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

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 at The Rex Theatre, the topic will be "Rethinking Public Safety in America: Where Do We Go From Here?" 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 is a former police chief and serves as an on-air Law Enforcement Analyst for MSNBC. He 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.

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.

After Dr. Alexander's 45-minute presentation, there will be a Q&A with a local law enforcement leader panel that includes Pensacola Chief of Police Eric Randall and Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons. Joining them will be Santa Rosa County Chief Deputy Shane Tucker. The panel discussion will be moderated by Pensacola News Journal Editor Lisa Nellessen Savage with questions coming from those submitted by attendees registering on Eventbrite for the live event at The Rex Theatre.

If you are unable to attend the event in person, you can watch it live on the Pensacola News Journal Facebook page or on its website, pnj.com.

Dr. Cedric Alexander

Host or Publisher Studer Community Institute