A police chief's call for reform.

• Author: Couper, David C.

Shortly after Senator Barack Obama became President-elect, I sent him a letter warning about the increasing militarization of our nation's police.

"Nothing is more endangering to a democracy than the militarization of its local police," the letter said. "Our police play a vital role in who we are as a nation. We will not have justice in our courts unless it is first a working value of our nation's police."

The letter also urged Obama toward "a re-examination of where our nation's police are today, where they need to be, the kind of people we need to police our communities, and how police should be educated, trained, and deployed. This must be done before it is too late." Today, the use of deadly force by police across the country has become a national disgrace. We have been overwhelmed by the all-too-frequent deaths of black men and persons with mental illness at the hands of police. It has happened in Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland, Albuquerque, North Charleston, Baltimore, and even Madison, Wisconsin, where I served as chief of police for more than twenty years.

Were it not for the advent of new technologies, like cellphones that take video, many of the incidents documented above would have been lost in doctored police reports, organizational denial, and cries of "support our police." It is difficult not to be stunned after viewing the videos.

I have come to the conclusion that the problem is not bad cops, but rather a bad system of training. It is a vast problem. The good news: It is a correctable one. But solving the problem must start now.

Since 9/11, our nation has lived in a climate of low-grade fear. Our decade-long military adventures abroad have led to the creeping militarization of our nation's police at home. Police have gone from being the guardians of our democracy to being our homespun warriors. It is not an appropriate shift: Police guard and protect us; a warrior's job is to kill our declared enemies.

Our nation's Constitution declares the values of life and liberty, and our Bill of Rights asserts we are not to be deprived of life or liberty without due process. While we affirm these values as a people, we have not always practiced them as well as we should.

The questionable killings by police drive home the point. Police in some communities have lost the confidence of those they are sworn to protect and serve. They are seen as threats to justice, not agents of it. That is bad for everyone, including cops.

If police...