Matthew D. Barter is a police leader, researcher, and educator with more than 18 years of experience in law enforcement leadership, organizational strategy, policy development, and applied analytics. He serves as Legal Division Lieutenant for the Manchester, New Hampshire, Police Department, where he oversees legal, records, prosecution, compliance, legal process, and training functions. His responsibilities include advising personnel on legal issues, managing public-records requests, reviewing criminal case documentation, monitoring legislative and judicial developments, and coordinating with prosecutors, municipal counsel, and the courts.
Barter previously commanded day-shift patrol operations, supervising five sergeants and approximately 30 officers while managing daily operations, critical incidents, resource allocation, and executive briefings. He has also served as Chief of Staff to the Chief of Police, where he supported department strategy, policy development, stakeholder relations, performance management, and a $32 million agency budget. He helped lead the department’s strategic planning process, implemented the community-centered CompStat360 framework, and developed internal and public-facing Power BI dashboards to strengthen transparency and executive decision-making. As Chief of Staff, Barter developed an implemented the agencies Real Time Crime Center and significant enhancements to crime analysis capabilities.
His experience also includes grant development, violence reduction, crime analysis, and multi-agency program implementation. Barter authored, coordinated, and managed more than $700,000 in Project Safe Neighborhoods grants and coordinated a regional National Integrated Ballistics Information Network program involving five agencies and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. As an ATF Task Force Officer, he participated in hundreds of gun-crime investigations across New Hampshire and New England. He has also worked with public health, academic, municipal, and community partners on initiatives involving opioid-related harm, homelessness, crime prevention, and organizational performance.
Selected as a National Institute of Justice LEADS Scholar in 2018, Barter has coauthored peer-reviewed research on artificial intelligence in police report writing and crime gun intelligence. He regularly translates research into practical guidance for public-safety leaders and has presented for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Harvard Kennedy School, the FBI National Academy Associates, and other national organizations. In 2026, he began instructing AI and policing instruction to executive leadership cohorts at American International College and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Barter brings Cambridge Consulting Group a combination of current law-enforcement command experience, evidence-based policing expertise, data-informed operational leadership, research credibility, and executive education capability. His background directly supports the firm’s work in executive leadership, law-enforcement operations, data analytics and technology, training, and compliance and policy development. He approaches consulting engagements with attention to each client’s operating environment and a practical understanding of how recommendations must be implemented within real organizational, legal, financial, and political constraints.
