IT’S TIME FOR OPEN ENROLLMENT! The 2021 Benefits Fair for the Houston Police Officers’ Union will be Friday, March 26 at 8 am to 6 pm in the Meeting Hall. There will also be First Responder Benefit Trust representatives visiting stations and facilities during the City of Houston open enrollment period. You can also bookRead more
We have been working very hard on the latest “mandate” from the mayor. The very first time we heard about the mayor wanting to have vaccine mandates was during a weekly City Council meeting when he stated that he was looking into all city employees get vaccinated. We immediately began to research if this was legal, and what we could do to prevent it. Our attorneys reached out to the Labor Relations Institute and found that there was case law and actual Supreme Court rulings on this, though the Supreme Court case was 1905. I believed that there must be other case law out that would prevent this from taking place. We do have constitutional rights, right?
I know we have all paid very close attention to the Methodist Employee case. The ruling from the court was that they can
Leadership is a word tossed around by many to label the head of an organization. But what is a real leader? Is it a chief of police, is it the commander at the station, or is it the hard worker on your shift?
There are plenty of supervisors out there who think they are “leaders.” But let’s be honest, not every supervisor is a leader. You can teach anyone to be a supervisor, but you cannot teach leadership.
Can you teach aspects of leadership? Certainly. But we must also understand that there are certain aspects of leadership that cannot be taught or learned from a book. Leadership is a calling, a feeling, a burning from inside that makes you want to do what you do.
True leaders will find a way to make things work in the worst of situations and a way that makes ever
Members,
As President of the organization, I get all the negative feedback from members regarding ever aspect of the department as well as the HPOU. I often get frustrated when people come in and make comments without knowing what we really do here. I recently had an officer come in and ask exactly what his dues go for every month? Believe it or not, I appreciate people coming in and asking questions, and actually take an interest in what the organization does for them. I could tell he was frustrated, and this interaction give me the opportunity to show what we actually do (and brag a little). We spoke for almost an hour, and I believe that he was satisfied with what I had to say and felt more comfortable when he left. But our conversation made me realize that we do not do a ver
I came onto the Houston Police Department in 1990 in class No. 142. During my entire career I have been incredibly proud of the department and consider it one of the best police departments in the nation.
I can recall times when other departments would look to Houston and ask us to help train other departments. We have led the nation with our innovative homeless outreach and mental health response teams (CIRT). I have always considered myself a proactive officer being in the Gang Task Force, Divisional Gang Unit, and the Tact Team at Southeast.
I know firsthand that proactive policing is necessary to keep crime rates down and the community safe. If it were not for great proactive patrol officers and line level Tac and Gang units, the City of Houston would have been crime ridd
Members,
I’m sure that it is easy for those in Command to look at body camera videos and determine what you should be doing and saying in the streets, but we all know the realities of a high-stress scene.
Over the last few years, I have sat on the Administrative Discipline Committee fighting for officers over discipline recommendations. With the introduction of the Body Worn Camera systems there was a quick downturn on discipline cases as the cameras were somewhat of a shock to our system.
The department found that officers were much more professional when on camera. Over the years I have noticed that officers curse quite a bit on video, which has not been a problem when dealing with violent suspects.
As we all know, over the last year there has been a lot more scrutiny over