with dr. cedric l. alexander, who’s the deputy chief … dr. cedric l. alexander, who’s the...

Dr. Cedric L. Alexander

December 3, 2014

Brien R. Williams

Interviewer

This interview was produced in conjunction with the Museum’s Witness to History program

and generously funded by Target Corporation.

Brien Williams: This is an oral history interview for the National Law Enforcement Museum

with Dr. Cedric L. Alexander, who’s the deputy chief operating officer in the Office of Public

Safety in DeKalb County, Georgia, and the current president of NOBLE, the National

Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. We are in the Burke Theater at the United

States Naval Memorial in Washington, DC. Today is Wednesday, December 3, 20014, and I am

Brien Williams. Thank you for doing this, Dr. Alexander.

Cedric Alexander: Thank you for having me.

Williams: Let’s start with your giving me some of your family background, where you’re from

and your parents and so forth.

Alexander: I grew up in Pensacola, Florida. My mom and dad met at Alabama State University

in Montgomery somewhere around 1952, I think it was. They were both in school there. And I

think my dad got to Alabama State, Montgomery, he’s from Mobile, Alabama. He got to

Alabama State in 1948 after high school, went to Alabama State, stayed two years and 1950 he

entered into the Army, or was drafted, and that was during the Korean conflict, I believe it was.

So he was gone for two years away from college. My mother got there in ’52 as he was

returning after the Korean War, and they met there. She was a freshman, of course. He was a

returning upperclassman. But they got married very, very young. My mom being from

© National Law Enforcement Museum 2

Pensacola; my dad being from Mobile. My dad died back in 1999 from pancreatic cancer. My

mother is still residing today in Pensacola, Florida. She’s 81 next month, and retired school

teacher, and my dad of course was a college professor and high school teacher of science and

mathematics during that time as well too. But they divorced when I was very young, so I used to

go back and forth between my mom and dad. And my dad was very popular in Mobile during

that time, the sixties, seventies, very, very popular, and he was working on his PhD through the

University of Texas during the summer months when he was not teaching. But he became ill and

that did not happen during that time, and of course he had remarried and had a couple of other

children as well too. But we were very close at the time of his death. But I grew up mainly with

my mom there in Pensacola and my stepfather. I finished high school in 1972, went to Florida

A&M University in Tallahassee, and got married in 1975, and we both were juniors in college at

Florida [Agricultural & Mechanical University], “FAMU,” as it is so dearly known to many. It

was during that time, we got married in ’75, and shortly after we got married my ex-wife now,

she got pregnant, so I had to drop out of school. She stayed in school, made sure she stayed in

and finished, and I dropped out and got in law enforcement, really local law enforcement. That

was not my first choice. My first choice was to go to the feds back in the seventies, but

opportunities that exist today did not exist back then, you know, for application and applying to

the Federal Bureau of Investigation or Secret Service or whatever. And, quite frankly, they were

very limited or weren’t very open in my recollection for people of color to even join those

agencies at that time. They always had a few here and there, if you will. That was, back in them

days, you didn’t even know where to go to apply to the FBI or to the Secret Service. It was not

like you could go on line and fill out an application. And I remember one day in Tallahassee

going to the local FBI office there, and they were very nice when I was there, but nobody could

tell me how to apply. “How do you apply for this gig?” “Well, you know, you need to finish

school first” and all of that, which you needed to do because you needed a four-year degree. The

process was very, very different than what it is today, and even though that was not a long time

ago in American history, the opportunities that exist are far greater for young people, all people,

than what it was back during that time. So anyway I ended up in local law enforcement. Got

hired by the sheriff’s department there in Tallahassee, and actually that was a unique experience

in and of itself because the sheriff’s department, back during that time, Brien, if you wanted to

police in Tallahassee, Florida, you’d be hired by an agency somewhere in the state of Florida,


and they’ll send you to the police academy, or you could pay a hundred bucks during that time

and go to the academy yourself, get the certification and maybe someone would hire you. So I

scraped up a hundred bucks, and I was married, my wife was pregnant, and she was finishing up

I think her senior year, and I was doing little handy jobs here and there, and scraped up a

hundred bucks, but what I needed was a signature from a chief law enforcement officer in that

county. So I needed a signature from either the chief of police of FAMU, chief of police of the

city, or the sheriff. Now, neither one of those was a very viable option, it appeared at that time,

because the chief in Tallahassee, he pretty much had his quota of blacks in 1976, let’s say, and

same thing with the sheriff’s office, and at FAMU, where you had a black police chief at the

college campus, he wouldn’t sign for me to go because he’d say, “No, Alexander, I remember

you. You ain’t been the most stellar student around here in your freshman year.” So, he was just

a jerk, quite frankly, and he wouldn’t sign for me to go. So I said, “Okay.” So I only had two

choices left. I had to either go to the late Sheriff Raymond Hamlin, who was one of those good

ole boy kind of chiefs, who used to make statements in the paper, “I like my women the same

way I like my coffee, white and hot.” And I think that pretty much kind of depicts the kind of

individual you’re dealing with at that time. And the other option was to go to the chief over at

the city of Tallahassee, who had a reputation of being just as bigoted at the sheriff in Leon

County. So I said, “You know what? I’m going to make an appointment to go see the sheriff

over at Leon County.” And I was a typical college kid, Brien. I went over there in a jean jacket,

jeans, a skull cap, like a typical college student. Didn’t even know how to dress for an interview.

So funny enough, when I call, the secretary got me an appointment with him a couple of weeks

later, and I went over to the courthouse, where his office was, there on Monroe Street I believe at

that time in Tallahassee, and we’re talking 1976, we’re not talking 1954 or ’44; we’re talking

about 1976. And I went upstairs and I sat there in the chair as I’m sitting right here, and she

finally came out and said, “The sheriff will see you now.” And I was nervous, not knowing what

to expect, having an understanding of what his reputation was. I think he had like three or four

black deputies in the department. He had pretty much met his quota. So I went into see him, and

he was sitting behind a desk, just like you and I are. I’m sitting on the edge of a desk, the only

difference is he had a desk between us, and he said, “Come on in and have a seat.” I had a seat.

One of the most memorable occasions in my life occurred. I was very, very young, early 20-

year-old young man, about 20, 21, and I sat there and talked for about two or two and a half


hours about virtually anything and everything under the sun. Sheriff Raymond, who had a

reputation of being a sexist and a racist and a bigot, all those things he was described as, and we

talked about everything. And as much as we had differences, we had likenesses as well too.

And at the end of the conversation, which was very pleasant the whole time, and a man of

tremendous common sense. You could tell he was not formally educated, but had a life of

experience that just exuded, and even though his time and framework and thoughts of the world

were different in many ways, he was also very much a politician too. But he said, “Cedric, I’m

going to sign for you to go to the academy, but I’m not going to hire you.” And I said, “That’s

fine with me. All I need is a signature to go. I get my certification, I can go apply any other

place in the state of Florida.” The official color for the sheriff’s office in the state of Florida is

green, that’s the official color. And he took out a green ink pen and he signed my papers in

green ink, and we shook hands and I never saw him again. But I’m sitting here today, years

later, because of Sheriff Raymond Hamlin. And everything that I’m going to talk about in my

career over the last 37 years is because of Sheriff Raymond Hamlin, opened the door, gave me

an opportunity that nobody else would. And what does that mean to me? It means that at the

end of the day, people are just people. We can’t help it if we’re born into a bias or a racist

household, or that it spanned generations. People learn what they’re taught, even though it’s

wrong sometimes. Because everything we learn is not always right. But he signed for me to go

to the academy. And I’ve had great success to date, but Raymond Hamlin played a very

important part of that, because he set the--

Williams: He opened the door.

