It’s been a full week of announcements for Kevin Davis, who is keeping himself busy a year out from being removed as commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department.
The Open Society Foundations, the grant-making group founded by liberal billionaire George Soros 25 years ago, yesterday announced Davis as one of four recipients of its Leadership in Government Fellowship. The former Baltimore top cop will “write a book critically examining the history of federally mandated consent decrees and the extent to which they provide necessary reforms for troubled American police agencies and the communities they serve,” according to the announcement.
He and the three other fellows will receive awards ranging from $100,000 to $133,000 to facilitate their work for periods of 12 to 18 months.
Davis, who helped negotiate the terms of the consent decree for BPD signed by U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar in April 2017, told The Sun yesterday, “My book really sets out to find out the formula for success and the pitfalls for failure” with the implementation of police consent decrees.
Baltimore is among a host of major cities, including Chicago, New Orleans, Cleveland, Miami, New Orleans and others, whose troubled police departments are under federal court order to reform from within after federal probes into their practices. As chronicled by the AP and The Washington Post/Frontline, consent decree have produced mixed results, depending on the buy-in of department leaders and rank-and-file, successful monitoring and other factors.
Open Society Foundations’ book news comes days after Boston-based security startup Armored Things announced Davis as its new chief security officer. In his new job, flagged yesterday by Technical.ly, Davis is tasked with overseeing development of products for law enforcement and security officers.
“Armored Things is leaning into the future of public safety and I’m proud to be a part of a talented team dedicated to keeping people and places safe,” Davis said in a buzzword-heavy statement in the company’s announcement. “Their cutting-edge software solution breaks down technology silos and delivers police officers and security professionals real-time situational awareness that affords first responders and their leadership evidence-based information to make better decisions.”
To add to the new job and book project, Davis is also working as an adjunct at American University in Washington D.C. He’s teaching Intro to Systems of Justice in the school’s Department of Justice, Law and Criminology this semester, according to his faculty profile.
