia.
She has worked with the American Bar Association (ABA), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) to share communications best practices with criminal justice professionals in the U.S. and abroad. She has served as Justice Advisor to judges in Bosnia, Lebanon, Republic of Maldives and North Macedonia.
At the Milwaukee Police Department, she developed its first Office of Media & Communications and served as its civilian commander for nearly a decade. She received a national Webby award in 2013 in the Government category for creating and developing MPD’s website, an innovative project that led the way for other law enforcement agencies to communicate by building their own websites and employing social media. Anne’s work was featured at the 2016 South By South West (SXSW) conference on the panel, “Municipal Policing: Transparency, Truth, and Trust,” as an example of best practices in government communication.
In 1991, as a reporter for the former Milwaukee Journal, she broke the story of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, wrote a book on the case, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize with the paper’s reporting team. An updated edition of the book became a No. 1 bestseller when it was released in October 2021 as “Monster: The True Story of the Jeffrey Dahmer Murders” with a new, final chapter providing a 30-year retrospective on the case. She has appeared in and contributed to dozens of documentaries on the Dahmer case.
She co-authored four key publications in criminal justice communications: “Strategic Approaches to Improve Communications Initiative: A White Paper for Law Enforcement Executives“ “Strategic Communication: A Toolkit for Police Executives,” and “Branding for Police Agencies,” all for the U.S. DOJ Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office). In 2019, she researched and co-authored the “National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) Mass Casualty Disaster Manual,” to assist U.S. Attorneys General in responding to crisis.
She is an alumna of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism. She serves on the Board of Directors of CrimeStoppers of Milwaukee. When she’s not managing a crisis, Anne rides her Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
