Open Letter to our Membership from National President Frank Hernandez

As your president, it is indeed an honor for me to be forwarding this letter to our membership.

As President of The Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association (HAPCOA), I accept the challenge and appreciate the opportunity to reaffirm the commitment of our association to advance the opportunities for Hispanic Americans in law enforcement throughout our great nation.

First and foremost, I'd like to thank the membership and their family members for their attendance and participation in this, our 32nd annual training conference. Secondly, I'd like to personally recognize our newest members to the Executive Board, Special Agent Hector Hernandez, U.S. Secret Service, 3rd VP; Capt. David Salinas, Bexar County Sheriff Department, 4th VP; and Special Agent Albert Arias, U.S. Marshal Service, Sgt at Arms. I'd also like to thank our Corporate Sponsors, Motorola and Anheuser Busch, for their unwavering support.

This year's conference provided unique classroom training opportunities to members by offering topics from a behavioral perspective, such as the "Evolution of Al Qaida," to exploring the partnership between the criminal investigator and psychologist, as in "Cold Case Homicide Investigation." We were also honored at the opening ceremonies by our keynote speaker, and native Texan of Puerto Rican descent, the Honorable Dionel M. Aviles, Under Secretary of the Navy.

As I previously stated at our board installation, HAPCOA was established in 1973 and is this nation's oldest and largest association in the U.S. of Hispanic American command officers from law enforcement and criminal justice agencies at the municipal, county, state and federal levels. HAPCOA was founded on two basic principals:

  1. Bridge the gap between law enforcement officers and the Hispanic community.
  2. Mentor junior law enforcement officers into command/leadership position.

So with that in mind, I reaffirm my challenge to every HAPCOA member to do just that over the next year...to continue to bridge the gap between the law enforcement community at large and our Hispanic communities and to start mentoring young officers into command/leadership positions within their departments or agencies. It's also my commitment to the HAPCOA membership that we increase the number of corporate sponsors during this coming year.

The Executive Board encourages any recommendations or suggestions that would improve and strengthen our association.

The Board can be contacted at Info@hapcoa.org

I look forward to seeing you again next year at the Las Vegas Flamingo Hotel to celebrate our 33rd Training Conference.

Thank you