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Welcome to the Coastal Bend Peace Officers Association
Serving the Coastal Bend and it's Officers Since 1966.
in memorium
CBPOA 1st Vice-President, Commander John Davis
The President, Board of Directors and general membership of the CBPOA are saddened to learn of the passing today of our 1st Vice-President, Commander John Davis. Below is a repost of a brief remembrance from Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd:
It is with great sadness we announce that a distinguished member of the Goliad County Sheriff’s Office passed away today.
Operation Lone Star Taskforce Commander John Davis passed away after he became ill soon after successfully overseeing a multi-agency enforcement action in Wharton and Jackson Counties.
Commander Davis had a 40-year law enforcement career that took him all across Texas, even being tasked by the State to help lead the effort to locate and arrest the “Texas Seven” escapees in December of 2000.
John was selected by Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd to command the newly formed Operation Lone Star Taskforce, which includes 22 agencies. Commander Davis was a man of faith, integrity, and relentless dedication. He was instrumental in the success of the Taskforce and gave all he had to make our region a safer place to live.
Matthew 24:12-14
“And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations and then the end will come.”
Commander John Davis has gone to his reward, so we ask that you keep his family in your prayers.
God Bless. -ЯB
a legend gone but not forgotten
Constable Valdemar (Val) Ramirez
San Patricio Co Constable Valdemar (Val) Ramirez (79) passed away this morning at his home in Mathis. Val served the community of Mathis & San Patricio County for 38 years. Val served as our court bailiff for 7 years prior to taking the Constable job in Mathis. A dedicated lawman and a hero to many of us. Fly high my friend, may God Bless you…
Some scenes from our January 2023 meeting in kingsville
Welcome to the Coastal Bend Peace Officers Association
There's much to see here. So, take your time, look around, and learn all there is to know about us. We hope you enjoy our site and take a moment to drop us a line.
San Patricio County Chief Deputy Adrian Rodriguez
CBPOA President
your upcoming cbpoa meetings for 2023
April 27, 2023
October 26, 2023
April 27, 2023
Live Oak County Sheriff's Office will host the second (spring) meeting of 2023. Location TBA at a later date.
June 27, 2023
October 26, 2023
April 27, 2023
We welcome the Nixon Police Department as a first-time host for the summer 2023 meeting. Location TBA at a later date.
October 26, 2023
October 26, 2023
October 26, 2023
Bee County Sheriff's Office, Beeville Police Department and the Refugio County Sheriff's Office will close out 2023 hosting our fall meeting. Location TBA at a later date.
Meet your 2023 directors
Want to Meet Your 2023-2024 President & Directors?
Click on the "Our Directors and History" page to see our updated list.
Denver Public Schools superintendent brings back SRO's
Two years after the school board cut ties with Denver PD, officers will be posted following shooting
By Nicole C. Brambila and Julia Cardi Nico
The Gazette
DENVER — In light of yet another shooting at East High School, the topic of school resource officers from Denver police in schools again moved front and center.
In June 2020, the Denver School Board unanimously voted to cut ties with Denver Police, following the murder of George Floyd.
But Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero told the Denver Gazette's news partners Chalkbeat Colorado Wednesday he will have an armed officer at each of the district's comprehensive high schools — a step that he acknowledges likely violates school board policy.
In a letter Marrero sent to school board members Wednesday, several hours after a student allegedly shot two deans at the school, he wrote that he is "committing to having an armed officer at each comprehensive high school.
A check of other metro Denver area school districts showed widespread use of officers in schools.
Cherry Creek School District has armed SROs and district security coordinators at every high school, spokeswoman Lauren Snell wrote in an email to The Denver Gazette. SROs patrol and support elementary and middle schools.
Exterior doors in elementary and middle schools, too, remain locked at all times, Snell said, requiring anyone entering to be buzzed in and report to the office. The district is also in the process of installing secure vestibules in all elementary and middle schools where visitors can conduct business without being given access to the campus.
In addition to armed officers and additional security measures, Cherry Creek classrooms have a "RedBag" that contains life-saving first aid supplies as well as a communication tool that provides information with a QR code students can scan during a lockdown emergency.
