Dear APA Member,

I am humbled by the position I now find myself in and thank you for the opportunity to serve you as the President of the Austin Police Association. I wanted to get some information out to you as soon as possible, now that I am in my 9th day on the job. I will be brief, but I hope to update these messages to you frequently as developments unfold.

COMMUNICATION
Look for myself or one of our APA Reps to be coming to an office near you soon to visit and obtain your home e-mail address. This will be the chosen way to communicate with you in real time. Once we have this communication system operating, all you will have to do is turn on your personal computer and there it will be. We will make sure you get just information that interests you, as our database will be designed so that detective info will go to detectives, and patrol will go to patrol. You will hear from your board reps that way and you can respond back to us. I assure you the home e-mail address you provide will be secure, and we won’t send you junk. I desperately need you to opt into this system, as we cannot achieve some of the things that are necessary unless I can keep you informed every step of the way.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REVIEW
Do not be caught off guard in reference to the DOJ report. While the 50 page report may be good bedtime reading (you will be asleep after page 3), there are some very dangerous things recommended within. Your APA leaders are studying this document and will be prepared to make our position known in regards to the most damaging recommendations. You will know our position on these items, because I am going to let you know what they are.

THE BUMP
It’s coming, and at this point there is nothing we can do about it. I was troubled to find out that there is still some confusion out there about schedules that each shift will have, come March 29th. I have been assured by the Chief’s office that the schedules are on APD Net and that they are definitive enough for you to begin making your plans. If you have problems accessing the schedule, please contact your supervisor. If you still have problems call me and we will make sure the department makes them available to you. I do not yet have access to APD Net from my office, so I have to take their word for it. As for the overall purpose of the bump, I guess we will just wait and see what the results tell us at the end of this experiment.

TONE ALERTS
Patrol, there was some confusion about a request I made concerning tone alerts. I requested that they be reserved only for ONA’s and armed robberies in progress, and not missing pets etc. Somewhere in the translation, the administration cut off all tone alerts, INCLUDING ONA’S. We made our position clear within the hour, and hopefully the tone alerts will be initiated for those serious safety situations only. Let me know if there still is a problem with this. As of this writing I have been assured it will be corrected.

DETECTIVE NIGHT SHIFT
The APA’S position on this is that to do it right, it should be centralized with a unit of detectives and their own supervision. The detectives should be on permanent nights/evenings. This in our position is better than a rotating night shift for detectives in various area commands in which detectives work a regular day job and rotate every few months into a night position. For one thing, the night shift detective unit will probably be staffed with detectives who prefer to work those hours. For another, it would just make sense to have a unit centralized to do this work. For those of you, who disagree or have better ideas, please call me. I do not know what the final decision is going to be on this, but the latest is that it will occur sometime in mid 09. I will keep you posted.

For individual concerns or questions please feel free to call me or send me an e-mail.

Wayne A. Vincent
Cell 589-7162
waynevincent@austinpolice.com