Breaking the Blue Wall of Silence: How to Fix the Police, According to Former Chief of Police Norm Stamper

NEW NORMS: Seattle’s former top cop backs reforms. MARK BENNINGTON PHOTOGRAPHY

From his early days as a San Diego beat cop in the 1960s to his rise to the chief of police of the Seattle Police Department in the 1990s, Norm Stamper has watched the world change. But while the world has changed, he says, police departments haven’t kept up.

Now 72 years old, Stamper resigned as chief in 1999 after Seattle’s World Trade Organization protests, criticized by demonstrators for being too heavy-handed and by cops for not being aggressive enough. Retired and living in the San Juan Islands, he published a gritty memoir a decade ago that—in the age of Black Lives Matter—now seems prescient: Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing. His brand-new book—To Protect and Serve: How to Fix America’s Police, published by Nation Books—is more solutions-oriented. We interviewed him about his own harrowing experiences, the “blue wall of silence,” and how he believes the country can stop police brutality once and for all…

Norm Stamper will be at Town Hall on Wednesday, September 7.