It is hard to believe that 12 months have passed since I stood before the IACP membership in Miami Beach and began my term as our association’s president. It has been an amazing year, and I can honestly say that serving as IACP president has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my law enforcement career. Thank you for your support over the years and your continued dedication to the IACP and the law enforcement profession.

During my inaugural address, I outlined several key priorities that I hoped to focus on during my term in office. As my tenure comes to a close, I would like to update you on several of these issues.

IACP Diversity Panel
While the law enforcement community has made great strides in achieving diversity, we have a long way to go, and no other organization is better equipped to lead the charge than the IACP. To that end, I established the Diversity Coordination Panel, which met for the first time in January. Panel members were selected based on their expertise and past work on a host of issues related to diversity in law enforcement.

After our initial meeting, panel members drafted a mission statement that reflects the panel’s commitment to study the challenges facing law enforcement agencies and then go on to help agencies recruit, hire, and retain members of historically underrepresented groups, including women and minorities. Panel members have begun to collaborate with representatives from IACP’s committees, divisions, and sections to leverage their expertise and make sure that a cohesive and consistent approach to diversity takes form in the IACP.

The overarching goal of the panel is to advance the message that achieving diversity in the workplace is an asset to law enforcement agencies and their communities. These goals include the following:

• Identify the real and perceived obstacles that prevent or inhibit minorities, women, and members of other groups not historically drawn to the profession from seeking careers in law enforcement
• Identify the factors that affect retention in law enforcement, particularly those that may be unique to minorities and women
• Coordinate with other law enforcement professional organizations to emphasize and achieve a broad-based approach to diversity issues

The Diversity Coordinating Panel will next meet during IACP’s Boston conference. Chief Joseph C. Carter, incoming IACP president, has committed to supporting the panel’s efforts and its work, which is at the core of IACP’s major mission to promote more diversity in the profession.

IACP National Law Enforcement Institute on Violence Against Women

With the assistance of the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women, and as part of our National Law Enforcement Leadership Initiative, the IACP established the National Law Enforcement Institute on Violence Against Women.

The Leadership Institute is an unprecedented opportunity for top law enforcement executives from across the country to improve their capacity and ability to respond to and reduce the crimes of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and human trafficking.

Participants assess their agency’s current response to these crimes and learn innovative ways to allocate resources to help victims while holding perpetrators accountable.

With the assistance of expert faculty, participants in these trainings design practical, proactive goals, discuss innovative investigative strategies, and network with colleagues to share challenges as well as solutions.

IACP Center for Police Leadership

The IACP created the Center for Police Leadership to serve as a training and resource center for police departments around the world. The center provides on-site training and technical assistance and develops police leadership publications of both an academic and a practical nature. Since its inception, more than 150 law enforcement agencies and academic institutions have expressed interest in the center’s training programs. Currently, the center offers two courses: Leadership in Police Organizations, or LPO, and the LPO Train-the-Trainer. More courses are in development.

In the past seven months, we have presented the LPO and its companion train-the trainer course to law enforcement officers from more than 60 federal, state, and local agencies.

IACP International Programs

IACP’s international program is critically important to police executives around the world. We know that sharing ideas, investigative techniques, and specific crime-related information among agencies from different nations is the only way that we can succeed in our anticrime and antiterrorism efforts. I am pleased to report that our international programs continue to grow and as a result the IACP is doing its part to ensure that law enforcement agencies throughout the world are united to fight the forces of crime and terror.

In the last year:

• IACP finalized the establishment of the Middle East World Regional Office in the country of Qatar. This milestone means that the IACP has an established presence in all seven of IACP’s world regions.
• I traveled to Taiwan to meet with the director of the National Police Agency and tour several of the training and investigative facilities.
• The IACP has continued its partnership with other policing organizations around the world. Delegations from the IACP will attend the conference of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Great Britain and the conference of the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police.
• Our international conferences have continued to grow. We held a successful conference in Brazil last fall and two more this year in Durban, South Africa, and Sofia, Bulgaria.

In closing, I would like to express my thanks to all of the exceptional men and women I have been honored to serve with during my time on the IACP Board of Officers and the IACP Executive Committee. I am grateful for your dedicated service to the IACP. I applaud the continuing efforts of the IACP’s outstanding staff of truly dedicated men and women. I continue to be amazed at the amount of work and creative initiatives that are the ongoing products of their exceptional efforts. Thank you for your hard work.

I also want to thank the mayor and city officials of Gaithersburg and the men and women of my department for their support and patience during my tenure on the board. I am very proud of my department’s accreditation awards and of our professional service to our community. I also want to thank my colleagues with the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives, the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies Inc., and the Maryland Chiefs of Police Association for their friendship and guidance over the years.

Finally, I would like to thank the IACP membership. I will always be grateful for this unparalleled opportunity to lead the oldest and largest professional organization of law enforcement executives in the world. ■