February 1, 2001

2001 Mid-Winter Conference

We just completed our mid-winter conference at World of Golf Resort in St. Augustine. Chief Dave Shoars provided everything possible to accommodate visitors to his beautiful community. World Golf Resort is a great venue and well suited for meetings, and is a short drive from the center of St. Augustine. We had the best of all worlds, a great meeting site, and close proximity to one of Florida's most beautiful and interesting cities.

We had 170 people register for the conference, and over 120 vendors participated in the product exposition. It's interesting to note the change in product at police conferences over the past several years. We used to see tons of weaponry and defense equipment, we now see tons of technology. If you're looking for computer hardware or software, a police exposition provides the opportunity to find whatever you're looking for.

Although not all inclusive, the following highlights will illustrate the important work that was completed this week:

1.     We passed our strategic long-range plan. Your board of directors worked hard to bring it into being, and it sets the tone for what we hope to accomplish over the next eighteen months to two years. You can obtain a copy by merely calling our FPCA office at 1-800-323-8117. We also hope to have it on our web-site in the near future at www.fpca.com.

2.     We read and passed five by-laws changes that strengthens the FPCA in the area of merger support, including placing a Past-President on the Board of Directors, requiring all Presidents to review and update the strategic plan, and establishing position responsibilities for District Directors. However, I was advised by Frank Ross that we must do by-laws changes at the summer conference, so this will be done again in June so we are in compliance with our by-laws. This clearly points out the importance of having a Past-President serve on the executive committee. Frank, who is that appointed person, brought a historical perspective to this issue after our vote, and suggested that we might have done it wrong. He was right, and we'll correct our mistake.

3.     Bill Liquori, who chairs the Self Insurance Group Board, has advised me that the Self Insurance Group will present FPCA a check in the amount of $8,000. If you get a chance, please call and thank him and the board.

4.     We adopted a position paper on racial profiling, including development of a model policy that can be used by member agencies, and recommend that all law enforcement agencies in the state adopt a racial profiling policy. We also recommend that all complaints of racial profiling be investigated, and that we each work to educate our respective communities on the importance of effective traffic enforcement in our traffic safety initiatives. The position paper highlights the importance of in-service and basic recruit training in professional traffic stops, and that in-car video be used in traffic stops to protect the officer.

Training was, as usual excellent. Monday, January 15, 2001, Dr. Kevin Gilmartin provided tremendous insight into the issue of malcontent and disgruntled cops, and discussed intervention techniques for us. Special thanks to the Training Committee (Rick Overman and Ed Morely particularly) for bringing in this world class instructor.

Technology Committee Chairman Marshall Gage provided excellent instruction in purchasing and implementing technology on Tuesday.

Those Chiefs who could, stayed Wednesday and participated in training on crime gun interdiction and investigation, sponsored by the United States Attorney's Office. Finally if you get a chance, please call Hal Robbins and thank him and our staff (Amy, Pheona and Analise) for all the hard work they do all year.