PAUL O’CONNELL, Ph.D., J.D., Partner

Dr. O’Connell began his professional career in criminal justice with the New York City Police Department (NYPD), first as a police officer, then as a Police Academy instructor, in-service trainer and curriculum developer. After receiving an MPA in 1984 and J.D. in 1989, he worked as a trial attorney with the firm of Cummings & Lockwood in Stamford, CT. He is the former Associate Dean of the School of Arts and Science and former chair of the Department of Criminal Justice at Iona University, New Rochelle, NY. He is an Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice and teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, conducts funded research, publishes scholarly papers and lectures widely on the topics of police performance measurement, strategic planning, integrity management and law enforcement training systems. He has lectured at the national conferences of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) and the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training (IADLEST).

He received his M.Phil. and Ph.D. from the Graduate Center (CUNY) where his doctoral thesis was An Intellectual History of the COMPSTAT Model of Police Management (2002). He is also the author of Performance-Based Management for Police Organizations. Waveland (2007) and Police Performance Appraisals: A Comparative Perspective, CRC Press (2012). He and his CERTUS colleagues have also co-authored Understanding Police Operational Performance (Routledge, 2024)

As an independent consultant for municipalities and public safety organizations, Dr. O’Connell has collaborated with the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), Center for Public Safety Management (CPSM), the Center for Technology in Government (Albany, N.Y.), Giuliani Partners (New York, N.Y.) and the Center for Society, Law and Justice (U. of New Orleans). He has performed staffing studies and operational reviews of police departments in 34 U.S. states. In 2010, Dr. O’Connell received a grant from the Fulbright Specialists Program, served for several years as a peer reviewer for the Fulbright Specialists Program (public administration) and has provided professional consulting services to the Mexico City Police Department (SSP), the Turkish National Police (TNP), and the Ministry of the Interior of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).