Louis Mayo, known to many as National Institute of Justice “Employee #1,” died this month in Virginia of cancer at 84. In 1968. Mayo issued the first policy memo of the newly founded National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice (NILECJ), which later became NIJ, says the agency’s Thomas Feucht. A former Secret Service agent on the White House detail, Mayo later was instrumental in developing and promoting community policing programs.
He formed and operated PACE (Police Association for College Education http://www.police-association.org) to encourage police departments to require BA degrees for their officers, and was founder and president of “Mayo Mayo and Associates” for 30 years, promoting best practices in criminal justice and policing. A Justice Department colleague remarked that International Association of Chiefs of Police conferences won’t be the same without Mayo there, saying, “Who else, in the world of sole proprietors, believes in their work so much that they have a booth at IACP every year?”