Published by David Couper

I served over 20 years as the chief of police in Madison (WI), four years as chief of the Burnsville (MN) Police Department, and before that as a police officer in Edina (MN) and the City of Minneapolis. I hold graduate degrees from the University of Minnesota and Edgewood College in Madison. I have written many articles over my years as a police leader. After retiring from the police department, I answered a call to ministry, attended seminary, and was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church. After almost 30 years serving in and leading two Episcopal Churches in the Diocese of Milwaukee, I am "sort-of" in the process of retirement. Life is good.

7 Comments

  1. You know, I was asked in a four-day diversity seminar once what my bias(es) are. I told the facilitators that not only is a bias (most people said theirs were racial) a dangerous psycho-pathology, biases (or more candidly bigotries) are imbecilic. Not convinced this lets-move-forward (whatever that means) or the race-brave approaches are constructive. More conducive to the reality that race is a meaningless concept (except to the racists) is the promulgation that racists and especially cops with racist attitudes have a problem, a dangerous and anti-human problem. This isn’t just Archie Bunker sitting on his chair and extolling amusing idiotic analyses. To the precise extent we deny this, we have a problem.

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  2. That’s an inspiring speech, and brought up something that troubled me. People who claim to be color blind usually seem to me to be in denial. I’m not color blind, I notice people who don’t look like me. I don’t think ill of them, but I do notice them. She also didn’t whine, or make excuses, she just had a good, practical speech that anyone can act on. Thanks for sharing it!

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  4. Pingback: Top Seven Posts Last Week | improving police

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