Criminologist Willard Oliver always wanted to read a biography of Berkeley’s first police chief.

So, he wrote one.

It only took Oliver a decade to research and write the 800-page tome, “August Vollmer: The Father of American Policing,” which was published in February.

“He did so many things that were so successful that it made Berkeley — it was the epicenter of policing,” Oliver said last week at the Berkeley Historical Society. “I have my job because of him.”

Oliver, a criminal justice professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, came to Berkeley last week for the opening of an exhibit on Vollmer.

“I tell my students that ‘you’re here because of August Vollmer, and the only reason I’m here teaching you is because of August Vollmer.’”

Vollmer’s Police Department innovatively used science and technology to solve crimes, and Vollmer helped start the criminal justice program at UC Berkeley.

The Berkeley Historical Society is hosting the exhibit on Vollmer, who was Berkeley’s top cop for almost three decades, beginning in 1905. Last week I went to the historical society to meet Oliver, who organized the Vollmer exhibit, because I was curious how he thought Vollmer would react to what’s been happening in the city he put on the map because of his progressive police tactics.

The Berkeley Police Department has weathered criticism for its approach to policing postelection brawls. The recent mayhem began with a Feb. 1 protest on the UC Berkeley campus against right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. It escalated into violence and vandalism in downtown Berkeley. Since then, Berkeley police have been in the spotlight for their mostly hands-off tactics.

It’s ironic that the celebration of the “Father of American Policing” is across the street from Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, the battlefield for two recent bloody clashes at rallies held by the president’s supporters.

Two things about the brawls concern me: People would rather trade blows than have a substantive debate with someone who has an opposing political view, and police are unable to stop people from handing out — and, of course, taking — beatings.

If the police don’t use force, they get criticized for standing by as people pummel each other. If the police use force to break up fights, they’ll get criticized — and sued. As you can see, one public relations disaster is more expensive than the other.

Oliver wouldn’t guess how Vollmer would react, but he pointed out that Vollmer handled a crisis almost immediately after being elected town marshal. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, 40,000 refugees were housed in a tent city in Berkeley.

“Now you’ve got a major crime problem, or the potential for one, and he adapted to it and did a stellar job,” Oliver told me as we toured the exhibit filled with clips of old news stories.

At the time, there were only nine police officers in Berkeley. So Vollmer, a veteran of the Spanish American War, recruited other veterans and deputized them to patrol the tent city.

Ten years later, Vollmer began focusing on educating his force. He worked with UC Berkeley to create a program where officers took classes in biology, chemistry and other subjects during the summer. It was the genesis of the school’s criminology program.

“He was very much a progressive,” Oliver said. “There was a strong belief that through science, through knowledge and education we can better our society, better our communities. He really believed that.

“He saw that if officers had the education and the knowledge, they could do great things.”

I wonder what happened to that way of thinking, but that’s for another column.

With UC Berkeley, Vollmer created the first crime lab for storing and testing evidence. Though he didn’t build the first polygraph machine himself, it was made under his direction. In the exhibit, you’ll see a second-generation machine — a black box with a blood pressure dial, and the needles that drew the graph lines of a suspect’s truths and lies.

From the 1920s until his death in 1955, police officials and dignitaries from around the world visited Vollmer’s Euclid Avenue home to pick his brain on policing. Vollmer, who taught at UC Berkeley after he retired from the Police Department, also encouraged the training and employment of women and blacks as police officers.

If that doesn’t convince you that he was way ahead of his time, this will: Vollmer had an open-door policy for the press. One reporter even had a desk at the police station.

Imagine what community relations would be now if police departments were as committed to transparency.

Berkeley police have attempted to explain how their approach to the recent violence at rallies is evolving. For example, two weekends ago, before people were allowed to enter Civic Center Park, they were searched for weapons.

So, the combatants used their fists instead of their confiscated weapons. But I can’t stress this enough: Without a proper deterrent to fighting, one of the bloodthirsty fighters is going to kill someone.

If Ann Coulter, another right-wing provocateur, comes to Berkeley this week as she insists on doing, it will be another opportunity for the police to display their improved tactics. I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know it has to be innovative.

Maybe Berkeley’s new chief, Andrew Greenwood, should tear a page out of Vollmer’s book.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr