Mayor Skips Finalists, Picks Outsider For Key Violence Prevention Role

Adam Procell. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The City of Milwaukee lined up three finalists to lead the Office of Community Wellness and Safety (OCWS). But after the candidates appeared at two public forums, Mayor Cavalier Johnson selected someone not on the list.

Johnson, in a press conference Monday, announced that the city’s new violence prevention czar will be Adam Procell.

Procell, 44, comes with quite the backstory. He’s currently the CEO of Paradigm Shyft, a consulting firm he co-founded in 2021 to assist individuals reentering society from incarceration.

It’s something Procell knows a lot about. Milwaukee’s new head of violence prevention is a convicted felon.

When he was 15, Procell joined a gang and killed a rival gang member. He ended up spending 23 years in prison on a life sentence before being paroled in 2018.

“I made the worst decision a human could make; that decision cost Robert his life,” said Procell. “I would serve a quarter century in prison for that decision, and that time didn’t give me all the answers and to be honest, there are no quick fixes, there are no cure-alls, and to be honest with you, I’m not gonna tout any crime metrics that I am going to hit because at the end of the day, crime can’t be defined.”

He said it was uncomfortable to talk about the worst thing he’s ever done, but that he needs to be uncomfortable when asking the community to be uncomfortable in combating violence.

Fire Chief Aaron Lipski introduced Procell, with whom he has become acquainted “quite accidentally” in recent years.

“What struck me about Adam is the candor with which he speaks about what he was involved in,” said Lipski.

Procell, said the chief, had come to firehouses and had conversations with firefighters about violence. “I was struck again by his sincerity and his candor and his ability to create connections with some of the saltiest, most burned-out firefighters and paramedics who day in and day out are tending to the injured from crime,” said Lipski.

By 2023, Procell had helped create and introduce legislation, Act 233, that requires Wisconsin prisons to create community reentry centers. In 2024, Gov. Tony Evers gave him a pen used to sign the bill into law.

“He’s a remarkable, remarkable individual, and he’s dedicated his professional life to exactly this kind of work, and that work is community safety and that work is violence prevention. He’s strategic, he’s collaborative, he’s innovative,” said Mayor Johnson. “He’s earned respect throughout the entire public safety sphere here in Milwaukee, and Adam’s lived experience, having been convicted of the most serious crime, sentenced to a very lengthy prison term, and then, I mean, just absolutely, completely turning his life around. All this means that he brings [an] unmatched perspective to this job and this work in our community.”

Procell said he told Johnson he would accept the role so long as Johnson understood three things about him: he’s not a Democrat and isn’t going to toe any party’s line “because safety isn’t partisan;” he supports the police, including paying officers better, giving them more resources and ensuring they’re culturally competent and supports those doing violence interruption work (called “credible messengers”); and, finally, that he would approach the position “as if it’s one of triage.”

The new head of OCWS said he had some ideas of things he’d like to do differently, but is going to start by listening and wants his staff to do that as well. He will be asking his staff to ride along with the Milwaukee Police Department, spend a shift in Froedtert Health’s trauma bay, meet with the Milwaukee Fire Department and visit the Medical Examiner’s Office.

A public forum on Procell’s hiring is to be held in the coming weeks, said Johnson.

“When I completed the stop the bleed training a year ago, I learned that to stop the bleeding, you have to apply heavy pressure on the wound. And I don’t know if the community is ready for the pressure that I’m gonna apply. And I told the mayor, I said, ‘if the pressure I apply is too uncomfortable, no hard feelings, you can fire me,'” said Procell.

He said he wouldn’t judge his success by a falling homicide or nonfatal shooting rate. “I don’t know that I can ever define anything I’m doing as success,” he said.

OCWS is involved in a number of violence prevention efforts, including partnering with the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) on a neighborhood-level violence interruption program (414Life), providing grants to community organizations and convening groups to address community issues.

In addition to Lipski, members of MPD and the District Attorney’s Office appeared in support of Procell. Procell was a speaker at District Attorney Kent Lovern‘s January swearing-in ceremony and served as a selection committee member for Sheriff Denita Ball‘s community advisory board.

A copy of a resume provided by the mayor’s office says Procell has served as an adjucent professor at Marquette University since 2023. It says he attended UW-Platteville and two technical colleges during the period for which he was incarcerated, but does not indicate if he earned a degree.

How The Hiring Happened

The position opened in January after former council president Ashanti Hamilton, who Johnson appointed to the role in 2022 after firing the incumbent, resigned to take a job with Veolia North America.

Johnson said the three finalists, interim OCWS director Karin Tyler, Paul Callanan, the former director of Louisville’s violence prevention office and Abraham Morris, the division manager of Orlando’s Children, Youth and Families Division, “were all excellent, they were strong and they were all capable as well. So, I just want to be clear about that.”

But then Procell entered the picture after the forums.

“Adam was a very late addition to the mix of candidates, and he really, really just quickly rose to the top,” said the mayor.

The mayor said Procell was not among the “dozens” of candidates who initially applied. But Procell’s name, said the mayor, was floated by “more than one person” as a candidate.

“At the end of the day, it’s my responsibility to make sure we have the right person in that position and, after having conversations with Adam when his name began to get circulated in this, it became very evident to me that Adam was the right person,” said Johnson.

The more he learned about Procell, Johnson said, the more this became clear. “It just became more and more evident, based on the totality of the facts, the public sessions we had with the community, Adam’s position within the community as it is, the position that he’s in with the public safety sphere in Milwaukee.”

Department of Administration Director Preston Cole, to whom Procell will report, said Monday that the OCWS operates 15 programs.

Grants primarily fund the office. The 2025 budget calls for 15 positions with a $1.4 million budget. Hamilton’s salary, according to the 2025 budget, was to be $121,255.

Procell said he does not yet have a confirmed start date.

The mayor said Tyler, who had served under Hamilton and serves as the interim director, was asked to stay with the city.

The office was created in 2008 as the Office of Violence Prevention and led by Terry Perry until her 2016 retirement. Reggie Moore substantially grew the office’s visibility during his tenure, which lasted from 2016 to 2021, when he took a statewide violence prevention job with MCW. Arnitta Holliman succeeded Moore as an internal promotion under then-Mayor Tom Barrett, only to be fired by Johnson in 2022.

The Common Council does not have the authority to review the mayor’s selection.

Alderwoman Sharlen P. Moore, who joined the council three years after her husband’s resignation as OCWS leader, issued a press release in January stating that she would introduce legislation to give the council authority to confirm the mayor’s appointment and provide more oversight. Legislation was introduced in February and endorsed by the Public Safety & Health Committee, but then sent back to the committee by Moore from the council floor without explanation. It has not been scheduled for further review.

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