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Brandon Kooi


Brandon Kooi is a professor and researcher, working at Aurora University in Illinois. Brandon Kooi is a professor and director of the criminal justice program at Aurora University in Aurora, Illinois. Kooi has been a private security consultant/executive, criminal investigator, law clerk, and youth crisis interventionist. He has helped to train police chiefs and executives across Wisconsin at the Wisconsin Problem-Oriented Leadership Institute for Chief Executives.


His most recent research is a book focused on police leaders, entitled Seven Highly Effective Police Leaders from Routledge Publishers. He included Teddy Roosevelt, August Volmer, O.W. Wilson, Penny Harrington, Chris Magnus, Bill Bratton, and Chuck Ramsey. He also delves into the work of Herman Goldstein and George Kelling.


Kooi evaluated a community anti-drug initiative called Neighbors Against Drugs, which won the Wisconsin Association for Community Policing Robert Peel Award and was a finalist for the Herman Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing. Kooi's book, Policing Public Transportation, appears with LFB Scholarly Publishing.


His research papers have been published in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education, Journal of Security Education, Journal of Applied Security Research, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, Police Science and Management, and Criminal Justice Studies. Kooi's research interests include community justice, victimology, environmental criminology, crime mapping, problem-solving, interviewing/interrogation, and private security.


He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Illinois State University and his doctorate in criminal justice from the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. A graduate of Michigan State University, he has been active in Problem-oriented Policing and is affiliated with the Arizona State University Center for Problem-Oriented Policing.


We talked about policing, reform, leadership, and the work of illustrating the work of the seven selected police chiefs.


Brandon joins The CopDoc Podcast on May 24th, 2022.

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