Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
Just when you thought it was safe to come back to the blog because IACP had come and gone…
Actually, this surfaced in the Boston Herald on the last day of the 2006 IACP convention in Boston, which ended last week. The Herald is not regarded as an especially pro-police newspaper, tending to spin any news involving the cops into something negative. Then again, sometimes these things don’t require any spin at all.
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Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
It took me a bit longer to get this final installment posted because the photographs I took at IACP were on the same laptop that I broke, and while I had the originals still on the camera’s memory card, I didn’t have anything to download them to. Well, here we are, back at the office, and I have no more excuses, beyond that it’s really late and I would like to go home.
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Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
I had intended to make this a daily event, but our parent division, the Cygnus Public Safety Group, had their Innovations awards ceremonies last night, and I got elected as the photographer, as someone who knew what they were doing was not available. Then, this morning, I destroyed the display on my faithful laptop computer, so I am limited to doing my computing on borrowed machines, this one in the lobby of the Sheraton. So, if this ends abruptly, it will probably be because the system booted me off. Read the rest of this entry »
Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
The opening ceremonies for IACP (that’s the International Association of Chiefs of Police) in Boston took place this afternoon. In keeping with tradition, I watched them from a TV monitor in the conference center lobby. If you have ever been to a police conference and attended the opening ceremonies, then you know that they line up more or less as follows: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in
Tim Dees on Law Enforcement on October 12th, 2006
Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
Chief Bill Harvey’s column from October 4th, and another one that I was editing tonight and that will go live next week, brought back memories of my encounters with “oral boards,” where those aspiring to be soldiers of the law get to be interrogated and make their case for why they are worthy of the badge. For the unfortunate person in the hot seat, it is a less than optimal experience.
I went to a lot of these, as I tested for maybe fifteen different agencies before I was hired. In the mid-seventies, the economy sucked and there were lots of men coming out of the post-Vietnam military and looking for cop jobs. Civil service looked pretty good when compared to the instability of the private sector. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in
Tim Dees on Law Enforcement on October 4th, 2006
Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
About three months ago, just before we switched from the conventional content management system to the blog format for my rants, I wrote an editorial titled The Rat Squad. I commented that some internal affairs units were used as weapons by unscrupulous commanders who were looking to get rid of employees that had displeased them, regardless of whether they were any good at being cops. I further suggested that some, if not all, internal investigations should be done by a state-level agency that didn’t have a political agenda with regard to that law enforcement agency.
My pontifications on this topic were not warmly received by the National Internal Affairs Investigators Association, an outfit that I didn’t know existed until I got an e-mail from their president, Randy Rider. Randy is a lieutenant with the Douglasville, GA Poice Department, and for what it’s worth, a very nice guy. Randy told me that he had received a number of calls and e-mails from his membership, criticizing my views and recommending that the NIAIA take some official position on the issue. I told Randy that if he or one of his colleagues wished to write an opposing editorial, I would publish it on Officer.com and cross-link the two files. For whatever reason, that hasn’t happened yet. Randy did invite me to attend his association’s annual conference, which was held in Gatlinburg, TN this last weekend. In fact, it ended on Tuesday, but I had to beat feet on Monday afternoon to attend a business meeting. But I did get to meet many of the members of the NIAIA, all of whom I found to be friendly and professional, and completely unlike the sleazy characters I described in my article and whom are portrayed on TV. And, fortunately for me, those that were anticipating the opportunity to tar and feather me or bestow a public Atomic Wedgie were dissuaded by cooler heads.
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