PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

As the Oregon Peace Officers Association enters its 41st year, we are well positioned to achieve our goals. I am happy to report to you that we have an enthusiastic board of volunteers who have made a commitment to donate their time, skills, and expertise to provide the membership with leadership.

The goals of OPOA are to provide quality training to law enforcement officers and staff, award scholarships to students with an interest in, or connection to law enforcement, publish the newsletter for the membership, and recognize outstanding law enforcement officers, which is accomplished through the annual awards banquet.

Currently, OPOA sponsors two major training conferences each year, the Major Crimes Conference and the OPOA Annual Conference. I highly recommend each OPOA member attend one or both of these conferences every year. The content changes to provide valuable information on current topics of interest, and the chance to meet and get to know fellow law enforcement officers from around the state is valuable. I also urge you to take advantage of the regional one-day trainings sponsored by OPOA on a regular basis throughout the state.

Last year, OPOA awarded more money in educational scholarships than ever before. We are proud of this program, and will be looking for more applications this year. Scholarship criteria and applications are located at the OPOA web site.

As always, we are looking for ways to improve our activities and grow our organization. The executive board is considering increased use of email for distribution of information, as well as improvements in the OPOA web site. If you have not visited and explored the web site fully, I recommend you invest a few minutes to do so, as it contains several interesting sections of information. OPOA has over a thousand members from all over the state, but there is still room to grow. One of our important tasks is to reach out to every law enforcement officer in the state to let them know the advantages of OPOA membership.

I am honored you have elected me as President of OPOA for 2009, and thank you for your commitment to our profession.