How is that Great Divide bridged? For if it cannot, the future of policing our great nation is at risk!
The work that LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and former civil rights attorney Connie Rice have done to promote REAL community-oriented policing has been monumental and should provide a way and a path forward for many struggling police leaders.
If real COP can be done in the Watts district in Los Angeles, it can be done anywhere in America.
It’s putting “community” back into policing! It’s a close partnership with those whom police are to protect and serve.
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.
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