Believed to be the first in the country, Cherry Creek officials have called the RedBag "a game changer" that addresses the physical and psychological safety needs of students and teachers.
The Aurora Joint School District has armed SROs at its five traditional high schools, which can have upwards of 2,000 students, said Corey Christiansen, a district spokesperson. The high schools also have what the district calls "campus safety officers." The smaller magnet high schools do not.
"It's really just about size," Christiansen said of the SRO placement.
In 2014, the Aurora district reworked its relationship with the police department to better identify the responsibility of law enforcement and staff.
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests across the U.S. in 2020, Aurora Superintendent D. Rico Munn talked about this work, memorialized in a Memorandum of Understanding with Aurora Police.
"Senior members of each team met together to discuss and understand which student behaviors should be addressed as educational matters and which were police matters," Munn wrote in 2020.
Some of the visible outcomes of the new approach resulted in removing police vehicles from high school entrances, Munn has said.
The Denver Gazette also reached out to officials at Adams 12 School District, Douglas County School District and JeffCo Public Schools, who did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment on their SRO policies.
It is unknown how many districts across Colorado use SROs to address security issues. The state does not keep data on this, said Jeremy Meyer, a Colorado Department of Education spokesperson.
(c)2023 The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
Visit The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.) at www.gazette.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Idaho Supreme Court vacates drug conviction
Justices ruled that K-9 jumping onto car door and sniffing at the seam constituted trespassing
By Nicole Blanchard
The Idaho Statesman
BOISE, Idaho — The Idaho Supreme Court has vacated a Mountain Home man’s conviction for felony drug possession and delivery after it ruled that a police drug-sniffing dog trespassed and conducted an illegal search by putting its paws on his vehicle, prompting the search that led to his arrest.
The court issued its decision Monday, with three of the five justices in agreement and two dissenting.
[READ: State v. Dorff]
The case centered on the 2019 arrest of Kirby Dorff. According to court documents, the officer said Dorff was stopped by a patrol officer in Mountain Home after Dorff drove across lanes of traffic without using a signal. A second officer arrived with a police K-9 named Nero who was trained to detect illegal drugs.
While Dorff explained to the first officer that he didn’t have a valid driver’s license or proof of insurance in the vehicle, Nero began sniffing around the car. Police body camera footage showed the dog jumped up against the car multiple times, including once when his paws rested on the driver’s side door and window as he sniffed the “upper seams” of the car, officials said.
Police searched Dorff’s vehicle based on the dog “alerting” them to the presence of drugs, its handler said. The officers found a pill bottle, folded papers and a baggie that had a white substance that testing later confirmed was meth. According to the court documents, the vehicle’s passenger told police Dorff had shown him a baggie of meth at the motel room they were sharing. Court filings said that when police searched the room, they found 19 grams of meth and additional drug paraphernalia.
Dorff was charged with felony delivery and possession of a controlled substance and misdemeanor drug paraphernalia possession — charges he argued stemmed from Nero trespassing on his vehicle. Dorff’s attorney submitted a motion to suppress, or exclude, the evidence from the case, which an Ada County District Court judge rejected.
Dorff pleaded guilty on the condition that he could appeal the denial of his motion to suppress evidence. In June 2020, he appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court.
Justice Robyn Brody in the majority opinion wrote that justices weighed whether the dog’s intrusion on the exterior of Dorff’s vehicle constituted trespassing as it would have if the dog had entered the interior of the vehicle.
Ultimately, Brody wrote, she and justices John Stegner and Colleen Zahn agreed that the exterior of the vehicle is protected by the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful searches. They said the drug-sniffing dog “intermeddled” with Dorff’s personal effects by jumping up on the car.
“Intermeddling is the difference between someone who brushes up against your purse while walking by and someone who, without privilege or consent, rests their hand on your purse or puts their fingers into your purse before your eyes or behind your back,” Brody wrote.
According to the majority opinion, it doesn’t matter that the unlawful search included the exterior of Dorff’s property or was performed by a drug-sniffing dog.
“There is no asterisk to the Fourth Amendment excusing the unconstitutional acts of law enforcement when they are accomplished by means of a trained dog,” Brody wrote.
