‘A transformational experience’: LAPD Chief Salutes Latest Officers to Finish Innovative Executive Program

Just a month into his new role as Los Angeles’ top cop, LAPD Police Chief Michel Moore visited the university to address the newest law enforcement graduates of the California Police Chiefs Executive Leadership Institute, a partnership between the Drucker School of Management and the California Police Chiefs Association.

“I congratulate all of you, and I hope you walk away from this campus today with a sense of renewal, with a transformational experience,” he told the graduates during a special ceremony held in late July in Albrecht Auditorium. “I see a lot of stripes around this room, and I know I don’t need to belabor this point, but we all need this training. We are in challenging times, and I know you’re up for it.”

Some 34 police officers took part in the second year of the institute’s program, which brings the officers to the CGU campus for two intensive weeks of study of the essential principles and applications of effective management with the faculty of the Drucker School.

“This program immerses students in learning who they are as leaders,” said Jackie Gomez-Whiteley, retired Cypress Police chief and program director of the institute. “They learn to think about what they do and how they can do things differently—this is what Peter Drucker’s Monday morning difference is all about.”

Gomez-Whitely described this year’s class as a wide blend of ranks and experience levels—from chiefs to captains to commanders to lieutenants—hailing from police departments up and down the state (from Palm Springs, San Bernardino, and Ontario to Chico and Fresno) as well as several from Arizona.

“The synergy in this class was obvious from Day 1,” said Rob Handy, chief of police for the city of Huntington Beach. “We’re confident you’re going to be the future of policing in California and Arizona.”

As the participating officers studied crisis management, branding, leadership, creating a culture of accountability, and other subjects, they lived in the university’s student housing and developed personal networks with each other that will assist them in the future.

During the ceremony, remarks were also delivered by Drucker Dean Jenny Darroch, who thanked the officers for their commitment to the program and to the Drucker ideal; and by CGU President Len Jessup, who thanked the officers for their sacrifice and described the record of public service in law enforcement and firefighting in his own family.

“This is an amazing program,” Jessup told them. “In my family, we’ve lived the sacrifices that you’re living every day, and we can’t thank you enough for all that you do.”

During his keynote, Moore also thanked the officers for their hard work before shifting the focus to the sacrifice of their families, too.

“Our families put us back together again, they make sacrifices for us in situations where they don’t have much control,” he told the officers, “So pamper them today. You owe it to them.”

A 36-year veteran of the LAPD who was sworn in as the department’s 57th chief in late June, Moore also described the LAPD’s long-running relationship with the Drucker School, which stretches back two decades (even longer if you include Peter Drucker’s consulting work for the department in the early 1970s). He praised the program’s creators for developing this training in partnership with the school.

When officers want executive development, he told the audience, typically they are sent to programs on the East Coast even though “the West Coast is so thoughtful when it comes to thinking about policing and why we police.”

“The ability to find a school like the Drucker School of Management and to sit down and develop a curriculum that matters, and that is worthy of investment, is really so important for us on the West Coast,” he said. “The LAPD has been a partner with this school for a long time. This is a progressive school defined by an ethos and values of how to give back to our communities, how to live our best lives, which is what I think we all want for ourselves.”