Police Leadership Training Gains Momentum in the United States Congress

Inspired by his training at the Policing Leadership Academy at the Harris School of Public Policy’s Crime Lab, Stephen Jenkins adopted new strategies in Portsmouth, Virginia, a city of nearly 100,000 where he has been police chief since 2022.

The impact has been, in Jenkins’ words, “monumental.”

“Last year we had a 44 percent reduction in homicides,” said Jenkins. “In one of my most violent neighborhoods, we haven’t had a shooting in well over a year.”

He credited the academy and working through his capstone project, which centered on violence intervention, with giving him a clearer, more comprehensive understanding of how community violence intervention programs can be most effective.

Jenkins’ experience, echoed by many who have completed the first-of-its kind five-month academy training since it was established in 2023, drew the attention of federal lawmakers across the political spectrum. Concerned by the absence of sophisticated management training for command-level officers in local law enforcement, U.S. lawmakers in both the House and Senate developed the Promoting Police Leadership Act to expand access to advanced leadership training nationwide, building on the work already underway through the Policing Leadership Academy.

The bill would establish a national framework to expand high-quality leadership and management training for police commanders, with a focus on reducing violent crime, strengthening department performance, making effective use of limited resources, and building public trust.

The proposal has attracted strong bipartisan support. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), along with Representatives Russell Fry (R-SC) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), introduced the legislation. The Senate approved the measure in June, sending it to the House for consideration.

“We met with policymakers across the spectrum — from the most conservative to the most progressive,” Crime Lab Founding Executive Director Roseanna Ander said. “They have very different perspectives on many issues, but they all see value in this because the focus is on something very practical: strong leadership and better results. The United States spends about $180 billion a year on local law enforcement. The question is how we make sure those investments are delivering the strongest possible results for officers and the communities they serve.”

Added Ander: “We think we have the receipts to show that investing in this very, very targeted leadership development is a way to help departments reduce violent crime, improve management, strengthen officer performance, and reduce unnecessary uses of force.”

New, effective strategies

The Police Leadership Academy grew out of Crime Lab research in 2022 highlighting a critical but often overlooked driver of public safety: strong police leadership and management. The research found that how departments are led can have a meaningful impact on reducing violent crime, strengthening police effectiveness, and improving outcomes for officers and the communities they serve.

More effective police management also increases community trust, research showed.

With the goal of providing world-class leadership and management education for police commanders in some of the most violent cities in the U.S., the Crime Lab built the curriculum around practical instruction, peer learning, and hands-on training. Meeting once a week over five months, the course weaves theoretical expertise of higher education experts in with the knowledge of community leaders and practitioners — all while prioritizing data-driven management, emotional intelligence, community trust, violence reduction, and collaboration.

A total of 200 police leaders from 95 jurisdictions have completed the training so far. 

“What we're trying to do is get the students to expand their minds and think about things differently, view issues through a different lens,” said Policing Leadership Academy Executive Director Kenneth Corey, former chief of the New York City Police Department. “We don't give them a checklist saying if you go back and do A, B, and C, you're going to reduce crime and increase community engagement, and improve officer morale. Every city is different and every neighborhood's different. We’re trying to give them tools and then they go back and find the right mix of what works. That's what makes it so fantastic.”

Like Portsmouth Police Chief Jenkins, commanders who have completed the training routinely implement new strategies, then track their effectiveness.

In one Philadelphia district, police Captain Joe Green, who completed PLA training in its first cohort, encouraged patrol officers to emphasize visible presence, community engagement, information sharing, and targeted violence reduction. The district saw significant public safety gains: homicides dropped by 20 percent from the previous year, shooting victims decreased by 30 percent, and shooting incidents fell by 25 percent. At the same time, officer-initiated traffic stops declined by 5,000, while officers conducted nearly 14,000 interactions focused on building relationships and sharing information with community members.

Chicago Police Commander Keith Milmine, who works in the Fourth District on the city’s far South Side, had a similar experience after completing the Policing Leadership Academy in 2024. Utilizing his capstone project on reimagining tactical teams — comprised of pro-active plainclothes officers — Milmine directed the teams in his district to focus on problem solving, what he called “results-oriented policing,” rather than “getting numbers” of arrests or other traditional gauges of police effectiveness.

“The tact teams are still producing but their citizen complaints have dropped amazingly,” Milmine said. “They haven’t been hit with any lawsuits. That wasn’t what drove the project, but it’s been an ancillary benefit.”

Now, Milmine said, other departments have contacted him about his new approach. He was also asked to give a presentation on the strategy at a policing conference in Madison, Wisconsin.

Not your traditional course

Milmine, who has a law degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law, was drawn to the Academy by UChicago’s reputation, the expertise of Academy instructors — including Corey and former Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck — and the wide range of departments where others in the cohort worked.

“The first couple of days I realized this was going to be a great experience,” Milmine said. “The people in the class were amazing and the instructors were passionate. They gave you things you could apply, looked at situations from different angles, and were interested in hearing what you had to say and processing that into what they were teaching.”

Four of his colleagues also have completed Policing Leadership Academy training and have expressed enthusiasm for it, he said.

Jenkins was impressed with how thoughtful and well organized the class was, and the exchange of ideas with other students.

“I realized very early that this wasn’t going to be your traditional organizational-level course,” he said. “There was a lot of time for critical thinking and bringing up topics that we may not have talked about formally but that come up as challenges in our area. It made you think that maybe you should look at issues and situations with a broader perspective.”

What stood out to Jenkins, apart from new approaches he could take to policing challenges in Portsmouth, was PLA’s potential “to become a national or international think tank of law enforcement ideas.”

That thinking aligns with the work underway at the PLA and with the broader goals of the bipartisan Promoting Police Leadership Act. The Academy is designed to demonstrate how advanced leadership training can strengthen policing and provide lessons that can be shared with law enforcement agencies across the country.

Ander said the PLA hopes its work can help inform broader efforts to expand high-quality leadership development opportunities for law enforcement. Everything the Academy develops is open source, allowing its training, research and lessons learned to be used well beyond the University of Chicago.

“We want the field to get better as quickly as possible and everything we learn we want to share with everybody,” she said. “I'm so proud that UChicago saw the value in doing this work and investing in police leadership. That speaks to what the University of Chicago is, and I think there's a real opportunity to continue to do this in a way that continues to refine the model and continues to stay abreast of where the field and the research is going.”