Future Leadership Development: The Policing Leadership Academy

The Most Underused Crime-Fighting Tool in American Policing

We have spent decades arming police departments with better tools. Faster patrol cars. Predictive analytics. License plate readers. AI-driven surveillance. The technology budget in American policing has never been larger, and it keeps growing.

Yet crime persists. Trust erodes. Officers churn. And precinct commanders across the country are left to figure it out largely on their own.

What if we’ve been solving the wrong problem?

That’s the question at the heart of the latest episode of Future Policing, where host Jim Bueermann sits down with Kenneth Corey, a veteran NYPD executive and current leader at the University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Policing Leadership Academy (PLA). The conversation is a serious, experience-backed argument that leadership development is not a luxury item in policing. It is a core public safety strategy.

A Career Built at the Center of American Policing

Kenneth Corey spent decades inside the largest police department in the country. He rose through the ranks of the NYPD to become a direct report to the Police Commissioner, navigating an organization of 30,000 officers and 77 precincts. In practical terms, that’s not one police department. It is roughly 100 mid-size departments operating under a single command structure. Managing that kind of complexity gave Corey a front-row view of what separates precincts that perform from those that don’t.

The answer, time and again, was leadership.

What the Policing Leadership Academy Is Doing Differently

The PLA at the University of Chicago Crime Lab is built on a deceptively straightforward premise: better leaders produce safer communities. Not safer because of the equipment they requisition or the tactics they deploy, but because of how they develop and direct the people under their command.

The program works with precinct-level commanders and district supervisors, the people closest to where violence actually happens, and equips them with evidence-based concepts, emotional intelligence frameworks, and accountability structures specifically designed to reduce crime and disorder in defined geographic areas. It is one of a small handful of programs in the United States doing this kind of focused, rigorous leadership work. And its results are beginning to make the case in a way that should get every police chief’s attention.

Leadership Counts

Bill Bratton used to say it plainly: cops count. The number of officers on the street matters for public safety. That’s true. But this episode makes a harder argument. Leadership counts more.

As Bueermann points out in the conversation, a poor leader with abundant resources will underperform. A strong leader with limited resources can move the needle. That’s not an abstract theory. It is the lived experience of anyone who has spent real time inside a police organization.

And yet, as both Bueermann and Corey acknowledge, the profession has never built a serious national infrastructure for developing that kind of leader. We promote people based on seniority and test scores. We send them to command schools for a week. Then we hand them a precinct and wish them luck.

The PLA is trying to change that. And the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab provides the research backbone to measure whether it’s working.

Why This Matters Right Now

Policing is at a crossroads. Recruitment is difficult. Retention is harder. Public trust is fragile in many communities. AI and surveillance technology are reshaping what it means to police. Agencies are being asked to do more with less.

In that environment, leadership development is not optional. It is the leverage point. The right person, well-prepared, in the right command position, can redirect a department’s trajectory in ways that no software platform or equipment upgrade can replicate.

That is the argument Corey and Bueermann make in this episode. It is a compelling one. And it is long overdue.

Listen Now

This episode of Future Policing is available now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. If you lead a law enforcement agency, work in public safety policy, or care about the future of the profession, this conversation deserves your time. You can also listen to the episode within your browser.