The New Guardians: Policing in America's Communities For the 21st Century

by Cedric Alexander

The New Policing in America’s Communities for the 21st Century embodies nearly forty years of experience in law enforcement in addition to a career in clinical psychology. In search of a better way to police our nation, Dr. Cedric L. Alexander takes us back some 200 years to the Constitution—and then some 2,400 to Plato’s Republic—and shows us how to remodel the warrior cop into the Guardian at the heart of community policing. Amid today’s explosion of homicide in our most-challenged neighborhoods and the bid of international terrorism for the allegiance of marginalized youth everywhere, healing wounded relations between the police and the people has never been more urgent. This is the story of one man’s quiet, courageous leadership.


Cedric L. Alexander 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 and, at the end of the year, became Deputy Chief Operating Officer/Public Safety Director.



About the Author



Cedric L. Alexander, Psy.D., is Director of Public Safety and Deputy Chief Operating Officer, DeKalb County Office of Public Safety, responsible for leading the Police and Fire Departments in the second-largest county in the metro-Atlanta 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. Alexander has appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, CBS Evening News, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, and NBC Nightly News, and has have written numerous opinion editorials for CNN, for which he is an on-air Law Enforcement Analyst.

237 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 14, 2016

Reviews

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 1 out of 5]

Critique of The New Guardians by Cedric Alexander

The Good:
I appreciate the fact that one of Rochester’s former police chiefs and the current deputy mayor wrote an autobiography. It gave me some insight into his career in Rochester (and elsewhere). Some of the highlights for me were: 1) he introduced Tasers into the Rochester Police Department; 2) he crafted the Disturbed Person Emergency Response Team (now called the Emotionally Disturbed Person Response Team (EDPRT) in Rochester); 3) he offered a snap shot in time of the politics between the department and the decision-makers in Rochester; 4) he offered clear definitions of police legitimacy and community policing; and 5) he tells a good story and offers plenty of anecdotes. Honestly, his own progression through his law enforcement career was kind of interesting reading. It’s the other stuff that got me angry about his book.

The Bad:
I’ve selected four issues that really drove me up the wall with this book: Alexander’s treatment of Plato’s Republic, individual experience vs. systemic patterns and practices of abuse, trust of the state, and war / no war.

1. Plato’s Republic:
I urge everyone to read the Republic before reading, or while reading, Alexander’s book. The theme of the guardians from the Republic is sprinkled throughout Alexander’s book. However, Alexander never really defines who the guardians are, except in broad and un-nuanced ways, such as on pages xii – xiii, “…as a Guardian, endowed by the community with the power and authority to heal, protect, build, and generally steward it. A leader and mentor, the Guardian is not a dictator or tyrant, but a servant of his or her neighborhood, city, and nation.”

On pages 197 and 198, he writes that, “Plato gave [them] a leadership role, entrusting them with the greatest authority in the republic because their character was worthy to ‘bear the responsibility of protecting the democracy.’ It was a ‘character’ built on the physical attributes of speed and strength as well as the intellectual qualities of ‘a spirited philosopher.’” There was no discussion of Plato’s totalitarian ideas nor any discussion on how a totalitarian utopia leads to preserving (?) democracy.

So, as I said above, everyone should read the Republic. After I finished Alexander’s book, I picked up Plato’s book because stuff I was seeing in Alexander’s book just didn’t jive with my rudimentary philosophical understanding. In short, my bullshit detector started going off. As I read through Plato, I wrote my old philosophy professor to share my reflections of both Plato’s and Alexander’s work as well as my concerns. Two central questions that emerged for me as I read Plato: 1) was the utopia constructed in the Republic a totalitarian form of governance? And, if so, 2) do we really want to model the institution of policing off of a model that called for the complete control of society? Is this really what Alexander imagines as an ideal democracy?

My former professor responded quickly and confirmed that my bullshit detector alerts were legitimate:

“Regarding Plato's Republic, you're right to raise your eyebrows at the suggestion that a police force might be viewed as similar to Plato's ‘guardians.’ Here are my thoughts on that.