Alexander: He opened the door. He opened the door. And he was considered very much a

racist and a bigot, and I believe all those things to be true about him. But he conducted himself

as a lawman, you know, who just came up in a very different time in America’s history than I.

But here again, in as much as we were different, we had some of the same views on some things.

Williams: Just a couple of follow-up questions. Did your mother remarry, or not?

Alexander: Yes, both my parents remarried.


Williams: So, other than stepbrothers or sisters, did you have any siblings yourself?

Alexander: No. They were all half-brothers and sisters.

Williams: Where did you go after FAMU and what did you study?

Alexander: Sociology. Actually, when I went there I went there on a little small stipend back in

1972, to study accounting, and after the first semester I’m like, “Numbers are not my thing.”

And my grades reflected that. So, subsequently I changed majors to sociology. I didn’t know

what I wanted to major in. And actually when I was in high school I was in Navy ROTC

[Reserve Officers’ Training Corps], and when I finished high school I was going to either go to

the Marine Corps and enlist in the Marine Corps or go to college. I knew I was going

somewhere, I just didn’t know where. But I decided to go to college, and I was going to get a

commission, so I was supposed to have gotten into Navy ROTC, which was the first year they

offered Navy ROTC, in 1972, at Florida A&M. They had always had Army, but that was the

first year they had Navy, and I had been in Navy ROTC in high school. But all of my buddies

who I went to high school with, a few of them went to FAMU the same year I did, they all went

to Army ROTC, so they convinced me to go with them. So I did a little short stint in Army

ROTC. But I didn’t have the maturity, Brien. I was 17 years old when I came out of high

school, and away from home for the first time, and you know you’ve got the freedom to come

and go whenever you want to and all those things. So it took a couple of years for me to mature,

to really get focused on being serious about life.

Williams: Sociology seems like a logical choice for someone who’s aiming towards law

enforcement.

Alexander: Right. At that time, absolutely. And like I said, I wanted to either go in the military

as a commissioned officer, or go into law enforcement, but at the federal level. Neither one of

those happened, but I’m right where I’m supposed to be.


Williams: So you spent several years in police and sheriff’s work in the state of Florida.

Alexander: Yes. I went to work for the sheriff’s department. Actually Raymond Hamlin got

voted out the next year. I think he had been much of an embarrassment to people in that

community, particularly in the academic community between FAMU and Florida State. You

know, his remarks and some things that he was saying, I think he was becoming dated. And a

young white guy by the name of [W.] Ken Katsaris, he had a Master’s degree in criminology,

and back in that time you had a Master’s degree in criminology from Florida State, that was a big

thing. He didn’t have much police experience, but he had ran against Hamlin once before and

lost, ran again in ’76 and won. And of course, I didn’t know him. I knew people who did. But

anyway, I applied for the sheriff’s office, had my certification, and they called me in for an

interview and I got in for an interview, and subsequently got hired by Ken Katsaris, and Ken

Katsaris had a very different viewpoint of the world. He brought more African-Americans into

that sheriff’s department and put them in supervisory ranks, and brought in women as well. He

did things very very different. And that was also during his time and my time there, is when you

had Theodore [R. “Ted”] Bundy, that came through Florida State. You had the Chi Omega

murders there at the sorority house. And in fact during that time in Tallahassee the sheriff’s

department did not just answer calls out in the unincorporated area. Because of the politics we

also answered calls in the city, and Florida State is in the city. Florida State had their own police

department, but that night that those girls were killed, we did have units on the scene. I

remember seeing a buddy of mine. I was off, I had gotten off earlier that day and I saw him, and

I said, “Where are you headed?” “Some guy running around with a baseball bat on Florida State

campus.” That’s how the call initially first went out. And then the next day everybody in the

world knew that things were, it was such a horrible event. It really rocked the community back

at that time back in ’78, I believe it was. But Theodore Bundy was caught over in my home

town of Pensacola, Florida. Brought him back to Tallahassee, to stand trial for the murder and

assault of those women. Those two women that did survive, I remember being a very young

deputy, they were the two that were severely injured were hospitalized there at Tallahassee

General Hospital, TMH, Tallahassee Memorial Hospital at that time. And I used to have to do

guard duty over there, because the sheriff’s department, we got calls, so I used to do an eight-

hour shift over there from time to time because they were on 24-hour protection. And also used


to transfer Bundy back and forth from the jail to the courthouse, with another car trailing me with

a canine in it and a chopper above as well too. I did that on several occasions.

Williams: Were you driving or--

Alexander: I was driving. I was in the front, the cage in the back, and he was shackled to the

waist and the ankles, but there was a car behind me with a canine in it, and we had a chopper up

above if I remember correctly. So just transfer him back and forth a few times during his

arraignments and trial.

Williams: Was it pretty quiet in the car?

Alexander: Very quiet, and I remember the captain at that time telling me, he said, “Cedric,

don’t say anything to him. Just drive. Don’t say nothing to him. Don’t have conversation with

him.” So, that was very dangerous, very dangerous man. But to look at him, you couldn’t tell

that. Looked just as average as you and I, Brien, but a very very dangerous man. So, left

Tallahassee, left the sheriff’s department there in December of ’79. Did a short stint with the

state of Florida as an arson investigator, and they assigned me to Miami, and that was a whole

different world having grown up in north Florida, now being assigned to south Florida. I think I

was making about $11,000 a year back in 1980. And I did that for a short period of time. And I

end up going to Orange County sheriff’s department, which actually I’d applied for Orange

County and the state arson unit at the same time, but the state called me first and I took the job.

And when they called me from Orange County and offered me the job I said, “No, I’ve already

taken a job at the state and I’ve given them my word. I’m coming. So I got to the state. It just

was not, it was very different than policing on the streets. I did that for about six months or so,

and I called Orange County and went there and I said, “Hey, you all still got that job open?”

And they said, “Yes, you went through the process. All that’s good for a whole year.” And they

said, “We’ll call you back.” That afternoon they called me back and said, “When can you be

here?” And I said, “I’ll be there in a couple of weeks.” So I resigned from the state, moved up

to Orlando and worked in the sheriff’s office up there for about a year. I was probably about 25

years old, going on 26, something like that. And I stayed there for a year. And then you had the


riots in Miami in 1980, huge riots. One of the biggest in America’s history. About 20-some

people dead, millions of dollars of property damage. That was following the acquittal of four

white police officers who were charge with murdering a motorcyclist. And they were acquitted

in Tampa. And that city burned. I was in Orlando when that was going on. In fact I’d just left

Miami, down in an area where it occurred, actually, and moved to Orlando. So we had some

small mini-riots in Orlando downtown, but nothing to the significance of what was happening in

Miami. So right after the riots, there was huge change, much of kind of what we see now. There

was a whole new movement in law enforcement, much of what we’re going to see post this

whole Ferguson piece [fatal shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson, MO, police officer Darren

Wilson in 2014 and a grand jury’s decision not to indict Wilson for his actions]. And we’ll get to

that. That changed policing in Dade County and probably around the state and around the

country tremendously, because community-oriented policing was not a term back in 1980, ’81,

and it was all about law and order and do as I say and we’ll tell you all what we want you to

know as police. We ask all the questions. You just give us the answers. That was policing at

that time, right? But after the civil unrest in Dade County, and here again, the [Arthur] McDuffie

death was just the tipping point of what was going to come anyway, much as Michael Brown’s

death was just the tipping point of what was going to come to St. Louis anyway. But it really did

change things in Dade County, and particularly with Metro Dade Police at that time, as the

Miami-Dade Police was referred to. So I applied to that department, late 1980, early ’81,

following the riots, and there was a tremendous push to diversify that department because that

department did not reflect unincorporated Dade County like Ferguson don’t reflect the city of

Ferguson. Same dynamics, same dynamics. But they made major wholesale changes there.