The justices vacated Dorff’s conviction and reversed the Ada County judge’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence. Now the case returns to a district court to proceed with the motion to suppress in place.
Two justices — Greg Moeller and Chief Justice Richard Bevan — wrote dissenting opinions. Moeller disagreed with the idea that Nero placing his paws on Dorff’s vehicle constitutes an illegal search. Moeller said the majority decision returns the court to “murky and uncertain legal waters.”
Bevans in a separate opinion reiterated his view from an earlier case that a drug-sniffing dogs canine instincts aren’t the same as intentional police intrusion.
For justices to equate a drug-sniffing dog “instinctually jumping onto the exterior of a car” to a government agent placing a tracking device on a vehicle “stretches logic beyond the breaking point of reasonableness,” Bevans wrote.
©2023 The Idaho Statesman.
How digital field notes help officers de-escalate situations
Record management systems can support de-escalation tactics and provide agencies with analytics
Content provided by CivicEye
De-escalation is undoubtedly a current buzzword within the public safety space. As civilians insist on increasing transparency from police, many law enforcement agencies have continued to pursue de-escalation tactics and strategies.
Lexipol recently defined de-escalation by describing “When circumstances reasonably permit, officers should use non-violent strategies and techniques to decrease the intensity of a situation, improve decision-making, improve communication, reduce the need for force, and increase voluntary compliance (e.g., summoning additional resources, formulating a plan, attempting verbal persuasion).” [1]
Ideally, de-escalation techniques are designed to protect potential suspects or offenders from use of force, while also protecting law enforcement officials from liability.
In response, officers have turned to new technology to increase evidence quality and improve trust with the general public, such as the use of body cameras. But how can they continue to implement technology to support de-escalation?
Read on as we examine how record management systems (RMS) can support de-escalation tactics and provide departments with effective analytics to maximize the use of technology in their investigations.
YOUR RMS: NOT JUST FOR INCIDENT REPORTS
Law enforcement officials typically use records management systems for storing criminal justice records, retrieving information, archiving files and streamlining their law enforcement operations digitally. [2]
Different RMS models have different features and/or modules to add on to the software’s basic functions, including syncing with CAD and JMS systems, alerts on BOLOs, data analytics for crime mapping and field reporting. These enhanced features can make a difference in how officers approach a scene or specific individual. CivicRMS, CivicEye’s public safety platform, includes tools to flag individuals and leave digital notes that follow an individual’s profile. This additional commentary allows officers to be more aware of situations before entering into an interaction with a person with specific needs and/or triggers.
By utilizing effective communication techniques, officers can diffuse a potentially dangerous situation and minimize the use of force. This not only ensures the safety of all parties involved, but also helps to build trust and positive relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve.
For example, Nick Dunn from Sparta Police Department in White County, Tennessee, uses digital field notes to track specific de-escalation tactics catered to persons he’s interacted with before, while also reviewing notes left by other officers.
“It allows us to be able to deal with certain individuals appropriately, whether they have some kind of past trauma, medical handicap, hearing impairment, autism – it just gives us a head’s up if this person needs to be dealt with in a different manner,” he explained.
Typically, many officers do not have access to notes on what happened in previous shifts unless they verbally exchange information with officers during shift change.
Captain Nate Theiss, from White County Sheriff’s Department, stressed that writing digital notes has kept the agency’s officers safer. Particularly, Theiss explained that users can see what the previous shift was doing at a specific address earlier.
“Before [implementing digital notes], we had no idea [what previous shifts were doing]. So you’d have to [rely on] word-of-mouth or shift changes ... Now we can click it and see the previous incidents,” Theiss explained.
Users can add these notes within the RMS by attaching an alert to an individual’s profile within the master persons’ index. This index is highly searchable, which allows officers to find information quickly and easily.
For example, when Captain Theiss or another law enforcement official scans a person’s driver’s license, they can see any attached alerts that other LEOs have added. An alert could inform an LEO of an individual’s tendencies toward combative behavior or suggestions on how to effectively de-escalate a situation with a specific individual.
Theiss described a situation in which a person had autism, and in the Individual Alert, an officer had left a phone number and described that calling that phone number and speaking with the person’s mom or sister helped calm him down.
