Hubert Williams (1939–2020) was President of the Police Foundation (now National Policing Institute). He was a graduate of the FBI National Academy, and he received his JD from Rutgers University School of Law. He served as a Research Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Center for Criminal Justice and as Deputy Special Advisor to the Los Angeles Police Commission (1992) after the April 1992 riots in response to the acquittal of four officers in the Rodney King beating.
Mr. Williams succeeded former New York Police Commissioner Patrick Murphy as NPI’s President. In 1990, along with Murphy, Williams authored The Evolving Strategy of Police: A Minority View, a publication of the Department of Justice and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Executive Session on Policing Series. Under his leadership, NPI focused on work that connected police departments with communities to improve police service and public safety jointly. In addition, Williams was a crucial partner in the National Community Policing Consortium. During Mr. Williams’s tenure, NPI conducted studies and hosted conferences on various policing issues. Many of these are still relevant today, including use of force, abuse of authority, gun ownership, balancing immigration enforcement with civil liberties, and other critical law enforcement issues. In addition, he established the Center for the Study of Police and Civil Disorder and the Crime Mapping Laboratory.
A 30-year veteran of policing, Mr. Williams was one of the youngest police chiefs in the U.S. while serving as Police Director in Newark, New Jersey. As commander of the largest police department in the state of New Jersey, he engaged the department in two groundbreaking studies pivotal to the evolution of community policing. The studies, the Newark Foot Patrol Experiment and Reducing the Fear of Crime, were conducted during an incredibly volatile period, and the then Police Foundation published both.
Mr. Williams was the founding president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, a member of the Advisory Board of the RAND Corporation Drug Policy Research Center, a graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the U.S. Delegation to the Seventh United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, and a member of the National Criminal Justice Commission. In addition, he served as a director of Drug Strategies and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.
Among Mr. Williams' academic contributions, he authored The Abuse of Police Authority: A National Study of Police Officers’ Attitudes (with David Weisburd, Rosann Greenspan, Edwin E. Hamilton, and Kellie Bryant). Many of Hubert’s articles appeared in the Bulletin of Narcotics, Crime and Delinquency, and Criminal Justice Ethics.
