Editor’s note: LAPD Reserve Officer Fazio was recently elected president of the California Reserve Peace Officers Association (CRPOA).
The Annual Reserve Peace Officers Conference (ARPOC), held this year at the Burbank Airport Marriott, is in the rear-view mirror, and for those who were unable to attend, you missed a really special set of experiences and some outstanding training. This was the first time the conference was held in Los Angeles County since the early 1980s.
The instructors and speakers we had were literally world-class. We kicked off the first day with best-selling author, screenwriter and producer Michael Connelly (Bosch). Connelly gave us some insight on his favorite cold-case homicide detective, Harry Bosch, and filled us in on the fact that Bosch will be a reserve police officer throughout the next series of his books. That ought to help recruitment!
Connelly was joined by real-life LAPD Detective Mitzi Roberts, of whom he fashioned one of his fictional detectives, and Detective Roberts was joined by Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman. The two took us through a cold-case homicide using the notorious Sam Little case, stated by the FBI to have been America’s most notorious serial killer, responsible for 93 homicides between 1970 and 2005. Little was arrested by Detective Roberts and successfully prosecuted by Deputy DA Silverman. The two did an outstanding job explaining the painstaking diligence and detail that was required to prosecute this dirt bag.
During this year’s conference, we had instructors who were world-renowned experts on human trafficking, suicide by cop, biker gangs and domestic terrorism, and there was a tactical medical response class held at Burbank Airport. In addition, the LAPD arranged for our attendees to select one of three off-sites — EVOC, shooting and building searches — at the Edward Davis Training Facility about 20 minutes away.
Each year, our ARPOC gets better, and we will soon get underway designing ARPOC 2023, which will be back in Lake Tahoe. We encourage you to bring some of your partners, and keep in mind, CRPOA is our only firewall between us and a California Legislature that isn’t always supportive of law enforcement. Let’s get people to join our ranks and ensure our California reserve peace officers remain the best trained in the country! Attending ARPOC, you can get up to 24 hours in-service training for your Continuing Professional Training (CPT) requirement.