“Moving forward, [this feature] is going to keep the community a whole lot safer. We can now see these little notes that officers are putting in, whenever we’ve dealt with somebody before that can de-escalate that situation when, before, they didn’t have that information,” Theiss stated.
Overall, it’s vital that officers can share their personal experiences in the field with their fellow officers. Here are three other reasons why officers should use a digital RMS to share their field notes.
- Easier access to accurate information: By sharing their field notes through a records management system, law enforcement officers will have a centralized source of information that can be easily accessed by other officers and investigators. This will help ensure that all cases are handled with accurate and up-to-date information.
- Increased efficiency and accuracy: By having all relevant information stored in one place, officers can quickly find the information they need, which will help to streamline investigations and increase efficiency. This will also help to reduce errors and ensure that the investigation is conducted in the most accurate way possible.
- Improved accountability: By having access to all field notes, supervisors and other officers will be able to review the notes and ensure that the officers are conducting their investigations properly. Steps, such as these, will help agencies build greater trust with the general public, as officers are held accountable for sharing their notes.
TAKEAWAYS
Digital field notes can keep officers safer and promote de-escalation tactics. By recording their field notes directly within an RMS, officers can streamline their notes with existing information and potentially create Individual Alerts to protect law enforcement officials, while simultaneously supporting officers and civilians with individualized de-escalation tactics.
Alongside training and research, modern tools can equip officers to better de-escalate situations. Click here to learn more about how CivicRMS can revolutionize your law enforcement agency.
SOURCES
- Police Use of Force. Lexipol. (2023). Retrieved March 2, 2023, from https://useofforce.lexipol.com/
- Law Enforcement Records Management Systems (RMSs) as They Pertain to FBI Programs and Systems. Federal Bureau of Investigation Criminal Justice Information Services Division. (n.d.). Retrieved March 2, 2023, from https://ucr.fbi.gov/law-enforcement-records-management-system
FURTHER RESOURCES
Oliva, J. R., Morgan, R., & Compton, M. T. (2010). A Practical Overview of De-Escalation Skills in Law Enforcement: Helping Individuals in Crisis While Reducing Police Liability and Injury. Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations, 15-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332581003785421
International Association of Chiefs of Police (n.d.). De-Escalation: Guidelines for how to begin evaluating your agency’s de-escalation practices. The IACP. https://www.theiacp.org/resources/de-escalation-use-of-force
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Hoof Patrol Program
San Patricio County S.O. is teaming up with Jim Wells, Bee & Refugio Counties on a Loose Livestock & Fence Damage program. These other counties have an active program in place that is aimed to help ranchers with animals that come loose. The program will be promoted through the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Association and the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. They will start promoting the program soon with meetings at various locations. They plan to assign a deputy to manage the program & check on these ranches & extend the program to farmers as well. There is NO cost to Rancher or Farmer & San Patricio S.O. will provide the plate & registration.
About Us
Serving the Coastal Bend and it's Officers Since 1966
Serving the Coastal Bend and it's Officers Since 1966
Serving the Coastal Bend and it's Officers Since 1966
"The purpose of the CBPOA shall be to promote the cooperation and understanding of all persons involved in the enforcement of laws of the State of Texas and of the United States; the continued and convenient interchange of information and training between various Federal, State and local agencies, and to conduct ourselves in a manner that
"The purpose of the CBPOA shall be to promote the cooperation and understanding of all persons involved in the enforcement of laws of the State of Texas and of the United States; the continued and convenient interchange of information and training between various Federal, State and local agencies, and to conduct ourselves in a manner that will gain the respect of those we serve and to constantly strive to improve our position.'
Scholarships
Serving the Coastal Bend and it's Officers Since 1966
Serving the Coastal Bend and it's Officers Since 1966
The Coastal Bend Peace Officers Association is responsible for awarding thousands of dollars of scholarship money each year to qualified and responsible sons and daughters of CBPOA members who wish to carry on the tradition of law enforcement and law enforcement related fields.
Our Members
Serving the Coastal Bend and it's Officers Since 1966
Our Members
Whether you help through providing meeting locations, volunteering your time, or spreading our mission through word-of-mouth, thank you. We couldn't accomplish our goals without the help of members like you.