“1. In certain respects the comparison is unobjectionable.
- The guardians serve the city, not their own interests.
- Their relationship to the population who they govern is not antagonistic.
- They are highly educated, and their very extensive education, culminates in many years studying philosophy (Yeah!!).

“2. In other respects the comparison is questionable.
- The guardians govern the city in a non-democratic manner. The society Plato describes is separated into distinct classes. The guardians are not accountable to anyone below them.
- Plato explicitly justifies lying to the population in order to maintain the stability of the hierarchical society. E.g. The lower orders are fed the "noble lie" that people are born with souls of a certain kind, and that fixes where they belong in the social order.
- The defining excellence of the city--it's "justice"–in Plato's view lies in the way everyone knows their place and their function, and sticks to it. Rulers rule; workers work; etc. (just as the heart pumps blood, and the lungs breathe).
- Plato is very keen on censorship. Any kind of art, literature, or speech that might rock the boat (i.e. threaten the rigid social structure, or inflame people's emotions, or make them suspicious of what they've been taught) is banned. Only what serves what the guardians deem to be in the interest of the city is allowed.
- And one other thing. To make sure that they are not corrupted, the guardians have to live frugally and simply. They don't get big houses, or lots of money, or fancy foods.”

To the last point of my professor’s email, I must point out a chilling passage from the Republic that seemed to portend the reality of the institution of policing in America today:

“’To them alone in the city it is forbidden to touch or handle silver and gold, to go under the same roof with it, to wear it or drink from it. Thus they will be preserved as they preserve the city. If they ever possess private land and houses and money, they’ll become farmers and landowners instead of guardians, despots and enemies instead of allies to the citizens, and they’ll live out their lives hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, fearing citizens within more than enemies without, and even then skirting the brink of destruction for both themselves and their city. For all of these reasons,’ I said, ‘let’s legislate that the guardians’ houses and everything else be arranged as we’ve said. Do you agree?’
“’I certainly do,’ he said.”
(page 86 of my versionThe Republic)

The police in Rochester, NY do not live frugally or simply. In Rochester’s case, the majority of the members of the Rochester Police Department (RPD), 90%+, live outside of the city [http://data-rpdny.opendata.arcgis.com...]. They also get substantial amounts of money to buy land, houses, and all the food that’s fancy (that they want) [http://rochester.indymedia.org/node/1...]. Fear drives their need to control, here and around the nation: a fear of citizens, a fear of being plotted against, and a fear of being hated. That fear transforms into aggression and barbarity directed at vulnerable individuals and communities that they target. (Sorry, this is in some ways hyperbole and in some ways not. In Rochester’s case, you just have to compare how police treat white folks vs. Black folks.) Rochester police get virtually no cultural competency training and little if any local history, according to a member of the Rochester Police Training Advisory Committee (2018). PTAC is a group of civilians that are informed about the training that officers go through in Rochester by the department. Structural and institutional racism provide the needed foundation for officers to determine, without evidence, that a person of color is a criminal, even if it’s not the person who’s committed the crime. (Not hyperbole. There are several documented cases of police misidentifying and hurting people who are not the suspects they are seeking or have completely different appearances than the people they are seeking. The common denominator was that the people they hurt were Black.) This leads to two different kinds of law enforced by the RPD: one for Black people and one for white people. The very foundation of policing in this country comes out of slave patrols and repression of the labor movement. To presume that the uniquely American institution of policing can be reformed with a shift in perspective is, perhaps, hubris. If Plato’s words above are a warning to us about the corruptibility of guardians, then I can only imagine what he would think about the institution of policing, re-framed in the language of guardians, today.

