Chicago police Cmdr. Roderick Watson has been busy this year juggling school and work.
He’s one of the 25 police leaders from across the country and the United Kingdom who’ve just finished a six-month training course at the University of Chicago.
He is also the executive officer for Chicago’s detective headquarters on the Far South Side.
Watson was in the running for the city’s police superintendent job, which went to Larry Snelling. On Friday, Snelling was on hand to congratulate Watson and the other leaders on their accomplishment.
“Our police officers are going to follow your lead, and if you lead from the front, lead with compassion and courage, those officers will follow you,” Snelling said. “I am extremely optimistic — after watching everyone here go through this course — in the direction we are going in policing.”
Keechant Sewell, former commissioner of the New York Police Department, encouraged the graduates to “get the villains out” of their communities while engaging the residents they serve.
“What changes will you bring?” she said. “Who will you inspire to follow?”
Last year, billionaire Ken Griffin, founder of the Citadel investment company and a U. of C. trustee, donated $25 million to create two academies at the university: one to train police leaders, the other for people who run violence interruption programs.
The officers took lessons from data-driven policing management in Los Angeles and New York, where homicide rates have fallen sharply over the past three decades, while there has not been much of a change nationally or in Chicago.
The officers who participated in the academy came from cities such as Washington, New Orleans, Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit, Indianapolis, Dallas and Cleveland, along with Manchester, England, and the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, an Indian reservation in Arizona. They were required to spend one week a month on the U. of C. campus in training.
The participants are responsible for overseeing law enforcement in some of America’s most violent police districts that are responsible for more than 20% of homicides in America, according to academy officials.
Stephanie Drescher, a police captain in Madison, Wisconsin, said her “capstone” project in the academy was a study of homicides. She was surprised to learn 44% of killings in Madison were related to domestic violence. Drescher said that new knowledge will help her officers deal with victims who survive such violence.
“This was like graduate school,” she said of her experience in the U. of C. program.
As part of his coursework for the Police Leadership Academy, Watson did a case study, called “together we can,” of officers’ engagement with residents in the Grand Crossing District on the South Side, where he was the commander.
“We can’t arrest our way out of this,” he said. “We need to collaborate with the community. I live in the community. What affects them affects me.”
Watson was considered a front runner to replace police Supt. David Brown, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s hand-picked top cop who resigned last year. But in August, Mayor Brandon Johnson picked Snelling from three finalists, who didn’t include Watson, to run the Chicago Police Department.
In recent years, the department has been dogged by a lack of trainers for rank-and file officers. The city’s new budget calls for 170 new field training officers. Snelling has said he may also bring in retired cops as trainers in order to put more officers on the street.
Snelling, a longtime trainer in the Chicago Police Academy, said he believes training is on the upswing, pointing to the U. of C. program and the infusion of money for new Chicago police trainers.
“If we are going to modernize, our leadership has to be aligned with that,” he said. “Going through programs like this is going to be beneficial to the department and our officers — and ultimately to our communities.”
