It’s an incredible honor to serve as the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), and I have so many people to thank for pouring into me and lifting me up to get to this point in my life and career.
As director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, I’ve seen firsthand the power of collaboration, innovation, and leadership in shaping the future of policing. IACP represents more than 35,000 members across 180 countries, and together, we stand at a pivotal moment in our profession.
This year, I’m calling on each of you to get engaged, be active, and to STEP UP and STEP IN. We need your efforts on our committees, sections, and divisions. We need your insights, your voice, and your engagement. We need you to encourage your peers to become members and to get involved. The IACP is the largest professional association for police leadership in the world, but we can and should be bigger. As a membership organization, we have been growing steadily year over year for some time now. But I think we have an opportunity before us to see exponential growth over this next year. The question you may have is WHY?
The current status of our world is WHY. The world needs police leadership now. There is a void that provides space for discontent to be sowed. There is division that has grown worldwide, and the world needs a stable force to STEP UP and STEP IN. The IACP can lead that force. In policing, we stand in the gap between competing forces all the time. Our role is to be the calm and the voice of reason—to point North and press for truth and justice and a commitment to the rule of law.
The IACP has consistently taken a stand to press forward with policy that supports community safety. What I have learned in my travels to several continents now is, while we may have differences in structure and in practice, policing is similar worldwide. The IACP is intentional with our efforts to ensure that the lens of our international footprint is always used in the development of our positions, and it informs our conversations with political representatives globally.
There are things that I am passionate about and will continue to emphasize during my year in this role. First is the continuation of the IACP Trust Building Campaign that was started five years ago. It continues to move forward, and I encourage you and your agencies to sign up and make the commitment to be part of this movement. As we look to the future, I see this initiative continue, and it will morph as there is a natural next step that we will transition to through the coming year. The natural next step is focusing on culture. We are the creators of culture in our agencies. The culture of our organizations impacts everything in our communities. Culture is crafted with every decision we make, from hires to selection for training, to promotions, to discipline, and more. Literally every decision sets the tone and shows what you value as a leader. The IACP is here to support you in making informed decisions that boost culture.
A long-standing challenge our agencies have had is the effective collection, interpretation, and dissemination of intelligence information. We have slipped backward since the tragedy of 9/11, and that is not acceptable. We can and must do better, and it has to happen now. This is why I will be working with our new Law Enforcement Intelligence and Information Sharing Section to push a long-sought effort of developing a single reliable source of information for police executives and to inform the intelligence community so as to ensure the safety of our communities from terroristic acts.
An area that has been improving, but needs more work is our efforts to de-stigmatize mental health wellness and improve skill development with our personnel. “C suite” executives and professional athletes are known for their engagement with psychological services and personal coaches throughout their careers. In our profession, for the most part, we send an employee to psychological services only when they have been involved in a violent or traumatic incident or when we are seeking to see if they are fit for duty. If we encourage personal coaching, it is because they have failed at some task. But in the corporate and professional sports worlds, these services are utilized to gain a competitive edge by removing barriers and setting goals. Engagement with these services is proactively used to help them achieve greatness. Imagine if we packaged our programs this way. What employee does not want a competitive edge over the criminal element and among their peers? What community doesn’t want high-performing police to lead their residents in all things safety? We need to change the narrative now to take better care of our personnel and our communities.
This year, let’s commit to action. My plea to you is to STEP UP and STEP IN. Get involved.
Another area that I believe we must continue to press forward in is working with our academic research partners. As leaders in our communities, we do whatever we can to improve safety. We try many things that seem like good ideas, but without proper measurement prior to, during, and after, we really do not know if a given initiative, program, or strategy works. By bringing in researchers to help build a program that includes an assessment plan, we can provide critical information to our peers on the value of an effort that could be adopted and adapted to their communities. Research to identify impactful efforts rings very Peelian and is significant for our profession.
The last area I want to touch on is technology. We have seen the impact technology can have on improving our craft. The speed of the introduction of new products is exponentially greater each year. The challenge we have is keeping up and staying on top of how the criminal element is adopting and adapting the tools for their gain as well as trying to get our communities comfortable with our use of technology. We must continue to message the guardrails that we have in place to protect the rights of those we police, even with the adoption of technologies that detractors will claim to embody “big brother.” Combined with the previous idea of robust research, we may just find a way to get the edge over the criminal element.
This year, let’s commit to action. My plea to you is to STEP UP and STEP IN. Get involved. Each of us needs to invite a colleague to join the IACP to grow our voice and our impact. The world is in a place right now where leadership is needed. We are the leaders that can fill this gap. I am honored to have this opportunity to represent you in this role. My commitment is to give you my all and serve you fully.
As Aristotle said, “We are what we constantly do; excellence then is not an act, but a habit.”
So, in the words of the infamous Ted Logan from the classic film Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, “Be excellent to each other!”d
Please cite as
David Rausch, “The Year Ahead: 2025–2026,” President’s Message, Police Chief 92, no. 11 (November 2025): 6–8.
