A historic day for Pacific Policing: PACPOL Chair’s inaugural address

A proud legacy. A shared future. The next chapter is PACPOL.

On a historic day for Pacific policing, inaugural PACPOL Chair, Commissioner David Manning of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary MBE addressed fellow Chiefs, Governors, Ministers, partner and donor organisation, and communities across the Pacific and globally, declaring: “I am deeply humbled to stand before you as the inaugural Chair of PACPOL. I do so with immense respect for the generations of Pacific police leaders who laid the foundations upon which we now build, and humility for the trust and confidence our Pacific police chiefs have placed in me to serve in this role.”

Commissioner Manning said for more than fifty years, the Pacific policing family has been united through a single institution – established in 1970 as the South Pacific Chiefs of Police Conference and renamed as the Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police, in 2004, adding, Across more than five decades, it has provided the Pacific's oldest continuous regional law enforcement forum and built a culture of cooperation that has served our region well.

“More recently, the Pacific Policing Initiative has strengthened our regional cooperation and architecture, by providing an operational arm to complement chiefs’ strategic leadership, creating practical mechanisms to support deployments, strengthen capability and build operational readiness across the Pacific.

“Today, these two proud journeys come together. Today, the Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police and the Pacific Policing Initiative become one. Today, we launch a unified regional body under one Pacific-led identity.”

Commissioner Manning said: “Under PACPOL, we will be a globally recognised network of Pacific Police Chiefs and police services, united by a shared vision of a peaceful, safe and secure Blue Pacific and a shared commitment to excellence in policing."

“The future will undoubtedly bring challenges we cannot yet fully predict. But what we can predict is how we will respond. We will respond with courage. We will respond by investing in capability. And we will respond through collaboration. Because working together has always been the Pacific way.”

‍