In 1517, Martin Luther, a Catholic monk, posted 95 theses on a church door. This led to the Protestant Reformation. Re-formations are never easy, nor are they without a struggle.
As a pundit[1] for the past two decades, I find myself finally realizing what I had hoped for when I began writing Arrested Development. My hope is that the craft of policing would finally come into the arena of public scrutiny after having been left in the woods for too many years.
The first indication that something was changing was the reaction as to how police responded to the Occupy Wall Street Movement in the fall of 2011. There was conversation throughout the country on how police should respond to public protest; that is, without excessive force and, at the same time, enabling this Constitutional right. That went on for a while and then there was Ferguson…
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 calling for police improvement (for example, How To Rate Your Local Police, and with my wife, Sabine, Quality Policing: The Madison Experience). After retiring from the police department, I answered a call to ministry, attended seminary, and was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church. At the present time, I serve a small church in North Lake (WI), east of Madison. Sabine and I have nine adult children, eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. She is also a retired police officer and we both continue active lives.
View all posts by davidccouper
In 1517, Martin Luther, a Catholic monk, posted 95 theses on a church door. This led to the Protestant Reformation. Re-formations are never easy, nor are they without a struggle. 
Improving Police: A Necessary Conversation 