They increased their minority hiring of both blacks and Hispanics, and women. There was just a

number of progressive changes that were made, even in the leadership in the precincts. I never

will forget at that time Major [Douglas W.] Doug Hughes, who was the major of Central

Precinct, which was near the Liberty City area there, the unincorporated Liberty City there, and

Dade County. Doug Hughes is probably someone I probably model myself after a little bit even

to this day. He was native New Yorker, had spent a career with Metro Dade Police, moved up

through the ranks, but just a very smart man, and had a wonderful way with the community.

Community people loved him. He may have been, I think Doug was Irish, if I’m not mistaken.

But just had a very unique demeanor about himself. Very likeable, very approachable. He was


assigned to that precinct because of his ability to integrate and go into any community, and he

made some real significant changes there. We had team policing concepts in many of the public

housing areas. Our job was to go in, build those relationships, provide police service in those

communities. He involved community into conversations around police, and how do we make it

better. Everything when we start talking about community-oriented policing, that was being

done in Dade County back in ’81. But there was tremendous change in that department during

that time, long overdue. Long overdue needed change. He just did a fantastic job, and I worked

for Doug Hughes both in Uniform Patrol and shortly thereafter I put in for a detective position up

on the north end of the county in another precinct and got accepted. And what was funny,

shortly after I got to the next precinct they moved Doug Hughes into that area as well too, which

was at that time was referred to and known as Carol City, up where you now have, it’s a city of

its own up there now. It’s not Carol City. The name escapes me [Miami Gardens]. It’s where

the stadium is [Miami Dolphins’ Sun Life Stadium], just south of the Broward County line. But

they sent Doug Hughes up there, and I was in the Detective Bureau, and he asked me to come

over and work community services for him. And the same concepts that he had employed in

Central District, he also employed up on the north end. And the demographics were a little

different, because it’s predominantly African-American in Central Precinct at that time, but on

the north end where we were, north of 103rd

Street, you had Miami Lakes, which was

predominantly upscale white, and then you had Carol City, which was very middleclass African-

American, and it was probably half and half, if you will, in terms of black and white. And then

of course you had a number of Hispanics, Cubans who resided in the community as well too.

Went up there, did some of the same great community work, and I learned a lot. And I stayed

with Dade County police up until 1990. I was ready to do something different, Brien, and in

1990 I enrolled in a Master’s program. And actually I did not finish from FAMU, by the way. I

dropped out. I wasn’t able to finish school. I went to work for the sheriff’s department. But

when I got to Miami in ’81, in ’83 I enrolled back in school, at a small Catholic institution there.

It was called Biscayne College at the time. It’s now St. Thomas University. It’s a small little

Catholic institution that has done a tremendous job in terms of educating thousands of

undergraduate and law students. They opened up their law school back sometime in the mid-

eighties, I think, and they’re accredited now, law school. But a small little Catholic institution

there on the north end of the county, and that’s where I was able to do my Bachelor’s. It’s just


something I always wanted to get out of the way, and I was finally able to get it out of the way in

’83. In 1990, I enrolled into a Master’s program in marriage and family therapy there, because

I’d always had ability to talk with people and make people feel good about themselves. God

placed on my heart to do something in the counseling field, from a spiritual perspective. And I

went in and did my Master’s there and spent two years going to school at night, get off work at

three o’clock and school at five or six o’clock. It just became part of the routine. And I did that

for two, two and a half years. But I also knew that I was ready to leave policing, and I knew

when I got in that Master’s program, if I were able to complete it academically, I knew that I was

going to go do a doctorate. And I was going to leave policing and I was going go become a

psychologist, and my days in policing would be over. And I did. I enrolled into a doctorate

program at Wright State University in Ohio, and got accepted into their clinical psychology

program there, and spent the next four years, I left the police department my first year. I have a

daughter; she was still in high school at the time. She was living in south Florida with her

mother, in Palm Beach County, and I was in Miami, so I used to see her on a regular basis. But

once I figured out how I was going to pay child support, once I got that figured out, off to grad

school. And I had a very wonderful experience. It was really hard, because clinical psychology

is much more science-based than it is arts-based, so I really had to study long and hard

academically, because I truly had been out of school a long time. But to go from a social science

like marriage and family therapy to go to clinical psychology where your courses are much more

challenging, particularly the science of it.

Williams: What particularly drew you to Wright State?

Alexander: That’s where I got accepted. I’d applied to a host of schools, and I got rejected by a

host of schools, and actually I’d given up and I was going to go to a little local, freestanding

psychology school there in Miami, and in fact I had enrolled in that school. And I never even

finished, I think, the first couple of weeks, and then I got this late letter. I come home one day.

You know, reject letters, after a while you know a reject letter when you see one, because you’ll

go to your mailbox and it will have University of Kentucky and it’s always this little thin letter.

And after a while, you kind of figure out, so I got one from Kentucky, I got one from Iowa, from

Florida, I got one from all these schools, right? These big institutions. Because that’s a very


competitive process too, and you have a lot of young people coming out of school every day with

the right background, the right GRE [Graduate Record Examinations] scores, GPAs [Grade Point

Average] and those things. So I just never good quite get over that hump. I never will forget,

when I had to take the Graduate Record Exam I didn’t do that great on it, and I remember I

talked to a guy in the psychology department at the University of Kentucky, and I told him how I

was going to apply. This was back in ’91, early ’92, and he encouraged me to apply. I think he

was the chair of the department, may have been at that time, or something. And I applied and I

felt very encouraged and sent them everything they needed, and I got a letter that I didn’t get

selected, and he called me up, Brien, right after I got that letter, and he said, “Cedric, I’m sorry

you weren’t able to get in.” He said, “You need to take those GREs one more time, go to one of

those courses, Kaplan [Test Prep] or something, get your scores up.” And I was just out of gas

by the end, really feeling I got bummed out everywhere, but I’ll always remember the University

of Kentucky for that. I’ll always remember that. Because he reached out to me and he said, “I

was pulling for you, but your scores just came up a little too short.” And I never will forget that.

Out of all the schools I applied to, and he’d say, “I know I encouraged you to apply, but apply

again. Just go back and see if you can those scores up just a little bit.” And I never did.

Williams: But you got a fat letter from Wright State.

