Alaska Chapter President Shirley Coté and Secretary/Treasurer Bob Beasley were grateful for the opportunity to attend the Presidents’ and Secretary/Treasurers’ meeting at Quantico March 5-9, 2017. Both found the meetings to be extremely helpful and they appreciated the opportunity to meet so many colleagues.
As did the other chapter representatives, Shirley and Bob took Alaska’s Session 267 attendees to dinner at Vinny’s Italian Restaurant. It was the first time we had the opportunity to meet Deputy Chief Dan Welborn from the Fairbanks Police Department and Lt. Lance Ewers with the Sitka Police Department. We had a great time and it didn’t take us long to form a friendship that will last a long time. In fact, Lance has agreed to join the Fundraising Committee for our Chapter. There is no doubt that Dan, too will be involved.
Our past president had to resign from the board for personal reasons and we are fortunate to have been able to reach out to our past president, Terry Vrabec to fill that position. We assuredly have on our board of all new officers a historical perspective with Terry’s 16 years as president.
Special Agent David Price will be retiring in May and he will be very missed as our Training Coordinator in the Anchorage Office. In February Dave pulled the selection committee together to make the very important decision of whom from Alaska will attend the 2018 sessions. The process was made up of Special Agent in Charge Marlin Ritzman, Assistant Special Agents in Charge Anthony Jung and Carolyn Perisot, Special Agent David Price, FBI Training and Liaison Specialist Debra Munoz, Lt. David Hanson from the Alaska State Troopers, Lt. Justin Doll from the Anchorage Police Department and Chapter President Shirley Coté. The process was very in-depth and was organized to ensure the most fair and objective way in selecting commanders from Alaska to attend the National Academy. The current attendees in Session #268 are Lt. Matthew Dobson from the Alaska Wildlife Troopers and Lt. Benjamin Langham from the Kenai Police Department.
The new vice presidents, Sean McGee, Barry Wilson, and Chad Goeden of the three state regions – Northern, Southcentral, and Southeast, respectively have been busy with their committee work. The Constitution and Bylaws have been revised for ratification by the membership at the next membership meeting. Training, membership, and fundraising are all active committees to ensure our members receive valuable benefits. Training is focused on the Executive Development Conference, which serves as Alaska’s Retrainer. The dates are December 6-8, 2017 with our annual membership meeting to be held on December 5th from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Our bi-annual membership meeting will be held at 3:00 p.m. on May 3rd at the State of Alaska Crime Detection Laboratory located at 4805 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Anchorage.
