I had the privilege of attending the Broward Chief's Association meeting
earlier this month, and found that, as I've found everywhere I've visited
local chiefs, police chiefs in our state are working very hard to improve
the quality of service we deliver to our respective communities. As I've
found during my visits to regional associations, this group of excellent
chiefs involve themselves in worthwhile projects in many ways. To name just
a few of the things they voted on and passed, they adopted the IACP Ethics
Oath, and decided to expand Red Ribbon Week and National Night Out through
a county-wide effort under the sponsorship of the Broward Chiefs. I thought
this was such a good idea I took it to the Brevard Chiefs, and we voted
to do the same. Thanks Broward for a great idea. By the way, an association
profile of the Broward Chiefs should appear elsewhere in this edition of
the Florida Police Chief.
I know that most if not all of us belong to more organizations than we
can count. We also have employees who belong to many organizations that,
when you cut through the various mission statements of those organizations,
find that we have a lot in common: making law enforcement service delivery
the best it can possibly be.
Two organizations that are tremendously
helpful to us as chiefs of police are the Florida Chapter of the
International Association of Law Enforcement Planners (IALEP), and the
Florida Gang Investigators Association.
IALEP provides certification of
law enforcement planners at two levels: (1) certified law enforcement
planner, and (2) advanced law enforcement planner. Their purpose is to
provide their employers with planners who meet every recognized standard
of excellence, professional development, and professional competence.
In a nutshell, planners help us in the following ways: budget development
and capital spending projects, data collection, communication, inter-
governmental liaison, graphics and public presentation, staff studies,
crime analysis, policy development grant writing and managemen
t, strategic planning, operations and staffing analysis, community
policing and problem solving strategies and evaluation, and other equally
important duties including applied research.
The Florida Gang Investigators Association is a cooperative not for
profit organization representing over 125 law enforcement agencies in our
state, and is dedicated to the prevention of gangs and the suppression of
gang-related activity. They accomplish this through enhanced interagency
intelligence exchange, legislative activism, citizen awareness, and
innovative anti-gang operational tactics. The FGIA is represented on FDLE's gang database
advisory committee, and helped implement GANGNET, Florida's statewide
gang database.
There are many other associations out there that we as
chiefs of police can tap for resources, information and material to help
us do our jobs better. I picked these two to write about because I have
agency members who belong to them, and they've come back from workshops,
seminars and conferences with great ideas to make our agency more effective.
If any of you have anyone doing planning our involved in gang
investigations, membership in these worthy associations would make you
better, and them stronger.