Alexander: Yes, so here’s how I ended up at Wright State. So I applied to the University of

Iowa, which had a very well noted doctorate program in clinical psych. So I’m talking to a guy

on the phone and he says to me, “Well, we want you to apply, blah blah blah blah blah. But I’ve

got a friend at Wright State University, and they’re looking good students too, particularly

minority students.” I’m like, “Wright State University, where’s that?” Well, I’d heard of

Dayton, Ohio, but never heard of Wright State University. And I said if you’re from that part of

the country you’ve probably never heard of Florida Atlantic University, you know what I mean,

or Florida International University of Miami. So he said, “But I’m not trying to convince you

not to apply here. Please apply here. But she’s a friend of mine and I told her I’ll make sure any

minority students we run across we’ll ask them to apply there too.” And I said, “What the heck.

I don’t care.” I didn’t think any more about it. So I did everything I needed to do for Iowa,

applied, didn’t get accepted. So, I shot all my applications out, got rejected by 99.9 percent of


them, and after a while you get the little thin letter in the mail and you know exactly what it is, so

you don’t even, you know, you open it up and throw it away. It was pretty discouraging. So one

day, I totally forgot that I’d applied to Wright State University, totally forgot. So I come home

one day and I go to my mailbox there in Miami, and this big old packet is in the mailbox, Wright

State University, Dayton, Ohio, blah blah blah. So, I open it up, it’s got all this material in it,

and I read the cover letter. “Congratulations. You have been accepted into the doctorate

program at Wright State University.” And I’m standing there, and I’m like, “Whoa.” You know

I had to read it two or three times and make sure it was addressed to me. Maybe they got the

wrong guy, rights? And it took me a little while to digest it. “Wright State University, okay.

Let me find out where’s Wright State University, and what is Wright State University.” So I was

just delighted to be accepted anywhere. Wright State is one of the Ohio state schools, been

around since 1965, I believe, there in Dayton, Ohio, more specifically in Fairborn Ohio, a suburb

of Dayton. Great school, great education. Engineering programs, got a medical school there,

Division One basketball team. It’s not Ohio State, but it’s one of the Ohio state schools, and

Ohio has a number of fantastic academic institutions there, from Ohio University, or Miami

University of Ohio, to Cincinnati, to Ohio State, I mean just tons of institutions in and around

that state. And it was a blessing to be able to be accepted at a state institution, a state college,

because I remember my dad was alive at that time, my dad was big into academics. In fact he

had even worked on his doctorate until he got sick, but he had a Master’s in math and physics, in

physics and mathematics with a concentration in physics. And I remember calling him up and

saying, “Where should I apply to go to school?” And he always said, “You would never go

wrong with a state school. As long as it’s a state school, it doesn’t matter.” Oh, that’s cool. I

want to go to Harvard, I want to go to Stanford, you know. But I applied to a number of state

schools, so I was just glad to have been selected to go to Wright State. I couldn’t even get into

Florida, which was my own home state.

Williams: Just a couple of questions here. Major Hughes: did he retire as a major from the

Florida--


Alexander: I think he’s retired now. We lost contact more or less after I, well, actually he got

moved, I think somewhere around ’87, ’88, got moved somewhere else in the department. I

stayed at Northwest Precinct. We moved into a new building.

Williams: But he never became chief of police?

Alexander: No, he never did, no. Everybody thought he’d one day he would end up being

director of Metro Dade Police, which was the largest police agency in the Southeast at that time,

and probably still is. But he was just a tremendous individual, and I think someone that will, for

me, he’s one of those persons like Raymond Hamlin, just one of those people that impacted your

life at that time.

Williams: Now, were you remarried?

Alexander: No, never remarried.

Williams: So you went to Dayton alone.

Alexander: I went to Dayton alone, right. And my daughter who was in high school at that time

was living with her mother in south Florida, and once I figured out how I was going to pay child

support financially, which I got that figured out. Got a job there and took out some student loans

and those kinds of things, and took a year’s leave of absence from Metro Dade that first year, just

to see how I would do academically, and I tell you, it was a grind, but I was able to get it done.

Williams: How was the adjustment to the Snowbelt for you?

Alexander: Well it was different. I tell you, especially having come from Miami it was very,

very different. In October I’m sitting there in a classroom and it’s snowing outside, and I’m

feeling depressed, you know, I’m in school, I gave up that lifestyle being in Miami. And I knew

that was part of the sacrifice, but when it hits, when it really happens to you, it’s not in your

mind anymore, it’s a reality now. But I was able to, Brien, make it through, left Wright State I


think with around a three-six, three-seven GPA, and probably the oldest person in my class.

Most of the students in my class were those that matriculated from undergrad school. It was a

couple of older folks my age, I was 37 when I got there, which was an old man to a lot of these

kids that were coming in at 21 and 22. Turned 40 in grad school.

Williams: Did you have a dissertation to complete?

Alexander: Yes, I did, and I did my work in police officer stress and burnout. I defended that

back in ’96, I think it was. And I end up graduating in ’97. And I probably could have gone to

work somewhere, I guess, but I decided to apply for a post-graduate degree, and I applied to the

University of Rochester and got accepted. Actually I was at the University of Miami doing my

one-year internship after I finished all my academic work. I got accepted into an internship.

You’ve got to do a one-year internship before you graduate, and from ’96 to ’97 I was back in

Miami but at the University of Miami Medical Center, Jackson Memorial Hospital, where I was

doing work in marriage and family therapy, and doing a number of rotations between other

medical specialties. I used to see nephrology patients because those patients that suffered with

kidney disease, because you find a lot of depression in that population. And I did some work in

cardiology and some other places. We did some rotations over that year period that I was there,

and did a lot of marriage and family work too. So instead of looking for a job, I looked for a

post-doctorate, and a lot of people were telling me, “Cedric, you’re ready to go. You don’t need

to go back to school.” I said, “No, while I’m here I’m going to get every bit of it that I can get,

and if there’s something after the post-doctorate, I’m going to go do that too.” So I got accepted

to the University of Rochester, and got to the University of Rochester in July of ’97, and spent a

year there doing post-doc training.

Williams: In clinical psychology?

Alexander: In clinical psychology. Well, my specialty was marriage and family therapy, but in

the department of psychiatry there. I was seeing a lot of families, a lot of couples, doing my

training under supervision. And about halfway through they offered me a job. The dean of the

department of psychiatry, he and my director of my clinic, they offered me a job if I wanted to


stay on. And I said, “Sure.” I think the job paid like $50,000 a year. “Wow, I never made that

much money before.” I think I left the police department in ’92, I might have been based out at

thirty of thirty-five or something like that. So, I said, “Yes, sure, absolutely.” I stayed there for

a year and did a lot of clinical work, and was there for five years. And I became friends with the

mayor, [William A.] Bill Johnson [Jr.], who was the mayor at that time. He and I became

friends. We just happened to be sitting around having lunch one day, and he knew my history,

he knew I was a former police officer. And the Rochester police department was having a

number of issues during that time. There had been about three in-custody deaths that would

make it appear that police was doing something very wrong. It was predominantly a white male

police department with a very strong union, and it was a city with about a 30-33 percent African-

American population, and there was constant conflict between police and community there.

