I’m out here in Las Vegas at the PATC Western States
Training Conference. This was the 15th
year I was privileged to organize and present the Internal Affairs Conference
and Certification program. We had 140
participants.
We did experience new attendees. Through the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, we
had 9 Mexican Federal police officials.
Apparently the representative from the Embassy had prior experience in
IA and he’s trying to encourage Mexican police development of a similar
program. He was very impressed with our
new National Professional Certification for IA/OPS Investigators and
Supervisors and is interested in creating something similar in Mexico. These representatives were provided with
translation services during the conference.
In addition, we had 5 representatives from Nigeria and
several law enforcement personnel from various tribal police agencies in the
U.S.
The weeklong conference heard presentations from 8
presenters. Tim Longo, Chief of
Charlottesville VA presented Constitutional issues on protests, employee
searches, compelled statements and filming of police incidents by
citizens. Richard Rosenthal from
Vancouver BC independent police use of force investigation unit and former
monitor in Portland and Denver gave insight into external oversight, mediation
of citizen complaints and employee discipline matrix. Steve Rothlein, retired deputy director of
Metro-Dade Police Department discussed early warning systems and undercover
stings. Mark Brewington from N.C. S.B.I.
told us step by step about the Operation Tarnished Badge he conducted in North
Carolina several years ago that resulted in over 100 arrests including the
Sheriff of the involved county. Curt
Varone gave the attendees a primer on disciplinary issues within the fire
service. Craig Futterman, Chicago
attorney, presented his studies of disciplinary issues within the Chicago Police
Department and his points of view on the implications of the Code of Silence
within law enforcement. I addressed
audits of special operations units, sexual misconduct and the impact of social
media on police agencies. Rounding out
the conference was the presentation by Jack Ryan of civil litigation and case
law on the critical tasks in policing.
Nearly half of our participants challenged the Certification
process and ten successfully earned their certification during this
Conference. There are over 100 who have
earned this national recognition to date.
This Conference will be repeated this spring in Nashville and Maryland/DC
area.
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