ORLANDO — In 2015, Modesto, California, recorded 25 homicides. Ten years later, the city finished 2025 without a single homicide, a milestone the Modesto Police Department hadn’t achieved in decades.
Other crime categories showed substantial declines. Between 2015 and 2025, robberies fell 60%, residential burglaries dropped 77%, auto theft declined 78% and aggravated assaults decreased 32%, according to figures presented by the department.
But as Modesto’s leaders examined those numbers, they confronted a question: Was the department doing something differently, or was it simply benefiting from declining crime across the country?
During a presentation at IACP 2026, Captain Bobby Meredith explained that the department compared its performance with similarly sized California cities and broader national trends. The comparison suggested Modesto’s reductions exceeded those of its peers.
“So what’s the natural question? Why? What do you think caused it?” Meredith asked.
Just as important, he said, was understanding how to maintain that progress. The department didn’t want to become complacent after achieving significant reductions, only to see crime rise again.
That examination led Modesto’s leaders to identify three reinforcing elements: organizational culture, innovation and technology, and meaningful community partnerships.
Meredith was joined by Chief Brandon Gillespie, Assistant Chief Chris Adams, Captain Robert Reyna and leadership and organizational development practitioner Kate Trompetter to explain how those elements came together.
When necessity forced innovation
The department’s transformation began under difficult circumstances. The 2008 recession brought staffing reductions, financial pressures and declining morale to Modesto PD. Yet the department continued to face robberies, homicides, auto thefts and other crimes with fewer resources.
Reyna, who was a young sergeant during that period, recalled that the department’s command staff remained focused on finding solutions. Leaders brought back ideas from professional development programs and encouraged employees to experiment with different approaches. “If it didn’t work, that was great also,” Reyna recalled, explaining that unsuccessful initiatives still taught the department something about the problem it was trying to solve.
With fewer personnel available, Modesto increasingly relied on crime analysis and technology to make more informed decisions about where to deploy its resources. But Reyna also described a lesson the department learned as it introduced new capabilities: Purchasing technology didn’t automatically produce better results. At times, the organization realized only a fraction of the potential of its investments because it hadn’t assigned personnel who were motivated to master the tools and teach others to use them. The lesson was that investing in people had to accompany investing in technology.
Turning intelligence into operational decisions
Assistant Chief Chris Adams explained how Modesto translated that evolving mindset into a systematic approach to crime reduction.
The department introduced predictive policing technology in 2013, established a real-time crime center in 2016 and expanded its camera network and license plate reader capabilities. But one of the most consequential developments was the refinement of intelligence-led policing beginning in 2018.
With limited personnel, the department needed to identify where crime was occurring, when offenses were happening and who might be responsible. Crime analysts helped provide that information, allowing leaders to establish priorities and direct resources accordingly.
Adams described the challenge using a familiar principle: “If everything’s important, nothing’s important.”
The department eventually integrated intelligence-led policing into its CompStat model, creating a recurring operational cycle built around analysis, deployment and evaluation.
Every two weeks, personnel from across the organization come together to examine crime patterns, identify priorities and coordinate responses. At the next meeting, they review what happened, evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts and determine what needs to change. The process involves specialized units, professional staff and other participants rather than limiting problem-solving to individual units.
Gillespie emphasized that the meetings are designed to generate discussion and encourage initiative. “It’s not a gotcha moment,” he said.
He described how recognizing successful work helps officers and supervisors become more invested in the department’s strategies. The objective is not simply to tell personnel where to go, but to help them understand the intelligence behind those decisions, participate in developing responses and see the results of their efforts.
Redesigning the department around problem-solving
Modesto also recognized that intelligence-led policing required an organizational structure capable of acting on the information.
In 2023, the department established an Area Command Division, dividing the city into four geographic areas, each overseen by a lieutenant responsible for addressing recurring problems in that community. Adams explained that the model was designed to tackle issues that patrol officers couldn’t devote sufficient time to but that didn’t necessarily warrant a traditional detective investigation.
“We need long term solutions with the right tools and the right people,” he said.
The division brought together resources including traffic enforcement, community health assistance, code enforcement and animal control, allowing commanders to draw on different capabilities depending on the problem. The same philosophy extended beyond the department.
Adams described City View, a 2015 initiative that brought police, municipal departments and city leaders together to examine crime trends and coordinate responses. If inadequate lighting contributed to problems in a particular area, for example, public works could be part of the solution.
The idea was that crime reduction required shared responsibility across city government rather than relying exclusively on police enforcement.
The harder challenge: Getting people to change
As Modesto introduced new technology, intelligence-led policing and different ways of deploying personnel, department leaders encountered a challenge that couldn’t be solved with another piece of equipment: Getting employees to change how they worked.
That was where Kate Trompetter’s expertise became particularly relevant.
A Stanislaus County resident and leadership coach specializing in organizational development and systems change, Trompetter works directly with Modesto PD on the human side of organizational change. Although she isn’t a law enforcement professional, she works with public agencies confronting complex challenges, including public safety.
“One of the things that I think is most frequently overlooked in my work is what it takes to get people to behave differently,” Trompetter told attendees.
