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By PORAC | June 1, 2015 | Posted in Chairman's Message

Chairman’s Message

FRED ROWBOTHAM
LDF Chairman

At the conclusion of the California Peace Officers’ Memorial weekend, your PORAC Board of Directors met in Sacramento. I gave the Legal Defense Fund presentation. I updated the Board of Directors on the status of the new service provider engagement contracts, which I first announced during the general session at the Annual Conference of Members last November. Every LDF service provider will be required to sign this new engagement contract. These new agreements will provide for a higher level of oversight and transparency into the operations of those who work for all of us. I expect to have our staff start rolling these out in the next couple of months.

I also reported to the PORAC Board of Directors that at the most recent LDF Trust meeting, the trustees voted to adopt an attorney code of conduct. Just as you and I, as public safety officers, are held to a higher standard, so should those we choose to surround ourselves with.
Through this proposed code of conduct, we hope to emphasize that any attorney who elects to make a living through the dues paid into LDF by public safety officers will be agreeing to act in compliance with rigorous standards of ethics, accountability, and professionalism.

The concept for this policy has already been embraced by the Board of Trustees, and the specific language is being drafted. The policy will be adopted in the very near future.

Also at the PORAC Board meeting, I announced that I plan to propose a trustee code of conduct at the next LDF Trust meeting. All member participants and all service providers need to be assured that each and every person involved at the executive level of our organization is consistently making decisions in the best interests of the member participants.

To this end, I will ask the trustees to adopt a policy that will prohibit a trustee from accepting any gift, gratuity, employment or any other consideration from a service provider or anyone associated with one of our service providers.

Recently I learned that the Deputy Sheriff’s Association of San Diego has decided to terminate its PORAC membership. I was disappointed to hear that an organization with such a long history with PORAC would decide to leave. The San Diego DSA was a founding member of PORAC years ago and possesses the distinction of having the longest-serving PORAC President in the history of the organization: Ron Cottingham, who represented them at the state level for 10 years. No doubt it is the DSA’s members who will feel the first sting of this decision made solely by the board of directors. The members will no longer have access to LDF, the great benefits of the IBT or access to legislators the way that only PORAC and its lobbyists do.

Public safety officers are under attack now more than ever. We must stand together as a united voice. There is only one recognized voice for law enforcement in California. That voice is PORAC. Everything else is just background noise. No group is big enough to go it alone; no group is so small that they should have to. PORAC is an organization that values both and provides value to both.

When groups splinter off, whether to go it alone or join another law enforcement organization of less significance, it hurts us all. It is only through speaking for our interests with one voice that we will weather difficult times.

Anyone who has heard me address the members in the last few years is familiar with my mantra. The PORAC Legal Defense Fund is the largest, most-respected legal defense fund representing public safety officers in the country. We, as an organization, must stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and always continue to improve on what we have. All of the policies addressed above will continue to raise the bar and heighten the professionalism with which this Trust provides service to our more than 107,000 members, participating in 40 states and two territories across the United States of America.