What a year! It has been such an honor to represent each of you and the IACP this past year as your president.

Even before I embarked upon my term as president of the IACP, the five vice presidents of the IACP and I agreed that we wanted to continue to make enhancing community-police trust a priority and that each of us would make a commitment that public trust would be an emphasis in the association’s strategic plan and work. Born out of that commitment was the Trust Building Campaign, which seeks to build relationships and trust with each of our communities. The program asks police organizations to commit to actions in six primary focus areas that include 25 tasks within the next 24 to 36 months. These tasks are supported by the vast resources, research, and work products of the IACP and other organizations with proven strategies to develop trust between the police and the public. The overall focus of the program is for each of us to take a good hard look at our organization’s culture and ensure we are doing our very best to build trusting relationships.

We all, including our officers and members of our communities, have a role to play in building and maintaining relationships of trust. As we have acknowledged previously at the IACP, to move forward, we must own the mistakes of the past that have negatively impacted our relationships with certain groups, and we look to communities to judge us not on the past, but on our actions in the present. However, we must also always remain mindful of the power we have been given as police officers that impacts our relationships with vulnerable communities; ensuring we do not abuse this power is an additional responsibility we shoulder as peace officers.

We all have a role to play in building and maintaining relationships of trust.

As I have traveled around the world, I have witnessed the impressive efforts that so many people in our profession are taking to build trust with their communities and capacity in their policing organizations. From Colombia to South Korea to Taiwan, I am so pleased to see the professionalism and extraordinary efforts being made to improve the face of policing worldwide. We all should be excited about the future of the profession and the people who are following us. I was particularly inspired by Major General Vargas of the Colombian National Police, who has really addressed the culture issue in his force, with signs outlining the organization’s values over the walkways at the academy. He ends every presentation by stating, “It is an honor to be a police officer,” which reinforces the importance of the policing profession to the community and all whom serve.

In keeping with the IACP’s vision to shape the future of the policing profession, we cannot rest on our laurels in developing the officers who will fill our seats in the future. That is why I feel it is so important that trust building is not just the work of a few at the top, but that it involves all sworn and professional staff in our agencies, particularly the frontline officers, who are everyday leaders in our communities and who have many contacts each day with our community members and can leverage those one-on-one opportunities to help build a relationship of trust. That is why agencies successfully completing the trust program will receive ribbon pins for the officers’ uniforms. This will encourage future efforts, as trust can be easily broken and requires continuous nurturing by all.

If you have not done so already, I encourage you to go to the IACP website and register your agency for the campaign!

We have done a lot this year as police leaders and as an association, including working to break the cycle of mistrust and to build common ground between law enforcement and the people we serve. This includes working with the U.S. Congress on police reform legislation and, when that was not successful, working with the White House to help craft the President’s Executive Order on Policing. The IACP was a critical partner on this important policy for the profession.

Trust comes in many forms, and key elements of maintaining trust include transparency and information sharing. To that end, this year, the IACP has made significant improvements in our capability to share information from local, regional, state, and federal levels in the most effective manner to solve crime and prevent violence including terrorism. In August, we hosted a successful information sharing summit with our partners at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

The IACP supported outreach efforts to improve law enforcement’s ability to respond to man-made and climate-related disasters as a partner in the emergency management enterprise. This includes supporting critical incident management systems improvements for policing and police participation in all-hazard incident management teams. A task force released findings for response to civil unrest. We worked with the International Fire Chiefs Association to promote best practices in police response to wildland fires.

Under the premise that officers can’t serve the public effectively in a professional manner if officers are not mentally and physically healthy, wellness remains a key focus for the association. This year’s Officer Safety and Wellness Symposium was the first in-person major conference the IACP hosted since the beginning of the pandemic, with over 900 in attendance, the most ever for this event.

I am proud to say that the IACP is currently managing multiple projects that will improve the ability of police agencies to respond to emerging issues, while growing our membership to the highest levels ever attained, with almost 33,000 members in 170 countries.

As I end my 10-year journey on the IACP Executive Board, beginning as the Vice-President Treasurer and then through the chairs to this year as president, I need to truly thank the team back at home in Vail, Vail Police Department employees, the citizens of Vail, my manager, and council.

This journey has been an excellent way to give back to a profession that has been so good to me over the past 40+ years. We have a lot of work to do, but I am confident that we will come out of these difficult past few years in much better shape to serve our communities successfully—and the IACP will be there each step of the way to support our policing leaders as they ensure safe communities across the globe.

Thank you. It is an honor to be a peace officer.d