She asked the audience to consider an experienced officer who had spent years developing judgment, instincts and relationships. Now the department introduces crime analysts, new technology and intelligence-driven assignments that influence where the officer works and how decisions are made. The officer may support the goal of reducing crime while still questioning the new approach.
Trompetter explained that resistance isn’t necessarily opposition to the organization’s objectives. It may reflect concerns about what employees believe they’re being asked to give up. In those moments, leaders need to respect employees’ experience while helping them understand the purpose of the changes.
She urged leaders to become more curious about employees’ concerns rather than repeatedly explaining what they must do.
“Culture doesn’t change because people told you it should,” she said. “It’s a series of decisions and behaviors that happen every day, in and out of meetings, in and out of briefings.”
Those everyday conversations, she argued, are among the most powerful tools leaders have for helping employees adapt.
Moving from compliance to ownership
Trompetter emphasized that leaders should use meetings, supervision and informal interactions to develop employees’ critical-thinking skills and help them connect their daily decisions to organizational outcomes. That, she said, is what moves an organization from compliance to ownership.
For Modesto, one example was the effort to simplify its core values. Reyna described how the department replaced a longer list with three principles: a servant’s heart, a courageous spirit and relentless drive.
The values were intended to establish expectations for everyday behavior. A servant’s heart meant approaching policing with a commitment to solving people’s problems. A courageous spirit included doing what was right even when no one was watching. Relentless drive encouraged officers to pursue investigative leads rather than simply complete reports and pass cases along.
Gillespie acknowledged that the change initially encountered skepticism. Some employees questioned whether the new values were another management initiative that would eventually fade. Over time, however, he began seeing evidence that the values had taken hold.
Officers started referencing them in commendations and public conversations without prompting from command staff.
“It’s not us pushing this down and having to talk to our officers about it,” Gillespie said, describing the shift toward employees reinforcing the values themselves.
During the audience Q&A, Gillespie also acknowledged that he would approach the original rollout differently.
The values were developed through months of command staff discussions. Looking back, he said he would have sought more input from line-level personnel at the beginning of the process.
The experience illustrated one of Trompetter’s central points: Employees are more likely to embrace change when they understand its purpose and have an opportunity to participate in the process.
Knowing what to stop doing
Trompetter also challenged police leaders to consider whether their organizations are taking on too much.
In her work with public agencies, she frequently sees leaders introduce new technologies, programs and initiatives without reconsidering everything employees are already expected to do.
“We keep layering new tools, new technology, new initiatives, over everything else we’ve ever been doing, and we never take the time to ask ourselves what we can stop,” she said.
She outlined five recurring leadership actions for agencies pursuing change: Understand the problem, decide where to focus, align people and resources, act and measure results, and adapt to sustain progress. But she cautioned against treating those actions as a rigid sequence.
Modesto encountered resistance, struggled at times to establish alignment and occasionally introduced capabilities before personnel had everything they needed to use them effectively.
“Nothing that MPD has done has been a linear experience,” Trompetter said.
The important lesson wasn’t that the department avoided difficulties. It was that leaders continued learning, adjusting and revisiting decisions when necessary.
Community partnerships built for difficult conversations
The department’s emphasis on relationships extended beyond its employees.
Adams described Project Resolve, launched in 2020, which brought law enforcement together with community representatives, including leaders from groups that had experienced mistrust of police.
The meetings created opportunities to discuss difficult issues, address concerns and establish relationships before a crisis occurred.
“Do we always agree when they sit in the room on politics or decisions? Not always,” Adams said.
But the relationships created opportunities for direct communication during controversial incidents and helped the department understand community concerns.
Modesto also developed its Community Health and Assistance Team and expanded specialized responses to address homelessness and quality-of-life issues, connecting people with services and directing different types of calls to appropriate resources.
These initiatives reflected the same philosophy guiding the department’s internal transformation: Sustainable improvement depends on relationships, shared understanding and the ability to respond collaboratively.
Building a culture that outlasts the chief
For Gillespie, the ultimate test of Modesto’s transformation isn’t whether its current initiatives remain successful during his tenure. It’s whether the organization continues improving after he leaves.
Having served nearly six years as chief, he told attendees that he recognizes his time leading the department will eventually end. His concern is that a future administration could abandon successful practices if employees never truly embraced them. Personnel may follow instructions because the chief directs them to do so. But compliance alone doesn’t guarantee that an initiative will survive a leadership transition.
Gillespie described the importance of developing leaders throughout the organization and creating a culture in which employees understand the purpose of the department’s strategies and take ownership of results. He also cautioned agencies against investing in technology simply because it is new or popular.
“Use technology because it matters to you, not because it’s the newest thing,” he advised.
The department’s reported crime reductions offer a compelling measure of progress, although no single initiative can fully explain those outcomes. What Modesto’s experience illustrates is how intelligence-led policing, organizational redesign, leadership development and community partnerships can reinforce one another over time.
“Your culture, at the end of the day, is what’s going to sustain it,” Gillespie said.
For police leaders, that may be the most important lesson from Modesto’s decade of change: Lasting improvement depends not simply on introducing new strategies, but on developing people who understand their purpose, take responsibility for results and continue adapting long after the original leaders have moved on.
