Another member of the Patten Policing Commission has backed the view of its chairman, Mr Chris Patten, that the new Police Service of Northern Ireland should be supported by both communities.
Ms Kathleen O'Toole was one of the leading policing figures in the US when she was invited to join the commission.
As the former secretary of public safety for Massachusetts, Ms O'Toole had responsibility for both state and Boston police as well as prisons and the fire brigade.
She said yesterday: "I am convinced that it [the new Police Service for Northern Ireland] would work.
"It is a difficult time for nationalists and unionists but I don't think Northern Ireland can wait any longer to take the politics out of policing."
She said the Patten Commission report was "a great model for policing a democratic society".
"I came to the commission as a police expert, not as a politician. For that reason, I strongly support Chris Patten's position on the need to take politics out of policing straight away."
Ms O'Toole, who now works in the private sector but still acts as adviser to Boston mayor Mr Thomas Menino, said the report had also been endorsed by leading policing think-tanks. It has been endorsed by the Policing Executive Research Forum (PERF) and the National Executive Institute in Washington.
Earlier this week, Mr Patten urged young people from both communities in the North to join the newly constituted force. In a Belfast Telegraph article he called on politicians to encourage young people to join the force.
He said: "They should now start to encourage youth from all parts of the Northern Ireland community to apply to join the police."
Meanwhile, the Patten Commission member who was highly critical of the Northern Ireland Policing Act declined to say whether nationalists should join the force.
Prof Clifford Shearing, of Toronto University, said it was up to political leaders in the North to make up their own minds about whether they would encourage members of their communities to join the force.
He added that it was up to people themselves as to whether they should join. "As I have indicated before, it is up to the people to make that decision."
Prof Shearing, writing in the Guardian last month, said the British government's legislation "eviscerated" the Patten report proposals on "collective community responsibility".
He also said the Policing Bill had rejected the established doctrine of "operational independence" in favour of the concept of "operational responsibility".