We’re into 2000 now, but it was around 2001, he and I start having the conversation, maybe

early 2002, and I think around April or May of 2002 he recruited me along with the chief at that

time to come in as deputy chief and help them work through some of the issues around

community and police and these kind of things. But let me back up a little bit. When I was at

the University, the city of Rochester had signed an agreement with the University of Rochester

Department of Psychiatry, that any time any police officer or fire fighter had a traumatic event to

occur, they would have to go to counseling, and they did that through the University of

Rochester. So me being a therapist and having been a police officer, I got to see many of those

cases came to me first. I worked very closely with a lot of police officers and firefighters very

early on, and saw other populations as well. It made it pretty easy for me because cops knew

that I was a cop and firefighters knew I was in a helping profession. It made it an easier process

to connect with them when you were doing therapy. But when I got recruited to go there, the

union raised the whole issue about, “Well, he can’t come over here and be deputy chief. He

knows about some of these officers and their personal stuff.” And that’s true, but that’s not

going to get in the way of me doing my job, and if I need to recuse myself from certain things, I

will. But at that time the union just didn’t want an outsider coming into that police department

at that level. So when I came in, made some significant changes, in fact, I brought Tasers

[electroshock devices] to that department. They didn’t have Tasers. Developed a disturbed

person emergency person response team program. We trained police officers to deal with people

with mental health conditions. We probably had about 50 or 60 officers out of about 700 that


were trained, just took calls, that if there was a mental health component to that call, we tried to

direct that call to that officer who had had that 48 hours of training. Our complaints, our fights,

our negative interactions went from here to virtually zero, because now officers were far better

trained to deal with mental health conditions than ever before. Because in the three in-custody

deaths that they had, they were people who had mental health issues, and the officers really

didn’t do anything wrong, but it was that perception that if you die in the custody, especially if

you’re black, and you die in the custody of a handful of white officers, they must have killed

you. But that was never the case whatsoever, but certainly that was the perception when you

don’t have police and community trusting and working with each other. So we got past that

hurdle. But the mayor decided not to run again in 2005. I think he had served about three terms.

The chief at that time decided he was going to run for mayor, so he left to go run for mayor. The

mayor appointed me as interim chief in Rochester. Who would have ever thought that would

have happened when I came to town doing a post-doc fellowship five years earlier? But it did

happen, and I served there as chief for about nine months. I had a great relationship with the

union, loved by the men and women in the department, by the community, and when my former

chief won as mayor, I did not want to work for him, because we just had some different views

about things, and it was just time for me to move on. I went to work for the Republicans, and the

Republicans hired me in 2006, Governor [George E.] Pataki at that time in New York. I moved

to Albany and I was appointed as deputy commissioner for criminal justice for the state of New

York, and I did that for about two years. [Gov. Eliot L.] Spitzer came into office. When Pataki

didn’t run again Spitzer came in, and they were very nice to me. They didn’t bother me, they

didn’t kick me out the door even though I thought they would. But the way that they did

business philosophically was just very different than how I had worked before, so I applied for a

position in the Department of Homeland, during the time George [W.] Bush was president, and

got accepted to run the Dallas-Fort Worth [DFW] Airport security, was hired as a federal

security director, and did that for about five and a half years. Dallas-Fort Worth is the sixth,

seventh largest airport in the world, and operationally we’re bigger than Atlanta. You know

Atlanta is considered the biggest airport in the world. They’re not the biggest. They have more

passenger traffic than any airport in the world, but operationally Dallas is bigger than Atlanta.

Operationally, but we don’t push through as many passengers as they do a year, and they push

through a lot of passengers, and so does DFW. Very proud, as you can see, from the work that


was done there. When I got there in ’07, that airport had been struggling some with morale

issues and some security issues as well too. Had about 1,300 employees that worked for me at

that time, and because all of them are not those you see, that are the TSOs [Transportation

Security Officers] that work at the checkpoints there, there are a host of other employees that you

don’t see or you would come in contact with, you know.

Williams: Doing what?

Alexander: Airport security and doing airline security, maintenance, making sure that they’re

meeting federal regulation, the airlines are meeting federal regulations by their response before a

host of things and so is the airport itself proper. So we had inspectors and we had TSO

personnel, we had canine personnel, we had just a host of other support personnel, which equated

to somewhere around twelve, 1,300 employees at that time. So I did that for about five and a

half years, and really did enjoy Dallas. I really did enjoy Dallas, especially coming out of New

York State for the last nine or 10 years prior to getting there. But I wanted to go back and chief

again one more time. So in 2010, the chief of police job came open in Atlanta. I applied, I was

one of the three finalists, and the other two finalists were actually sitting chiefs, one was the

sitting acting chief in Atlanta, now the chief, and another gentleman who came out of Louisville

is now chief in Denver. But we were the three finalists, and the chief currently, he got selected,

and so I went back to Dallas a little bummed out, felt I should have gotten that job, as we all

would. And it was three years later, next door in the adjoining county, DeKalb, which is a very

large, very popular community, historically in that area, in fact about 10 percent of Atlanta is in

DeKalb County, the city. Part of it is DeKalb and the rest of it is Fulton. I applied, and kind of

thought the local politics would beat me out again like they did before. But I applied and got

accepted, and came to work there in April of 2013, and hit the ground running, and it’s been

moving ever since. Got there, there was some internal corruptions going on assigned the police

department got a number of those officers out and made some philosophical changes. I didn’t

move any of the appointed staff, assistant chiefs, except one or two. Sometimes it’s kind of like

coaching a sports team, whether it’s football or hockey or whatever. What you got on your

bench is what you got on your bench. Bringing in new players don’t necessarily mean anything,

right? So I took the players I had, and we rewrote a game plan, and we have been doing very


well. We’ve reduced crime, we’ve got a great relationship in the community, we’ve got a great

relationship with the media, and people see us as a very different police department 19 months

later than what we were when I first got there. Got a little over 1,000 officers. Should have

about 1,300, you know. Budget cuts and that kind of thing. But we’ve still got a lot of work to

do.

Williams: In what areas?

Alexander: Well, I think that the county is changing. Much of the county is trying to become

cities. People breaking away wanting to form their own cities. I don’t think it’s going to affect

the police department very much. And like every other city and county, municipality in the

country, everybody struggles with money. Housing crisis took a major hit in that county back in

2008. A lot of people abandoned their homes, lost their jobs. So we’re recovering from a lot of

that as well too.

Williams: How does it jurisdictionally work with part of Atlanta being in your county?

Alexander: If you’re in DeKalb County you’ll get DeKalb County police services. I don’t know

how they’ve done that, but about 10 percent of the city of Atlanta does sit in DeKalb County.

There’s just shared government responsibilities there.

Williams: So you must work closely with the chief of police in Atlanta.

Alexander: In Atlanta? Oh, yes. We’re neighboring, I mean literally neighboring, because you

can be out of the city into DeKalb and you don’t know one from the other. We’re just that close

together, we’re contiguous communities. So, yes, we work very very closely together,

absolutely.

Williams: When you did your thesis on burnout, was that a case study?


Alexander: No, it wasn’t a case study. I took a lot of the research that was already out there and

looked at it, and combined that with some of my own experience having been a police officer at

that time for 15 years or so. So it was interesting to look at some of the dynamics as to why

police burn out and stress that are associated with it. But there’s been a lot more research, which

I’m quite sure has been since I left grad school now.

Williams: We took a little break here, and as you just discovered, this New York case of Eric

Garner broke [grand jury does not indict Staten Island, New York, police officer for killing

Garner by chokehold], with the police officer not being indicted. So that brings us right up to the

current situation, Ferguson and so forth. Why don’t we start out with you just giving your

philosophical observations on what’s going on.

Alexander: Let me start by saying this, first of all, for whatever purposes you use this footage

for, and it’s probably going to be more historical than anything. But I am a law and order police

official. I learned that back in 1977 from Raymond Hamlin. I’m a law and order police official.