Another aspect of Plato’s Republic that is concerning is the totalitarian nature of the “just” society he envisions. His call for absolute control of all aspects of society, down to the artistic license of chair makers, is horrifying. All human creativity and free will becomes predetermined and at the will of the state. Any deviation is grounds for immediate censorship and punishment. It sounds like an ideal command and control situation for police, under Alexander’s re-framing, transforming police into the enemies of the people (even the “good” ones), and certainly not allies. This does not bode well for Alexander’s ideal of guardians, unless of course the populace is ready to abdicate its rights. And civilians have rights in order to protect themselves against the tyranny of the state.

There is a certain logic that dictates why a former police officer might identify the utopia (?) outlined in the Republic as an ideal to strive for in a democratic society. I am not insinuating that Alexander is a totalitarian monster out to destroy democracy. I think he, like so many people, have a certain nostalgia for the (false) ideal of police. Alexander wants to take that ideal and pair it with an idea (police and community relations) that appears to put civilians and police (guardians) on the same footing, thereby creating/attaining/increasing respect and legitimacy of police officers. Of course, the police retain all power in the police and community relations equation and use civil society to expand their social control, sometimes through informal channels, throughout society. Obviously, this is all speculation. The ideal, perhaps, of total control of society through some kind of formal or informal democratically-driven decision-making process between police and civilians, could appeal to individuals who have led departments or who have done their jobs as police officers. But I think it's a disingenuous ideal that actually hurts democracy and civil society. To me, it sounds like totalitarianism and it is really scary. Again, I urge you to read the Republic and make your own decision. I will say that Alexander doesn’t even consider this point in his book (even though there has been an ongoing, international debate about Plato and his totalitarianism) and that omission is certainly for me, a red flag.

2. Individual experience vs. systemic patterns and practices of abuse:
Alexander’s narrative uses a lot–A LOT–of personal anecdotes to make his argument, while explicitly NOT focusing on the systemic violence of the departments he was a part of or oversaw. Cue the ever classy “it’s just a few bad apples” argument, while dropping the second part of that phrase (“spoils the bunch”).

Kristian Williams, in his Our Enemies in Blue offers a wonderful critique of the "few bad apples" argument that focuses on individuals rather than systems and institutions:

"Given such pervasive violence, it is astonishing that discussions of police brutality so frequently focus on the behavior of individual officers. Commonly called the 'Rotten Apple' theory, the explanation of police misconduct favored by police commanders and their ideological allies holds that police abuse is exceptional, that the officers who misuse their power are a tiny minority, and that it is unfair to judge other cops (or the department as a whole) by the misbehavior of the few. This is a handy tool for diverting attention away from the institution, its structure, practices, and social role, pushing the blame, instead, onto some few of its agents. It is, in other words, a means of protecting the organization from scrutiny, and of avoiding change." Our Enemies in Blue

Here’s an example of how I’ve experienced the individual experience vs. systemic patterns and practices of abuse when it comes to the RPD. Enough Is Enough was invited to participate in a focus group conducted by the Center for Public Safety Initiatives (CPSI), which is a part of the Rochester Institute of Technology, regarding how people felt about the police department. The focus group was a part of a broader effort to include voices that, in the past, were generally left out of these "feel good" surveys. It was a bit nerve wracking to sit and respond because each question asked by the research assistant focused almost exclusively on our specific and individual interactions with police officers. The questions asked of the focus groups refused to acknowledge that my individual experience with a police officer (or non-experience based on my perceived race and gender as a white man) would completely skew the data and that the targeted enforcement activities in primarily poor communities that were coded racially as Black or Hispanic would be discounted or omitted because that information was systemic (not individually-based experience) and not within the scope of the survey. (It may have also been the case that the researchers weren’t able to gain access to police records, which would severely stymie their efforts at exposing systemic police violence. Of course, assuming that was their goal, which it didn't seem to be.) We raised these concerns with each question presented to us and each time the research assistant would make a note about our objection to the question, the line of questions, or the limited—even cosmetic—kinds of questions that were driving the survey.

