Daniel Bell observed that wisdom is “the bridge of experience and imagination over time.” 1 In the two decades or more that I have been engaged in the higher education of police, I have found that while police are intelligent and experienced, they often lack the kind of imagination on which wisdom must draw to reach insights needed by municipal administrators, lawyers, judges, legislators, social scientists, and most importantly the communities they serve. Without the cultivation and refinement of that imaginative faculty, disciplined by the habits of mind and heart in which law abides, the judgment the police profession brings to bear on its experience is compromised. The kind of imagination to which I refer enlarges vision and mind. When these are coupled with heart and conviction, they fire vocation. Focused as they are on the narrow details, however, police often miss the forest for the trees. Having expended considerable resources in the development of professional technique, they have, for the most part, neglected the subject of police philosophy. Bereft of a larger vision addressed to ultimate ends (which would inform the work of police as a whole and help unify it under a common professional vision), the police remain mired in a highly fragmented practice that fails to fulfill the promise of vocation.