But the difference between me and him is this: my expectations are far greater, not just that yes,

we’ve got to have law and order in a civilized society, in a country where people have

constitutional rights. Sometimes those rights become challenged, and where they begin and

where they end becomes somewhat muddied. And then it comes down to basic respect, how we

respect each other too, right? But my expectations from police officers are simply this, is that we

maintain law and order, what we’re sworn to do, and we are courageous, we’re bold, we’re

strong, but we’re professional. Our biases, our prejudices, we’re aware of them, we know where

they come from, we know that we weren’t born with them, but we got stuck with them,

sometimes because of our own family of origin issues, that’s the family therapy piece, that’s the

psychology of it. We’re born blank slates. We’re not born to be racist or sexist, we’re just born

to be human beings. And we’re blank slates. And what get written on that slate dictates who we

are for the rest of our lives, become ingrained. So we have to be aware of what our biases are.

Some people like “po-ta-toes”, some people like “po-tat-oes,” and once we know that we have

these biases, and we serve the public, and the public is broad, it’s vast, it’s diverse, it’s different,

sometimes, than what we know, it makes us peacekeepers, and we have to treat everybody the

same, regardless of who we are, where we’re from. Because the law and order does not just


pertain to the public, it pertains to us as well too. And we have to role model what we want

others to do. Just as much as we want to maintain law and order we also have to role model law

and order. And not law and order in the sense of somebody gets out of line, you crack him over

the head with a billy club. Not that kind of law and order, but people must obey law, and if

they’re not, people are arrested, and it’s done in a way that is professional, and it’s done in a way

that is non-biased, but it’s by the letter of the law as best we can. But we all have to be, Brien, of

what our strengths and our weaknesses are. And to be a police officer today you also have to

have a certain set of skills. You got to be observant, you got to be sensitive, you got to be caring

about people, because I really don’t think you can do this job the way it’s supposed to be done

without really caring about people. But a police officer also have to be very well-trained.

They’ve got to have good interpersonal skills, and they have to have an ability to assess

situations and think critically, oftentimes in a split second, but not all the time was that a split

second. Because the majority of the work that police officers do is not running around shooting

at people or being shot at. Most of the work police officers do, still to this day, is very much

public relations, whether it’s answering the call of a fender-bender, or a cat in a tree, or a

domestic complaint which could turn dangerous in a matter of seconds, or responding to a

burglary call. It has its dangerous moments, but you’re trained for that, and you stay alert for

that. But training is monumental when it comes to public safety, when it comes to law and order,

because the old translation of law and order means kick butt and take names. Not with me. It

means obeying the law. If we conduct ourselves in an orderly manner and if the law has to

intervene, the law does so without bias, without prejudice, and it does so with a professionally

trained workforce. What has occurred in Ferguson occurs in many cities across America, is that

you have a community that is not connected with its police department or the police department

is not connected with its community. But you’ve got to understand a little bit of history at first,

and I’ve spent a little bit of time in Ferguson over the last few months and gotten to know the

chief there, Tom Jackson, as well too. Ferguson is a community back in 1970 was about 90

white. In 1990 that number lessened, in early 2000 it lessened to where today is 67 percent

black. But what did not change was the demographics in the police department. So let’s think

about that. Twenty or 30 years ago, if you and I came on the department together, we’re

probably still there. We don’t change just because demographics move around. But when they

had opportunities, through attrition, as they saw the demographic changing, as they had


opportunities through attrition to bring on more people of color, they did not. So if you were to

ask Tom Jackson, the chief there, and others, they will say, “Well, we tried to recruit other

persons of color, but they don’t want to come to Ferguson, because I’m competing with St. Louis

PD [Police Department], which is a larger police department. It offers them more money and

more opportunities for advancement; I’m competing with St. Louis County Police, which offers

them more money and more opportunities for advancement, because you’re not talking about a

55-person department, you’re not talking about departments of a thousand or better officers.”

So, he has to compete with that, and he has to compete with everybody else who’s trying to

recruit people of color and women and people from various sexual orientations and religious

preferences. Everybody’s vying for diversity in their organization, which is the right thing to do,

whether you’re government or whether you’re private industry. So he’s competing with that.

But here’s what I say, and I have said this, privately and publicly, in national news and local

news, is that we never can give up the efforts of trying to diversify organizations. It means that

we’re just going to have to be more creative, we’re going to have to put more money into our

budgets, it means that we’re going to have to maybe incentivize opportunities for people to come

into our departments some kind of way, but we have got to create an environment where people

feel welcome and they feel they want to be part of law enforcement in Ferguson and many other

communities across America. But at the end of the day, regardless how well they’re able to

recruit people of color or not, regardless of who you are, black or white, serving in that

community, you’ve still got to be professionally trained. When you call a police officer to your

house, you don’t care whether he’s black or white. Neither do I. What you want is someone

who is professionally trained to get the job done. That’s what you want first and foremost. Is

diversity important? It absolutely is. But what’s equally important is a well-trained police force

of men and women of various backgrounds, and in some places it’s going to easier to do that

than in others. In DeKalb County, Georgia, where I’m from, a large African-American

population. I don’t have a problem finding African-American candidates. Every academy class

that I fill, the majority of classes are African-American, but so is DeKalb County. It’s 55 percent

African-American. And I have a combination of blacks and whites in my academy classes. I

need to recruit more white females, which we’re making efforts to do, because those numbers are

low. So we are all looking for differences in our respective agencies.


Williams: Where does economics come into all this?

Alexander: In what sense do you mean?

Williams: Ferguson has a large, unemployed rootless proportion that are likely to misbehave or

whatever, and they represent a special challenge to the police, I would think. And DeKalb

County, there must be areas of economic stress there too.

Alexander: Yes, the economic strata in DeKalb is much broader than what it is in Ferguson, and

that is true, even though we do have our pockets of poverty as well too where people are

struggling. But to your point, in Ferguson yes, you do have economically-challenged African-

American community there, and usually where you find low economics, where you find poor

education, where you find those types of variables you’re going to find, oftentimes, crimes, more

challenges with the criminal justice system. But the other side of that coin is too is that you have

a lot of very good people, who at no fault of their own, oftentimes maybe living or struggling

with loss of jobs, loss of economic stimuli in that community that has gone away or closed up or

whatever the case may happen to be, and people are doing the best that they can and they just

can’t pack up and move. Because there are a lot of wonderful people in Ferguson. I learned this

years ago when I got to Miami in 1981, in the projects there in public housing, is that you could

look at that public housing there in Dade County at that time, and say, “Man, all these folks over

here living in these project apartments and buildings, they’re not all bad people. They’ve got to

live somewhere.” Because I remember going in homes over there back in the early 80s. People

kept their homes so clean you could eat off the floor, Brien. But they were there not because

they wanted to be but because that was the best they were able to do. They were law-abiding

citizens, they came out to the community meetings at night with the police, and they partnered

with the police. Were there bad elements in there? Yes, but everybody was not bad. In that

neighborhood where Michael Brown lost his life, that’s not some worn-down, weather-beaten

apartment complex. It’s actually a very decent-looking apartment complex. You got working

class people that are in there, and you have people in there that are struggling. But when you go

in those communities and you get on the ground and you start talking to people, some of the

nicest people you ever want to meet. The problem is in Ferguson and in and around that


community they have mistreated those communities, they have. And I am more conservative

than I am liberal, but I will tell you this, right is right and wrong is wrong on any day of the

week, and they have mistreated that African-American community. Now that whole criminal

justice system has made a living, that city has made a living off the backs of poor folks. It is

shameful.

