CivicCon: Rethinking Public Safety in America: Where Do We Go From Here?

18 North Palafox Street,Pensacola FL 32502

20 September, 2021

Description

A Leading Voice On Advancing Policing Suggests What Is Next Dr. Cedric Alexander is a leading voice on the topic of advancing policing and is the author of The New Guardians: Policing in America’s Communities for the 21st Century. When he speaks at 6 p.m. Monday, September 20, the topic will be "Rethinking Public Safety in America: Where Do We Go From Here In Our Local Communities?" He will share his ideas and the ideas of others regarding how police training needs to change and how officers can connect closer to all parts of the community. Dr. Alexander has appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, CBS Evening News, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, and NBC Nightly News. He has written numerous opinion editorials for CNN and The Washington Post and is an on-air Law Enforcement Analyst for MSNBC. He entered law enforcement in 1977, as a deputy sheriff in Leon County, Florida, on the brink of profound transformations in America and American policing. In many cities, the nation was in civil war, the police on one side, the community on the other. Wars are about winning by inflicting defeat. As a young deputy, Alexander saw that unending combat was destroying police-community relations. He devoted the next four decades to creating something new and something better. His background combines a long career as a deputy, a police officer, and a detective in the Tallahassee area, in Orlando, and in Miami-Dade, Florida, with a career in clinical psychology, both as a practitioner and an assistant professor at the University of Rochester (New York). He holds a Doctorate of Clinical Psychology from Wright State University (Dayton, Ohio) and provided senior-level administrative and clinical leadership of mental health services within the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, with special emphasis on counseling police officers, firefighters, and their families. He served as Deputy Chief and then as Chief of Police of the Rochester Police Department and subsequently was appointed Deputy Commissioner in the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services before joining the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as Federal Security Director for Dallas/ Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). In 2013, Dr. Alexander was appointed Chief of Police for DeKalb County , the second largest county in the Atlanta metro area. He has served as President of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) and was appointed in 2015 to the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Dr. Cedric Alexander CivicCon is a joint program of the News Journal and the Studer Community Institute to make Pensacola a better place to live, grow, work and invest though civic conversations and smart planning.