ALERT Members and Friends,
Message from the President...
Hopefully this newsletter continues to find you and your families safe and healthy in this new year! Now that the holidays are over, we have some exciting work ahead of us for 2022. We have some important announcements we want to pass on to everyone and as always, if you have any questions, ideas or concerns please reach out to myself or any Board Member. We are looking forward to 2022 and with the involvement of our membership hope to make ALERT more active in the coming months! Stay safe!
Sincerely,
Geoff
Conference 2021 Tulsa, Oklahoma
We again would like to thank everyone who made our 2021 Tulsa Conference a huge success!! This was our 30th Conference and even with pandemic concerns, it turned out to be a tremendous week of learning and networking! I would personally like to thank Travis Yates, the Board, Candyss Bryant, and the EVOC staff of Tulsa PD for all their hard work in planning and carrying everything out that week! I would like to thank our sponsors, L3 Harris, Federal Signal, Virage, FAAC, HAAS ALERT, and Skid Car. And finally our presenters Jason Hodges, Jeff Eggleston, Pierro Hirsch, Doug Larson, Kelly Duvall, John Bostain, Jay Autera, Joseph Aretino, Amanda Barak, Jeremy Agulnek, Sean Larkin, and Al Liebno. Track day was awesome with lots of hands on driving opportunities at both driving tracks!
I want to congratulate our 2021 Z Man award winner Deputy Shannon Lofland of the Arapahoe County Colorado Sheriff's Office. Also congratulations to our 2021 Bruce Cabral Scholarship recipient Maddox DeVault of Iowa, the daughter of member Ryan DeVault.
Also at the Conference I was honored to be sworn in as your President for another term and Chris Swanson from Oklahoma City was sworn in for another term as Secretary.
Conference 2022 Charlotte North Carolina
We are excited to announce our location and date for our 2022 Conference! It will be held October 2-6 2022 at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Charlotte, 4800 South Tryon Street, Charlotte NC and will be hosted by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department! More information will be forthcoming in the coming months. We already have some great driving activities planned for track day at CMPD's training facility!
We would like to get our membership involved as presenters. We are sure that within our membership we have the expertise of some of our members who may have a class that would be of interest to the attendees at our conference. We are looking for 1.5 hour presentations that are related to vehicle operations training in some aspect. Submissions must be forwarded through email by March 1 2022 to alert.president@gmail.com.
Presentation submissions must include a detailed explanation of the course with an attached PDF of the PowerPoint or similar visual presentation portion. If you have an idea for a presentation, or know of a topic or presenter you would like to see next year, please reach out to me as well. Selected presenters will have one night's lodging covered by ALERT.
Bruce Cabral 2022 Memorial Scholarship
Members, your son or daughter could be the recipient of a $500 or $1,000 Scholarship!
Each year ALERT International provides educational scholarships to children of ALERT Members. Applicants must:
(1) be a son/daughter whose parent has been a member of ALERT International for at
least the 12 previous months (United States and Canada),
(2) be a graduating senior
(3) have a scholastic average of at least a B, or 3.0 on a 4.0 scale
(4) plan to attend a college, university, trade or business school
Please email your application or questions to: alert.president@gmail.com, c/o Bruce Cabral Memorial Scholarship. We will present this at our Closing Banquet in Charlotte.
Z-man Award
Mark Y. Zylawy, "Z-Man", a highly regarded Portland police officer, died January 27, 2008 in a tragic and untimely accident at the age 40.
In memory of Mark and what he stood for regarding Emergency Vehicle Operations Training, ALERT International has set up this ACHIEVEMENT AWARD. This award is presented on an annual basis for the best innovative idea in Police Driver Training in the past year. The Z-Man Award recognizes EVO Instructors for their exceptional efforts to improve emergency vehicle training. Take a few moments and check out the Z-Man Award description on our website and nominate a member of your department or unit.
Do you know of a training unit or an individual that has made an impact on EVOC? Don't wait until the last minute, Please submit your submissions as soon as possible at
Info. Request by Member
I am currently an EVO instructor with my agency and have been tasked with developing training for the following concern:
I've been told that on two separate occasions some neighboring agencies have had violators stop, then back into the patrol vehicle aggressively so the patrol vehicle's airbags are set off, then speed away.
Hopefully this tactic doesn't become commonplace, however I was wondering if you could forward this out to others to see if anyone :
Is experiencing this issue?
What tactics or techniques are being trained to mitigate this?
Josh McKissick | Sergeant
Bellingham Police Department
360.778.8699
ALERT Board Positions
We have two positions on the Board up for election. The positions are Treasurer and Vice President. If you are interested in either position please submit to me an email with intent to run, and attach a resume that can be forwarded to all membership for election purposes.
Regional Conferences
Folks, as restrictions are being lifted and training is getting back to "normal" we would like some of our regional reps to look at hosting a regional training event in 2022! We will support you in any way possible to help you set something up. Please reach out to me with any questions!
ALERT Consultant
The Board of ALERT is excited to announce we have hired Candyss Bryant again for 2022 as our organization consultant. Candyss did an awesome job last year securing sponsors and vendors for our 2021 Conference. If you have any questions, ideas, or suggestions regarding sponsors or potential sponsors or promotional ideas for ALERT, please feel free to reach out to Candyss directly at candyssbryant@gmail.com.
ALERT Website
We are in the process of updating our current website. We are looking for ideas and suggestions of what you, our membership, would like to see on the website. We plan to have a members only section with exclusive information and ideas to help each other with driver training ideas and topics. We are looking for updated lesson plans and driving courses that you would be willing to share. Please reach out to me or Candyss with any ideas or suggestions.
ALERT Newsletter Articles
We are looking for articles and information from our vast experience of our members to share with other members. Please consider sharing your expert knowledge and information with ALERT's members and partners. Submit articles to me at alert.president@gmail.com or Al Liebno at
alert.pastpresident@gmail.com.
Geoff Bush
ALERT International President