Williams: How so?

Alexander: Well, people who don’t have access to jobs, poor education, being fined for various

things oftentimes through government that many of us would probably consider insignificant,

paved the way of them coming into a judicial system which they can’t afford to, and which

subsequently gets them incarcerated. And that’s going to come out in this U.S. Justice

Department report. That’s going to come out, and it’s going to come out very, very clearly, that

they have made money off people in this community. It is shameful.

Williams: With your background in psychology, are there certain types of people that are

attracted to police work? Can you generalize at all on that?

Alexander: Yes, well I guess you can, anecdotally. I mean I can’t speak to what the science is

saying about it today, but yes, you do have certain people oftentimes it’s been said that are

attracting towards that profession. But I would say that probably would have been more true

back early in my era when it started. I know why I got into law enforcement. I needed a job,

and always wanted to be in law enforcement, here again not local law enforcement. I wanted to

be in fed, so I said, “Okay, I’ll start locally until maybe I get a degree one day.” But what you

see today, young men and women that are coming it, because it’s important that I say this too, is

that law enforcement truly has made significant gains over the last 30, 40 years. Community-

oriented policing is very evident, very much alive in many communities across this country that

we don’t hear about. Those cities and those towns and those villages and tribal communities are

across this country, where they work very very well with police. And when they have challenges

they’re able to meet those challenges, together. But we also know we have a lot of communities


such as Ferguson and others that don’t. What was you question again? I lost track of your

question.

Williams: My question was who is attracted to police work.

Alexander: Yes, who’s attracted to police work? I think it’s a number of different reasons. But

today what I am seeing as a police administrator, you have men and women now who are coming

to policing for the same reason that I did 35 years ago, they’re looking for jobs. Now, my reason

for looking for jobs is very different than theirs. The economy is very different. We got a lot of

people who are coming into policing with college degrees, and once their field begin to open up,

when we start to see the economy come back a little bit, a lot of these kids are leaving to go to

where they wanted to go the first time. Early in my career, most people who came on the job

were going to be there 20 or 30 years. I was the anomaly. I moved around. I was just the

anomaly at that time. The anomaly today is a guy who hangs around for 30 years, because most

kids today, you’re seeing them do three, four, five years, they’re gone. They’re gone.

Williams: In today’s environment, which is somewhat charged, I would say, what do you

imagine the black police are thinking? I know it’s a very general question.

Alexander: It’s a double-edged sword for a black police officer because if you’re an African-

American, and you’re a sworn law enforcement official, and you’re very sensitive to the history

in how your people in your racial group has been historically treated by police, because one thing

we cannot deny is that people of color in this country historically have been abused by police.

We know that. But there have been great gains too. You can’t say that without saying there’ve

also been great gains, but we know we’ve still got great challenges. We got challenges around

race as a nation still. I think for the African-American police officer, as for the African-

American administrator, as myself, you have loyalties in a number of camps. You’ve got to be

sensitive to the struggles and history in your own population, but you also are tied to the

responsibilities and the other that you’ve taken as a law enforcement official. So it’s almost like

where do you side up if you’re in Ferguson, where you have all these white officers that are

friends of yours and you’re officers with, and then over here is your community, who’s saying to


you, “You’re like them.” And if you go over here and stand up too long, well, you’re like them.

You follow what I’m saying? And I think the only people in this country who have that

challenge have always been people of color, whether they’ve been black or brown or whatever

the case may happen to be. But here’s how I socialize that with others and think about it in my

own mind: I am a black man in America, always will be. I’m very well aware of that. I know

America’s history. I know the good part of it and the bad part of it. In the 60 years I’ve been on

the face of this planet. I’ve seen injustices done, and I’ve experienced some of those injustices,

maybe not like my grandparents, but I’ve experienced them, and they’re hurtful regardless. But

you still have to rise above that. But, if you know what? If you ask an Italian or Irishman who

came into this country at the turn of the [twentieth] century, everybody got a story to tell.

Everybody got experience of assimilation into this country. Others have been better than others,

merely based on the color of their skin, but we all have had experience. As the Jewish-

American, they have had their experience. We all have had experience. If you ask Asians, we

all have had that experience. Some have been more longstanding than others, such as African-

American in this country, and Hispanics. But at the end of the day, you always do what is right,

because I am a strong believer that everybody white is not my enemy, and everybody black is not

my brother. Because one thing that Raymond Hamlin taught me in that conversation with him

for two and a half hours, he taught me things that he didn’t even know he was teaching me. He

taught me truly, truly, truly, when [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] said, “You judge people by the

content of their character,” that’s really the only way you can judge people, it really is. Because

people who are white, just like you, Brien, if you go back in your own history, there are people

who come from your own race, your own religion, who have probably not been as nice to you as

they should have been also. We’ve all got a story to tell, in some way, you know.

Williams: Tell me about your association with NOBLE [National Organization of Black Law

Enforcement Executives].

Alexander: NOBLE is an African-American executive law enforcement organization that was

started back in 1976 in response to much of what we just talked about: separation between

police and community, violation of civil rights and human rights in communities of color, lack of

diversity of police departments, a lack of leadership positions being offered to African-


Americans in that point in time in history. NOBLE was born out of that, and since 1976, the

fight has truly been around the respect of civil rights and human rights for all people, all people.

NOBLE has had a number of successes in helping to move law enforcement along throughout

the seventies, eighties, nineties and even up until this day. I’m just proud to be its, I think 38th

president if I’m not mistaken, something like that.

Williams: You’ve been a member for many years?

Alexander: Since 2002. The struggle continues, but certainly we’re far better along than what

we used to be. But the struggle still continues. You know when I went to Ferguson, as the

president of NOBLE, I met with [Thomas] Tom Jackson. We have an active NOBLE chapter

there in St. Louis, and I had them reach out to Tom Jackson, and he and I spoke and told him I

was coming to sit down with him because of our concerns about what had occurred, and he was

very reception to that. We talked at depth and length, and talked with some community members

on my first visit as well too. And my job was not to go and pounce on him and call him this

horrific, horrible guy who walks around with a sheet on. I felt part of my responsibility because

he was open, was to go in, and Tom Jackson will tell you this, publicly and privately. I went in

and asked him what can we do to help. I think that has to be our role today. Not what can we do

to destroy, but what can we do to help, if you want help. Now, if he had had a totally different

attitude and flipped me off or flipped us off, then he would have had a much different experience

with me and with NOBLE publicly. But because he wanted help, he was seeking help, seeking

support, trying to find a way and trying to learn. Did he make a lot of major missteps early on?

Absolutely he did. And he’ll own that as well too. But at this point, how do we move forward is

what I’m concerned about as president as NOBLE. How do we move forward? Not to beat up

on Ferguson, on Tom Jackson. And there are many people in this country, certainly, that are

bothered by the outcome of the grand jury decision, and I certainly do understand some of those

hostilities. And it’s hard to overcome that when you already had a total distrust of your criminal

justice system, period, from the DA [District Attorney] right down to the chiefs of police, or the

last officer on the street that was hired. And then to have that decision made, it just further

separates the two from each other.


