BY JON SCHUPPE
The Justice Department said
Wednesday it had appointed a retired police chief to run a new project to help
police officers improve their relationships with their communities, part of a
broader effort to build more trust in American law enforcement.
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Noble Wray, the former chief in
Madison, Wisconsin, will lead the Policing Practices and Accountability
Initiative, the department announced. He served as a Justice Department
consultant in Ferguson, Missouri in the aftermath of the August 2014 police
shooting of an unarmed black man, helping local authorities confront problems
associated with systemic racism.
As chief in Madison, he pushed
similar efforts, and his final crisis before leaving the force in 2013 was
dealing with an officer's controversial killing of a burglary suspect.
"Chief Wray's background and
extensive experience make him the ideal candidate to lead this effort,"
Ronald Davis, Wray's new boss at the Justice Department's Office of Community
Oriented Policing Services, said in a statement.
Wray will join the agency as it
implements criminal justice reformsproposed by President Obama's Task Force on
21st Century Policing. The group was assembled as a response to unrest
following the shooting in Ferguson and a New York officer's fatal strangling of
a suspect.
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