This kind of focus, an individual’s interaction with law enforcement (rather than how violent the department is and what its goals/targets are and why—and further—who decides what those goals and targets are) becomes the litmus test for how well a police department functions and how much it is “liked” by the community (which community?) it “serves.” Systemic violence in a police department is not often reported on in academic work and its even rarer for a longitudinal study to be conducted where actual use of force complaints are tracked for one department over the course of decades. Some of that may have to do with who’s contracting with who (in the above example, the RPD contracted with the CPSI to do the study) or the barriers to getting actual information on topics, cases, and outcomes for situations that led to police violence because of transparency laws, such as 50-a in New York State [http://rochester.indymedia.org/node/1...].

Alexander’s book is autobiographical. Therefore my argument that Alexander focuses entirely too little on systems may be an unfair critique. That said, I’ve chosen a few examples where Alexander is telling his personal story and then extrapolates that experience to everyone. The insidiousness of that tactic in his writing is that he’s floating assumptions past the reader, which may or may not be caught because the reader is trying to move forward with his personal narrative. Alexander’s experience and the assumptions he makes (and is asking the reader to accept) are contained within the perspective of a law enforcement officer, which brings its own set of assumptions to the table, assumptions that average civilians or targeted civilians may vehemently disagree with.

Page 12 is one example. Here, Alexander is discussing his entry into law enforcement and how his whole career was held in the balance by a presumably racist, white, southern sheriff. (Alexander is Black). He writes, “Whatever else he did for me that day—and just by signing his name in green ink, he did everything—Sheriff Raymond Hamlin taught me that people are just people, and most people have a surprisingly powerful and resilient need to do the right thing, especially if you give them a good reason to.” It’s an emotional hook meant to lay the groundwork for Alexander’s storied career. It’s simply people being people, one individual to another. Institutions and cultures play no role. There are simply too many variables that Alexander sets aside in his narrative. He may have just got lucky. I’m speculating. There’s a similar instance of this on page 17. Here Alexander talks about there being a lot of distrust between him and other officers because of his race and his co-workers’ “redneck ways.” But this, Alexander tells us, was overcome overtime as they started to see each other as “brother officers.” That terms evokes for me the “thin blue line,” the line that demarcates the boundary between the public sphere and the police sphere; the line that establishes opacity to patterns and practices of abuse; it’s a line not to be crossed. I met a retired RPD officer a few years back. He was also Black. Until he and several other officers of color brought a suit against the department for racial discrimination, he had been treated like a second class officer. He could not arrest white people, he was forced to sit in the back of the police car, where arrested suspects would sit, on route to crime scenes. If he spoke up, he would be retaliated against by the super majority white police department. (Mind you, this was the late 1960s and 1970s, not today). However, at the same meeting, there were two current Black police officers as well (2014) and they spoke about how their union represented white officers and not Black ones, at least that’s how it felt to them. They also talked about the ongoing racism within the department and how negative the environment could get. These examples are a tiny piece of the systemic and institutional factors that are not addressed by Alexander in his writing. It seemed to me that, whenever he could, Alexander would talk about a personal experience and then quickly extrapolate that experience into something societal.

Sadly, Goodreads does not allow enough space for me to finish my lengthy review. You can continue reading here: http://rochester.indymedia.org/node/1.... In conclusion, please, don’t buy this book or the hype. I invite you to take it out from a library (one of our great civic institutions) and see if I am correct or not. Also, again, read Plato’s Republic. Thanks!

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I live in Minneapolis and read this book because of both his expertise and because we hired him to oversee Public Safety. I found his book useful and feel like I should read parts again. I appreciated that he didnt come into it with an agenda and gave us expertise instead.

[Billy Grogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author has taken a complicated topic and provided a balanced discussion of the issues using personal examples from his own life and career as well as current events familiar to all of us. The author starts off describing his response to the events in Ferguson as the President of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) and then takes us on a journey through his career and the lessons he learned along the way and how those lessons can help us understand the challenges facing law enforcement today. I highly recommend this book for all law enforcement executives! It is a must read! I also recommend this book for any citizen interested in a frank discussion of this topic.