Standby: What Needs To Be Done!

Along with my friend and colleague, Noble Wray, we have co-authored what we believe to be a powerful op-ed on the state of policing in America and what must be done to improve it. Our working title was “If We Had To Do It Over Again.” The idea behind the op-ed was to collaborate what we have learned about policing and share some recommended action steps with progressive police and community leaders.

I’ll share a piece of our introduction and what is unique about our approach:

“We come from two generations of policing, two 30-year careers, two racial experiences, and one singular mission: to develop a system of policing that is fair, impartial, and supports our nation’s sacred values and protects all of us…”

Noble worked with me in the 1980s and 90s as a police officer. He went on, after I retired, to serve as Chief of the department from 2004-2014. Upon his retirement, he was asked by the Department of Justice to implement national 21st century policing reforms and went on to consult and teach police in over 400 agencies throughout the country focusing on implicit bias in policing. Together, we have 60 plus years of municipal police experience and many years of teaching, commenting, and recommending ways police can, should, and must improve.

Noble has a broad exposure to police throughout the country in his work with the DOJ. And I have been writing about the subject of police improvement since 2011 with over 1,600 posts on this blog site from a range of police topics. Through the years, there have been over 600,000 views here!

Standby — more to come (hopefully). A copy of our op-ed has been sent to a leading national news source this week. We’ll see what they do with it.

By the way, the title and the major problem we address…