Community Oversight of Public Safety (COPS)

2025-2027

Sharon D. Welch joined the League of Women Voters in 2017 and works on criminal justice reform with the Illinois and Cook County Leagues. Her term with the LWV Cook County Board ended in May 2020. She served on the LWV Chicago Board from 2020–2023 as Events Director. She has served as Community Oversight of Public Safety (COPS) Director since January 2024, when she began chairing the COPS Committee.

Sharon has held faculty and administrative positions at Harvard Divinity School, the University of Missouri-Columbia and Meadville Lombard Theological School (Unitarian Universalist, Chicago). She is the author six books, the most recent being After the Protests Are Heard: Enacting Civic Engagement and Social Transformation (NYU Press, 2019). She is completing a revised edition of her book After Empire (Fortress Press, 2004) that will be published by Bloomsbury Press, and has been giving lectures based on the new preface "Democracy's Future."