In what journalist Rob Zaleski calls the “most spirited” among the 19 interviews in his enlightening new book, former Madison Police Chief David Couper lays out the “two different models, two ways of looking at the world,” with regard to policing.
“Is the world controlled because the people who’ve got the guns control it? Or is the world controlled because we agree upon how we’re going to live and we agree that we’re going to support police because they’re working for all of us and the communities and the neighborhoods are better and safer?”
The book, David Couper: Beyond the Badge; Reflections of an Ex-Cop (Little Creek Press), describes his efforts over the years to promote worldview number two, both as a guy with a badge and a man of the cloth. It is a remarkable testament to a remarkable life.
During Couper’s tenure as chief, from 1973 to 1993, Madison’s police department became more diverse and community-oriented, less militaristic and confrontational. It was a transition that drew fierce resistance from the department’s old guard, who filed trumped-up charges against him in an effort to have him fired.
When Couper’s 17-year-old daughter with addiction issues got busted for underage drinking, the president of the local police union, a man named Richard Daley, wrote a letter to the local papers that, in Couper’s words, “basically said that a man who can’t raise good children shouldn’t be police chief.”
“That had to hurt,” muses Zaleski. “Yeah,” says Couper, “it really did.” He notes that he and Daley later reconciled and his daughter is now long sober.
Though Couper spent much of his time playing defense, he came in determined to make changes, and that is what he did. At his first staff meeting, he recalls, the department’s acting chief, Herman Thomas, told him he would have to trim his mustache, in keeping with department grooming standards. “And I responded, ‘Well, I guess we’re going to have to change department grooming standards then.’”
Madison was one of the first police departments to eliminate the use of chokeholds by officers, bar cops from shooting at fleeing cars, and require that officers report illegal behavior by colleagues. He put an end to the violent clashes between police and anti-war protesters that had then come to define Madison, making it clear that the job of police was to protect protesters, not bash their skulls.
When Couper took over the department in 1973, it had only one Black officer and seven women cops, all in the juvenile section, where they didn’t carry guns or go on patrol. When he left 20 years later, one-tenth of the police force was Black and 25 percent were women. Couper achieved this over time by requiring that 50 percent of each recruit class be women or people of color.
Couper began his own career as a cop in Minneapolis after a stint in the Marines, during which he showed no signs of being a reformer. Disgusted by the inhumane conditions of the aircraft carrier’s brig, where he was assigned to guard prisoners, he leapt at his first opportunity to transfer to a different assignment. “Did you tell the captain you were uncomfortable with how the brig was being run?” asks Zaleski. “Of course not!” Couper replies. “I’m not stupid.”
Yet as chief of police in Madison, Couper famously hung posters of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi on his office wall, and he sought to lead the department in a visionary way. After stepping down as chief, he went on to become, of all things, an Episcopal priest, and has remained a leading voice on the subject of police reform, including his 2012 book Arrested Development.
Zaleski, a longtime reporter and columnist with The Capital Times (the book’s cover photo shows him walking with Couper, recorder and notebook in hand), structures the book as a series of interviews, as he did with his excellent 2019 book Ed Garvey Unvarnished: Lessons from a Visionary Progressive.
The interviews are fast-paced and engaging, often revelatory. Some are centered on topics including the police murder of George Floyd, police unions (he wouldn’t mind seeing them go) racism within policing, the presidency of Donald Trump, and the sorry state of elder care. Zaleski is probing and Couper candid. At one point, looking back on his days as a cop, “I realize my job was primarily to make sure poor people and Black people didn’t bother white people.”
In an interview about how to respond to drug abuse, Zaleski surprises Couper by quoting from one of their interviews from 1990, saying something he no longer believes about the need to bust low-level dealers. “I’d like to apologize today for having made that statement,” Couper says.
The book makes an important contribution to local history, providing fresh insights into Couper’s years as Madison’s top cop. It includes a frankly incredible story about an iconic photograph of Couper and newly elected Madison Mayor Paul Soglin at the Mifflin Street block party in 1973. Decades later, when he was writing his book about policing, Couper says that when he asked about the photo, which “somebody had sent” to him, he was told that it was likely taken by Leo Burt, then as now a fugitive in the 1970 bombing of Sterling Hall.
Couper’s personal life, in Zaleski’s book, is as fraught and fascinating as his professional one. When his first wife left him with their three children to care for, his parents stepped in to fill the parenting void, but only for a six-month period. That would give him time, his father explained, to find another wife. And that is what he set out to do, successfully, in a marriage that brought three more children into the picture and lasted 15 years.
Couper lost a son to suicide and a granddaughter to a traffic crash. One of his daughters became so addicted to drugs that, while he was Madison’s chief of police, he took her to court to gain custody of her child. When his third wife, Sabine, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he stepped in to become her primary caregiver — for more than a decade. She died in his arms in 2020, after 40 years of marriage. And even that did not bring an end to the story of his love life.
The book includes short essays by a half-dozen people, from journalist George Hesselberg to former Madison cop Maryanne Thurber, offering their own insights on Couper. (Note for second printing: Noble Wray, one of these contributors, was not “the city’s first African American chief,” as stated; that would be Richards Williams, whose tenure as chief from 1993 to 2004 was, in fact, largely forgettable.)
David Couper is, in Zaleski’s book, neither a heroic figure nor a tragic one. He’s just a guy who throughout his life has tried to do the right thing, and in so doing has had an enormous impact on the lives of others. At age 84, he is still adding to his legacy, as a minister and advocate for police reform.
At one point in the book, Couper has this to say about his life so far: “And if I did a self-assessment, I’d say I really do think I’m happy with my life. I’m happy with what I’ve been able to contribute, happy with the friends I have around me. I’ve now reached my 80s and it’s been a good life. I’ve used up a lot of resources of oxygen, but I also think I put some back into the system.”
We should all be so lucky.
