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Alan Hanson is a Captain with the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) in Virginia. Alan received a BA in Political Science and Russian Studies in 1989 from Gustavus Adolphus College after which he joined the U.S. Navy and served as a Cryptologic Officer. He joined the FCPD in 1994 and is currently serving as the commander of the traffic division. In addition, he is the senior public order incident commander for the FCPD and serves as the Civil Disturbance Units (CDU) administrative commander. He has served as the incident commander for numerous CDU deployments, most recently he was primary IC for the FCPD for the protests of Supreme Court Justices residences as well as deployments to support US Capitol Police in 2022.
Alan is one of the founding members of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) CDU subcommittee and served there for several years as chairman and vice-chairman. He is also a founding member of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) CDU Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Special Technical Committee (STC) and traveled to the United Kingdom and Germany on a research trip for NIJ in 2017 to observe European public order standards and best practices in CDU equipment, tactics and training, and report back on the findings. Alan also served as the chairman of the Incident Management Subcommittee for the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
Chapters in Anthology:
Differences in U.S. and German Police Organizations with an Impact on the Policing of Public Assemblies
Police Organization and the Policing of Assemblies in the United States
