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After 26 Years of Attending IACP, It’s Still All About One Thing

By Michael Sale

I recently returned home after attending the annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in San Diego, California. This was my 26th IACP conference.  Back in 1982, I was appointed to coordinate the 1987 IACP conference in Metropolitan Toronto which led me to my first conference in Houston, Texas, in 1985.  As career opportunities grew, and retirement came and went, there always seemed to be a good reason for participating in this, the greatest gathering of law enforcement leaders anywhere.

For the record, though, this wasn’t my first police chiefs’ conference. I was a driver, on the host committee, for the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) when it was last held in Toronto in August 1975.  And that’s where this story really begins.

Toronto did not have a convention center in 1975. To properly accommodate the CACP conference, Metropolitan Toronto Police selected the famous Royal York Hotel as the site that could handle every aspect of this prestigious gathering of Canada’s police leaders. I can still remember the excitement, as a young police officer, when I walked into the trade show to see police motorcycles, trimmed in chrome, patent leather Sam Browne belts, boots and leggings, roof lights, sirens and revolvers of all descriptions. 

Some innovative exhibitors were demonstrating new methods for developing photographs at crime scenes while others were previewing new portable devices that could be used on the road to determine the condition of motorists suspected of drinking and driving.

By 1985, at the IACP conference in Houston, I noticed for the first time, the emergence of various products that would automate police departments; simple computer systems, with their monochromatic green screens, could efficiently manage traditional police administrative and investigative files. Body armor and other forms of safety equipment were now routinely available to the modern police officer. 

By the end of the decade, wireless technology was a major attraction at other IACP trade shows. I can still remember seeing my first demonstration of the tiny cellular flip-phone from which a call could be made from a convention center in Arizona to police headquarters in Toronto – like magic!  When the Internet came into common usage, the business of managing police systems exploded. At the same time, I had been noticing a new emphasis on the roles of the chief of police and the need for higher education across all areas of police leadership. As one century was ending and another was beginning, I started to see educational institutions offering leadership programs to IACP delegates. I counted 23 universities exhibiting at an IACP conference, promoting convenient degree programs that would prepare police officers, and executives, for every aspect of policing in an increasingly complex society; it was then I realized we’d gone from revolvers to universities, in a short 35 years.

I learned all this from the police trade shows and exhibitions, but I also realized that for many IACP conference delegates, the modern “law enforcement education and technology exposition” is the conference.  

But there’s more to the IACP conference than the exhibits.

For many years, I was a member of IACP’s conference committee, comprised of host city representatives and interested members of the general membership. Our purpose was to make regular recommendations for improving the conference. At one of our earliest meetings, Charlie Higginbotham, IACP’s Director of Information and Services, recited a story that has stayed with me for years: Some time before, IACP had decided to retain the services of the Gallup people to properly survey past delegates to determine what features of the annual conference motivated them to attend each year. Several factors were uncovered, but the three most popular, in order, were networking, training sessions and access to the world’s largest police trade show. But Charlie Higginbotham’s experience with IACP convinced him that the top three reasons for conference attendance were networking, networking and networking.

Since I have returned home, and because I am online and connected to various social media, I have been regularly reminded of all the contacts I made in San Diego as evidenced by the number off follow-up messages I am receiving via services like LinkedIn and Twitter. My networks have been “humming.”

After 26 conferences, I’m sold; it’s still all about the networking.

Leischen Kranick is a Managing Editor at AMU Edge. She has 15 years of experience writing articles and producing podcasts on topics relevant to law enforcement, fire services, emergency management, private security, and national security.

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