Colston Westbrook

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Colston Richard Westbrook (September 14, 1937 – August 3, 1989) was an American teacher and linguist who worked in the fields of minority education and literacy. At the University of California, Berkeley, he established a program of prison outreach and approved students from the Bay Area to serve as volunteers. Some of the participants from Berkeley and two former prisoners at Vacaville Prison were among the founding members in 1973 of the radical leftist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Westbrook had previously served with a contractor in Vietnam for the US Army that provided services to the CIA. After returning to the United States, he worked for the Los Angeles Police Department in its Criminal Conspiracy Section and the State of California's Criminal Identification and Investigation Unit. In 1970 he started graduate work at University of California, Berkeley and taught at the university after completing it.