Williams: So is NOBLE playing a role there other than your going in and--

Alexander: Well, yes we are. We are partnering with the Department of Justice, and we’re

going to be offering some seminars and training around police and community relations in that

community and across this country, quite frankly. We have a program in NOBLE called “The

Law in your Community,” it is a seminar about an hour, an hour and a half long, that is going to

be launched here pretty soon, and it really talks to audiences about how to interact with police,

the challenges of their job and what our responsibilities are as community members and so forth

and so on. But Brien, we’ve got to move away from, we’ve got to figure out in this country, and

quite frankly, for this country’s national security, we’re going to have to figure out how police

and community are going to work together. Because when you have organizations that are out

there that want to do harm to this country, to this nation, for example, ISIL [Sunni Islamist rebel

group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant], who are trying to infiltrate themselves into this

country, and trying to hurt Americans and destroy the fabric this nation, we got to be united as

one. We can’t operate in civil unrest, or we become vulnerable to the enemy, whoever that

enemy is.

Williams: In your visits to Ferguson, did you meet at any point with the few black officers there

or not?

Alexander: No. That’s three. No, I didn’t get a chance to meet them, no.

Williams: You’re also a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police [IACP].

Alexander: Right.

Williams: What’s that experience been like?

Alexander: It’s a great experience. In fact, we just had our annual training convention in

Orlando in September, I believe it was. You probably have ten or 15 thousand police

representatives from around the world that attend, from Africa and Europe, the Middle East, they


come from all around. It’s an opportunity to train and hear some of the latest research that’s out

there, to attend some wonderful classes. IACP does a stellar job in putting on these conferences,

and the training that they expose us all to, particularly in an age of domestic threat, is just really

great stuff.

Williams: How do some of the police in other countries regard our gun policy?

Alexander: Well, you know, I can’t say that I’ve had that conversation with anyone from

another country personally, but I can only imagine that they probably see it very different.

Particularly the fact that, as you know, it’s written into our constitution. So it’s just a part of the

American fabric, where with them, it’s not. But it’s a very different experience I can only

imagine for them than it is here for us, and that’s a very sensitive subject, and I’m a gun

supporter. I support the right to bear arms. But I also support us being responsible in securing

our weapons and being trained in the use of our weapons, because the fact of the matter is, what

you’re going to find, that people who are true gun advocates and true supporters of gun rights,

they don’t have problems with the law. They really don’t. They don’t have problems with the

law, the gun enthusiasts don’t. But at the same time it’s still a very touchy subject matter. And

then sometimes too that too can still be divided by race, the whole issue around that. But I

certainly believe that people should exercise their right to bear arms if they choose to do so, with

responsibility.

Williams: Do you see yourself moving beyond DeKalb at this point, or are you happy there, or

Alexander: I don’t know what the Good Lord has in store for me, to be quite honest with you,

Brien, I’m on a spiritual journey. And everywhere I’ve been, at least I know, knowingly,

consciously for the last 24 years of my life, has been pretty much a spiritual journey. And

everywhere I’ve been I’ve really had wonderful success. I’ve been able to make organizations

better than when I left them, whether I was in Rochester or whether I was in Dallas or being

here, I just hope that whatever I do next, if there is something next for me to do, that I just leave

a place better than what I found it.


Williams: What is your meaning of the term spiritual journey? What does that imply?

Alexander: It means God got me on a journey. God placed me on this earth for a purpose. I

don’t really believe I started to understand what that was until later in life, and that’s when I

separated from policing, went back to school, had some different experiences, and came back

into policing with a very different and broader perspective of what this job is about, because I

didn’t follow your traditional path of becoming a chief or public safety director. I didn’t grow up

this way. I grew up this way. But I think my experience going all the way back to Tallahassee,

Florida and the people that I met along the way influenced a lot of who I am today, whether it

was Raymond Hamlin at Leon County or Doug Hughes at Dade County or in many others that I

encountered. I think I’m a little bit of all of them.

Williams: How does God manifest himself to you?

Alexander: I think speaking to me in a way where, and I still struggle with this, being patient

where I am, doing the very best where I am. Because I’m the kind of guy, bored very easily, and

for me, I like high speed. If it ain’t high speed I don’t want it. As you saw a few minutes ago,

that kind of stuff, that’s really when I’m at my best, in my element, when things are for many

folks not going right, for me it’s where I operate the best, is in crisis, to be perfectly honest with

you. Silence makes me bored, but crisis energizes me, and the more crisis, the more energized I

become, and it means that something has to be fixed, and if it has a human element attached to it,

that’s where I feel I do my best work. And I’ve got proven successes to go along with that.

Williams: Would you recommend law enforcement now, from your perspective now, to young

people, or not?

Alexander: Well, if people want to serve, here again, I think young people today, young

biennials, they’ve seen their parents’ experiences through work and play, and I think these young

people want to be different. They don’t want the 30-year watch. They want to go somewhere

and spend some time, have an experience, then they want to move on to something else. And

quite frankly there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s the trend, that’s the way it is, and I hear a


lot of my police executive friends talk often about young kids today, they don’t want to stay on

this job. Well no they don’t. And if that’s the trend, then we got to adjust to it as administrators

and come to terms with the fact that we’re probably going to attrite more frequently. Through

attrition they’re going to leave more frequently. And that means we have to be constantly hiring,

and we always got to find new, innovative ways to recruit, because it’s not as easy to recruit

young people into law enforcement anymore. They have many other opportunities to do many

other things, and some of them don’t want to be in this profession. And I think a lot of what you

see that is going on today with the split between police and community may make it tougher.

That’s yet to be seen. That could make it tougher.

Williams: In what sense?

Alexander: In the sense that how do you be a police officer when you’re constantly being

scrutinized.

Williams: Any last thoughts on this historical record that we’ve built today?

Alexander: No, other than the fact, I’ve really had a wonderful career to this point, and for me

I’ll just see what God got in store for me to do next, if anything. I don’t know. But a 17-year-

old kid coming out of high school in 1972 in Pensacola, Florida, to where I am today, has been

an exciting journey. What really has made it exciting is the people I met along the way, all kinds

of people, people who played a very instrumental role in my life whether it was my parents or

friends or acquaintances or whatever the case may happen to be, but I like to think I’m a little bit

of all those people. And God blessed me with an opportunity to not only to have been in this

profession of criminal justice, but I get whole different view of it from a much higher altitude as

a psychologist. And when you can integrate that along with this, it really has helped me to be, I

think, a far better manager and leader.

Williams: So in Rochester when you went back into police work, after having pretty much

decided you were not going to do that ever again, you were able to absorb that change with

equanimity, I suppose.


Alexander: I think that was just part of the journey. I think for me to jump off policing for a

while, and to do the academic piece and to train and learn about human behavior and end up

back in law enforcement, I think that was just part of my journey. I thought my journey had

ended, but actually my journey was just beginning. So I’m just going to continue to do what I

do, and treat people with respect and dignity, and choose the very best people for the job,

regardless of who they are, never forgetting the African-American history and struggle in this

nation and before, because that I won’t ever do, but also being respectful to the struggles that

many other people from many other races and generations have had to endure. Because we all

have had to endure something. But as a nation, as a country, as the United States of America, we

got to figure this out, because we can’t stay separated and stay safe. You can only stay safe if

you stay together.

Williams: Thank you, Dr. Alexander.

Alexander: Thank you for having me.

with dr. cedric l. alexander, who’s the deputy chief … dr. cedric l. alexander, who’s the...

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