SPRING 2013

 It is hard to believe that the spring of 2013 is upon us and it finds me with the realization that I am nearly three quarters of the way through my tenure as your association President. While it has been a busy year, I have to say that I have enjoyed working with a great Executive Board filled with fellow Chiefs that have shared of their valuable time, experience and energy to safeguarding our Profession with sound decision making on behalf of the organization. If you are reading this and have “thought” about getting involved, please do not merely think about it, get involved! District elections are right around the corner. If you need more information on the Districts and where you fit in, please contact the MACP office staff or a fellow Chief to find your place today.

I believe that perhaps the biggest challenge to me personally this year has been keeping up with our Executive Director Bob Stevenson. Bob is a high energy individual who is always looking for ways to promote the MACP and is never short on ideas and embraces change with a passion. Please help me convey many thanks to Bob when you see him for his dedication and leadership to our organization.

As I write this article, we have passed our Mid Winter conference and enjoyed one of the best conferences I have attended as it was filled with relevant training opportunities and provided what some vendors have described as being one of their best conferences ever. We rolled out our new Mentoring Chiefs initiative at the conference and my sincere thanks to Chiefs Dave Molloy and Neal Rossow for putting organization to the concept. If you are interested in the program, please contact our office or one of the Chiefs direct.

Our Spring Police Executive/New Chief School graduated a class of nineteen on March 29th and this marked the second such school run exclusively by our organization during my tenure. It is great to see the tremendous support of our fellow Chiefs of this training initiative. I want to thank the Chiefs that provided the instruction to our new brothers and sisters at the school, the Training and Education Committee and our Executive Director Robert Stevenson for coordinating the school and curriculum.

As expected, a flurry of legislative activity has been taking place and this means a heavy workload for our able Legislative Committee led by Chief George Basar. The issues are many and will not fit in a brief message such as this, so if you have particular concerns, please contact our Legislative Committee members to discuss your concerns with them and to help us formulate the best positions possible for our organization and profession. This committee is a tireless group of folks who make the time to champion our issues. Whether they are lobbying our legislators personally or testifying on behalf of our organization, they are all truly our “most valuable players.”

We also have to remain mindful that we all can and must do our part with your local legislators. Please contact them and let them know that you would like to be an active partner in discussion regarding bills that affect the Law Enforcement community and the communities we serve. As I stated in my fall message, the key to our success will be in direct relation to the amount of members we can motivate to be active with our area legislative representatives and participation in our association in the coming years.

In the area of relationship building, we continue to meet and look for ways to be proactive and collaborate with our fellow Law Enforcement partners at the MSP and the MSA. To that effect, Executive Director Stevenson, Immediate Past President Bourgeois, and I, have begun what promises to be regularly scheduled meetings with the State Police Director Colonel Etue to begin exploring opportunities.

The MACP is continuing be active in the area of becoming more accessible and to further our brand of recognition within the State. To that effect, we will be featuring a complete remodel of our website with many more features that will be of use to our member Chiefs. Additionally, MACP has recently jumped into the social media area by introducing a Facebook page to post things of interest to the MACP membership community. I would be remiss if I did not thank Past President and Ret. Chief Mike Lauretti for his hand in launching and populating the site with photos. Please review Director Stevenson’s article in this issue for more on these endeavors.

Your MACP membership numbers, in general, have remained the same from year to year and we strongly encourage every member Chief to reach out to other people in your areas that would like to become members in our organization and encourage them to join. The new “Supporting Member” designation has generated 26 new business members this year. Please reach out to vendors that you use to encourage their membership in the organization.

In closing, I want to remind all of you to begin looking for the information on the 2013 Summer Conference held at Shanty Creek in Bellaire, MI on June 23-26, 2013. Please plan on attending so that we can continue the momentum that we built at last year’s conference. We look forward to having many vendors, training opportunities and the return of the popular Police vehicle show.

Thank you for allowing me to serve our organization.

Chief Brian A. Hill
Gerrish Township Police Department