Officer.com Police Blogs & Podcasts

Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com

There are official opening days, opening days, days on which things are declared open, and days when something actually opens. Much semantic stuff prevails. The annual IACP meeting actually began on Saturday, October 13, but I was on airplanes then. I got into New Orleans late Saturday night, and will be in and around the New Orleans Convention Center until very early Wednesday morning. The conference had some sessions on Saturday, so you could say it was open then, but the exhibits didn’t open until Sunday, and the first general assembly was on Monday. You choose which is the real opening day.

The huge (as usual) exhibits area opened with speechifying, handshaking, and lots of grinning and posing before and after the traditional ribbon-cutting. IACP President Joseph Carter, Chief of the MBTA Transit Police in Boston, welcomed everyone and then introduced Superintendent Warren J. Riley of the New Orleans Police Department, the host agency this year. He, in turn invited representatives of Cisco Systems, Motorola, and Bank of America to join him and Carter in cutting the symbolic ribbon with an oversize pair of scissors, opening the exhibit floor to attendees. I call the ribbon “symbolic” because it was lying on the carpet until everyone had gathered at the entrance, and then a man off-camera picked up the loose end.

The exhibits floor had moderate traffic today, as there weren’t very many other activities going on. Monday was the First General Assembly, when principal speakers appear and formal business is done.

The IACP is run on a level a bit higher than most other police conferences. For instance, most of the meetings I go to might have a podium for the speaker and a table for his LCD projector so everyone can see the PowerPoint show. The PA system is often the hotel’s basic system, and if you can understand what’s going on, consider yourself lucky. The general assembly here is a Hollywood-level production. There is simultaneous translation of the proceedings, as they really do have international attendees (I sat next to an academy administrator from Botswana), theme music for transition between speakers, and multiple camera video simulcast for those that can’t or won’t come to the meeting hall. They could have — there were plenty of seats. You can see what’s happening on TV sets throughout the convention center, or, if you’re in the nosebleed seats inside, on one of the 60-foot high screens inside.

Spendy? Oh, yeah. This is the meeting where every vendor in creation comes to try and sell something to cops, and the buyers are here. No expense is spared, and the vendors mostly pay for it. If you think police gear is too expensive, this is one of the reasons why. This year’s exhibit floor has 47 aisles of vendor booths, although “booth” is a misleading way to describe some of these constructions. Some look like the reception area of a top-flight business office. There is a vehicle pavilion, a computer pavilion, and a weapons pavilion, or that’s what they’re called, anyway. Each “pavilion” is really a group of aisles, all under the same roof. Gargantuan mobile command post vehicles, tactical rescue trucks capable of surviving a land mine detonation, helicopters, motorcycles, and of course, squad cars, dot the floor. It’s always fun to look at the new toys.

I haven’t had that much time to look at the new toys, because this trip I am doing double duty as a news reporter. We usually have one or more members of our news staff attend this conference to do the first-hand reporting on the major sessions, but this trip, it’s just me. It might appear to the casual observer that reporting and writing news is more or less the same as the other writing and editing I do, but in fact it is quite different. I know this, because I think I’m reasonably good at this job, but I’m at best marginal as a reporter. Yesterday I got an excellent illustration of this.

I “covered” the general assembly meeting on Monday, and my report can be found on the O.com homepage. It’s okay, but when I discussed the story with our news director, he pointed out to me where I buried the most compelling item in the story. During the assembly, it was announced that the New Orleans Police had an officer shot early Saturday morning, and that blood donations were being solicited for him at a collection center on the exhibits floor. I got a little more information after I posted the story.

NOPD Detective Theolonious Dukes, a 19-year veteran of the department, was parking his truck in the driveway of his home at about 0300 on Saturday. He was approached by three men who came from between the houses and confronted him with guns. New Orleans has been plagued with home invasions as of late, and the officer I spoke to said that this was apparently a “wrong time, wrong place” event, rather than the targeting of a cop. The invaders forced Dukes and his wife into a bathroom in the house while they ransacked it for valuables. Detective Dukes was going to go along with the program as long as only property was at risk, as he didn’t want his family in the middle of a gunfight. But when one of the robbers said, “I ain’t goin’ ’til I see that pussy,” Dukes took the fight to them. Before these cowards fled, not caring to victimize someone who resists being victimized, Dukes was shot in the leg and abdomen, and his wife was shot in the foot. Both are at University Hospital in New Orleans, with the detective in critical condition. The torso wound is survivable, but there is a high risk of infection that can be fatal all on its own.

Our news director pointed out to me that “17,000 Asked to Give Blood for Wounded Officer” would have been a much better headline than “Chertoff, Mueller Address IACP.” I have to agree. I will tell you that there was a line at the donor center, where I met and kidded around with Assistant Chief Glen Anderson of the National Park Service. He did his bit and left a unit of his blood to replace that used for Detective Dukes. I’m hoping he doesn’t need it, but someone will.

I even dropped off a pint myself.