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Day: Wednesday
Time: 4:00-5:30PM
Location: Faculty Dining Room

Traditionally, when we speak of politics certain images or issues come to mind; a reformer running for mayor; an administration committed to social welfare legislation; a Governor focused on a program to reduce poverty or increase education.  Seldom do people think of the police in terms of politics.  In fact, it is an American mantra to keep politics out of policing.  That might be the ideal, but like most ideals, it is a far cry from reality.  Politics has always been embedded in policing.  Even worse, policing sometimes gets embedded in politics.  When that happens, nothing good can result. 

This course will take students behind the scenes to see how the politics of policing really plays out.

September 22
The first class will give an overview of police and crime over the past forty years, beginning in 1968 when crime and police became a major focal point in both the national presidential election and other local elections throughout the country.  In every decade since, political reputations have either been bolstered due to the issue of crime and police (think Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani) or left in tatters (think Nixon and Governors Spitzer and Patterson.) 

September 29
Guest – Bill Bratton, former Police Commissioner, NYPD, former Police Chief, LAPD.  Out-of-control crime rates in New York City in the early 1990s led to the election of Republican Rudy Giuliani in the overwhelmingly 5 to 1 Democratic city.  Giuliani promised to tame the untamable city and bring crime under control.  To fulfill this promise, he chose Bill Bratton as his new police commissioner.  Bratton put together a top-notch team and in short order revolutionized how policing was conducted in New York City.  Navigating the racial and political turmoil of that city, Bratton managed great accomplishments with little rancor or recriminations and achieved historic crime declines.  But once he left the racial cauldron that was always New York City, boiled over and became front and center on the political front once again. 

October 6
Guest – Gordon Wasserman, Special Police Advisor to the new British Prime Minister David Cameron, former Chief of Staff, Philadelphia Police Department.  A Rhode Scholar from Canada, Mr. Wasserman headed the Office of Science and Technology for the Home Secretary (the equivalent of the U.S. Attorney General.)  In the US, Mr. Wasserman was instrumental in the reorganization of the Philadelphia Police Department and also of the Miami Police Department.  Recently, he served as the main police advisor for the Whig Party and its Shadow Prime Minister, David Cameron.  Mr. Wasserman currently works for the Cameron administration and will take the class behind the scenes of the most recent (and a most interesting) British election. 

October 13
Guests – John Miller, Deputy Director, Director of National Intelligence and Phillip Mudd, former high-ranking CIA official.  John Miller, a former award-winning journalist (the only American journalist to interview Osama bin Laden) and Phillip Mudd (who was heavily involved in the early US efforts in Afghanistan after 9/11) will discuss the politics of terrorism. 

October 20: NO STUDY GROUP

October 27
Guest – Joe Sexton, Metro Editor, New York Times and Willie Rashbaum, Reporter, New York Times.  Mr. Sexton and Mr. Rashbaum will discuss covering politics and police in New York City and how their reporting cost two Governors their jobs and garnered them a Pulitzer prize in the process. 

November 3
Guest – Katie Lapp, former Criminal Justice Coordinator for New York City and later for New York State.  Successive Criminal Justice Coordinators in New York City failed to manage even the most facile parts of the criminal justice system in New York City for decades.  In 1994, Katie Lapp managed to do what all her predecessors had failed to do; organize the system while balancing the super egos of all 5 elected district attorneys and the other equally egotistical bureaucrats that led the various city agencies.  This was no small task. 

November 10
Guest – Chuck Ramsey, Police Commissioner of Philadelphia, former Police Chief, Washington D.C., President, Police Executive Research Forum and Chuck Wexler, Executive Director, Police Executive Research Forum.  Everything in Washington D.C. is political, including policing that great city.  From the murder of Chandra Levy to the Washington D.C. sniper case, Chuck Ramsey has had a front row seat to some of the biggest events of the last decade.  And as if he was not busy enough, Mr. Ramsey joined Mr. Wexler to untangle the Professor Gates controversy with the Cambridge Police Department - a department that was described as having “acted stupidly” by President Obama during a televised press conference.  Both Mr. Wexler and Mr. Ramsey have, in one way or another, been intimately involved in the politics of policing in almost every major city in the United States.

November 17
Having reviewed policing and politics over the past forty years, we will look to the future to examine, better yet, predict what the students of this class will confront, as it relates to police and crime, during their own careers in politics.