ABOUT THE AUTHOR

•

Photo by Wave Photo, Pensacola, Florida

Today a respected law enforcement and public service consultant, Dr. Cedric L. Alexander retired in December 2018 as deputy mayor of Rochester, New York, and clinical professor of psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester Medical Center. He began his career in law enforcement in 1977 as a sworn deputy sheriff in Leon County, Florida, and he went on to serve through 1992 in Florida law enforcement, in Tallahassee, Orlando, and Miami-Dade, where he was an early exponent of community policing.

Alexander earned degrees in sociology and in marriage and family therapy (St. Thomas University, Miami) and holds a doctorate of clinical psychology (Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio). From 1997 to 2002, he was assistant professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center (Rochester, New York) and a clinician who worked extensively with police officers, firefighters, and their families. Appointed deputy chief and then chief of the Rochester Police Department in 2002, he went on to serve as deputy commissioner of the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services and then TSA federal security director at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, before going on to become police chief and, subsequently, director of public safety for DeKalb County in the Atlanta, Georgia, metro area.

In July 2014, Alexander was elected president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) and held membership in the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). President Barack Obama appointed him in 2015 to the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, which issued its Final Report in May 2015, with extensive recommendations for improving community-police relations.

A sought-after speaker on a wide array of law enforcement and public service issues, Alexander has made many television appearances, has been a law enforcement analyst for CNN, and has written many opinion editorials for CNN and other news outlets, as well as professional essays published in the Yale Law Journal and other major venues. He delivered a lecture (“Public Safety, the Community and the University in Times of Change”) in the distinguished Steinberg Lecture Series at the University of Rochester and was a speaker at TEDxYale: Leap of Faith, at Yale University in April 2019.