“The Community Safety Partnership is solid evidence… that guardian policing is part of the solution to conflict between police and community. If it works for the housing projects of Los Angeles, it can work anywhere” — LAPD Chief Beck and Attny. Connie Rice
It is becoming apparent that the Los Angeles Police Department is capable of making (and hopefully sustaining and leading) significant reforms. The above news story tells a bit of it.
Hear how Chief Charlie Beck asked Connie Rice (a former civil rights attorney) to join his team and demonstrate what real community oriented policing is. She developed the model that became the Watts COP Project.
Hear what she had to say at the May, 2017 conference at the Hammer Museum at UCLA, “Strategies for Law Enforcement Reform 25 Years After Rodney King.”
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. After 25 years leading two Episcopal Churches in Portage and North Lake, Wisconsin, I now serve as Associate Pastor in a growing, dynamic, and Spirit-filled Lutheran congregation in nearby Black Earth. After losing Sabine, my wife of 40 years to cancer, I met Christine, a retired nurse and widow. We were blessed to find love again and married in 2021.
View all posts by David Couper
Improving Police: A Necessary Conversation 
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