Roundtable Breakfast - Mediation Potential in Racially Charged Police Community Relations

Come hear Dr. Christopher Cooper address how excellent interpersonal conflict resolution and social skills in a police officer's toolbox can improve police-minority relations and enable police to de-escalate interpersonal disputes.  The prevalence of conflict resolution skills, particularly mediation, engender trust between police and citizens and will motivate citizens to assist the police in crime solving objectives.  Dr. Cooper will draw from his extensive policing experience and intervention work in racially charged police-community situations to discuss the potential of mediation.

Dr. Christopher C. Cooper is an internationally known conflict resolution expert and lawyer who specializes in use of mediation in police-community relations. A New York City native, Dr. Cooper has been a Washington D.C. (Metropolitan) Police Officer, a United States Marine Sergeant with a tour of duty in Iraq, a tenured professor at Saint Xavier University, and currently a Civil Rights attorney based in Chicago.  He has written extensively with over 35 publications, most focusing on police training, use of force, and conflict resolution processes, has presented his Patrol Police Mediation course nationally, taught at police academies, and served as an instructor of Urban Combat at the U.S. Marine "Basic School," Quantico, VA. 

Dr. Cooper has received two Post Doctoral Fulbrights, in 2009 at the University of Akureyri, Iceland and in 1996 at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has been featured as a consultant on MSNBC, CNN, BBC, NPR, CBC and other media regarding police practices, and often speaks as a representative of the National Black Police Association.  Dr. Cooper is a graduate of the City University of New York - John Jay College Dispute Resolution Program having started in 1984 under Dr. Maria Volpe, received a Ph.D. from American University, and J.D. from New England School of Law.