New York City is right now on its fourth police commissioner in just three years. The current commissioner, Jessica Tisch, is widely thought to be doing an excellent job and yet, with an upcoming election, it is likely New York City will move on to its fifth commissioner in four years. Why? Because politicians like to “bring on their own people” regardless of how the people in place are doing. And this is not a New York problem. This is a growing national trend. Imagine a Fortune 500 company where a new CEO takes over, and immediately replaces everyone in the C-suite, along with the staff that supported them, and that team then abandons successful products or eliminates popular services. Now imagine that process repeats itself every three years or so. That company probably wouldn’t survive for very long. This is exactly what’s been happening in police agencies across the country. In the past three years, most of the nation’s 70 largest police agencies are under new leadership. In fact, only 12 of them have the same chief executive that they did four years ago. In just the past year or so, leadership changes have taken place in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia, Austin, Seattle, Louisville, Miami-Dade and many other large cities. Currently, Buffalo, Dallas and Salt Lake City are among the major cities searching for a new chief. Chicago has had four superintendents in the last two years. Louisville has had seven chiefs since 2020. The list goes on and on. Each of those leaders typically replace the senior staff as they seek to assemble their own teams. The result inside the organization is chaos and uncertainty as those changes get made and solidified. Innovation stops. Promising initiatives are abandoned as the chief implements their own ideas and strategies. Right here in New York, policing initiatives that were launched with great fanfare, and that had achieved success, are quickly shelved when a new management team takes over. Remember the 2016 launch of Neighborhood Policing in the NYPD? All but abandoned today. What is the impact? Police agencies don’t improve and grow as they should. Studies have shown that the single most important element in determining success in changing an organization’s culture is the interest, support, and even passion displayed by its leader. That quality of leadership is strongly linked to the level of employee engagement, and employee engagement is a critical factor in achieving any kind of change: something the American public has demanded of police departments over the last four years. Is it a coincidence that recruitment and retention of police officers has also decreased substantially in this same time period? Stable leaders can foster a positive culture that people want to belong to. No one wants to work for an organization that is in a constant state of uncertainty. Leadership matters, especially in policing. Programs like the University of Chicago’s Policing Leadership Academy develop leaders and introduce them to strategies to implement organizational change and use data to inform decision making. But none of this matters if their home departments are in crisis. Ultimately, what the people in the organization learn from this frequent turnover is they don’t have to change, because as soon as the chief does, so will the priorities. Exceptional leadership creates better policing. Stable leadership will ensure it lasts. In order to make police departments more efficient and more fair, we have to ensure they have the time to implement these changes, because it takes time to change any large organization. In Los Angeles, the chief is appointed to a 5-year term. So while the NYPD is on its fourth commissioner in three years, the LAPD has had four chiefs in the last 23 years. The tenure of a police chief should not be tied to the whims of mayors or city managers, but rather for a set term during which they can only be removed for good cause. This will allow those departments to grow and develop officers that can better serve their communities, instead of being hampered by constant chaos and uncertainty. Corey spent more than 34 years in the NYPD before retiring as chief of department. He currently serves as the director of outreach and engagement at the University of Chicago’s Policing Leadership Academy and a senior advisor to the Secure Community Network, a homeland security initiative working to secure Jewish communities and people across the nation. ...read more read less