About the Authors
Kathleen M. O'Toole
Kathleen O’Toole is a career police officer, lawyer, and PhD, who has earned an international reputation for her principled leadership and innovative police reform strategies. She has led departments in two major U.S. cities as commissioner of the Boston Police Department and chief of the Seattle Police Department. O’Toole is currently consulting on police reform projects in several jurisdictions across the United States.
O’Toole rose through the ranks of local and state policing in Massachusetts. Beginning her career as a beat cop in the Boston Police Department, she was assigned to numerous patrol, investigative, undercover, supervisory and management positions. She served as Superintendent (Chief) of the Metropolitan District Commission Police and Lieutenant Colonel overseeing Special Operations in the Massachusetts State Police. She was later appointed Massachusetts Secretary of Public Safety, overseeing twenty agencies, boards and commissions with more than ten thousand personnel.
Her extensive international policing experience began as a member of the Independent Commission on Policing in Northern Ireland (The Patten Commission), which worked to transform policing as part of The Peace Process. O'Toole served as the first chief inspector of An Garda Síochána Inspectorate, an oversight body responsible for advising the Irish Minister of Justice and recommending best practices for policing and security. She served on a four-person panel that published recommendations for reforming the Northern Ireland Prison Service and was a member of the Independent Commission on Policing in England and Wales. Most recently, she chaired the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland.
O’Toole earned a BA from Boston College, a JD from New England School of Law, and a PhD from the Business School at Trinity College Dublin. She is a life member and served on the board of directors of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. She also served as a board member and treasurer of the Police Executive Research Forum. She is currently president of O’Toole Associates, LLC and a partner at 21st Century Policing Solutions.
Robert N. Peirce
Bob Peirce is an international policing consultant and former diplomat. Educated at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, he served in the British diplomatic service and Hong Kong Government for a total of 32 years.
He was present at Margaret Thatcher’s meeting with Deng Xiaoping in 1982 and a leading participant in the subsequent negotiations about Hong Kong’s future. He was Hong Kong Government’s deputy secretary for external affairs from 1986-8. In 1988-90, he was Private Secretary (senior staffer) to the British Secretary of State. He then served three years at the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York, working on Security Council issues. Returning to Hong Kong Government in 1993, he was secretary for external affairs until the handover to China in 1997.
Following the Belfast Agreement of 1998, Peirce directed the work of a commission on policing in Northern Ireland, chaired by the former Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten. He drafted the report of the commission, published in 1999 and the foundation for policing there ever since. In 2017-18, he worked with a similar commission on policing in the Republic of Ireland and drafted that commission’s report, which is the basis of reforms now underway.
Peirce served at the British Embassy in Washington DC from 1999 to 2004, and as Consul General in Los Angeles from 2005 to 2009. He retired from government service in 2009, and now works on policing issues, both in the US and internationally