Editor’s & Past Presidents
Update
Conference Recap
First of all I’d like to apologize to you, our membership for the lateness
of the release of this magazine. I became sick in early October and was incapacitated for the next 6 weeks
and was not able to be able to work on getting the magazine out on a more timely manner. My apologies.
I am now starting back to work and hope to be able to support this organization and our new President, Cordell Pearson
in a more effective manner. Thank you all for the support and well wishes while I was sick.
I was totally surprised by the great turnout we had at our last conference in September.
Thank you for the great support and attendance at the conference. I’m so appreciative of the
efforts of the board in making this last conference such a great one. We hope you continue to support
UNOA in its efforts to offer you excellent training at the regional level as well as at our annual conference.
I’m excited to have as our new President a man that has such a vast background and level of
experience as that of Cordell Pearson. (No Cordell, I’m not trying to say that you’re old!)
Cordell will do an excellent job as our new President. I have worked with Cordell over the years
and he is a man of great integrity and common sense. Please support him well this year.
The
conference was not only well attended but I believe that you were well instructed and the highlight was the night of the awards
banquet where we were addressed by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, and then you the membership were recognized for the
great efforts from this past year. As I’ve always said, we want to recognize your efforts and all
the work you do. This magazine will print all of the awards given to further recognize you and your work.
Monday August 31st we had a hot day of golf at the Casa Blanca resort and then gave out
golf awards at a pool side reception and early registration. The board was glad to be able to hand out
UNOA engraved knives from Columbia River Knife and Tool to you the membership. We have purchased more knives
from CRKT with the UNOA engraving and these are available for sale through your Regional Reps. Pictures
and winners of the golf awards can be found on another page here in the magazine.
Tuesday September 1st
was the start of our first day of classes. We opened with the Las Vegas Metro Honor Guard and welcoming
comments from Mesquite’s Police Chief, Douglas Law. Detective Pat Fielding of Las Vegas Metro then
instructed as quite capably on updated information on the Mexican Mafia.
Wednesday September 2nd
had morning instruction from DEA SAC, Gordon Taylor from Sacramento. He instructed us on Interrogation
techniques that is something that is continuously evolving and where we can always try to improve.
The afternoon was taught
by or own Sgt Steve Salas from UHP’s CIT Unit. Steve spent time talking about this group’s
evolvement and the effectiveness in the past year.
Thursday, September 3rd was an all
day class from one of my favorite instructors, Tony Alvarez a retired LAPD narcotics officer. Tony spent
the day with us instructing and entertaining us on the ins and outs of undercover operations.
Also
during all three days of classes, breakout sessions were provided by the Utah State Crime Lab on Marijuana recertification
as well as FIDO recertification. Thursday, Tyler Boelter, representing RMHIDTA did a meth re-certification.
Thursday night was the awards banquet and many of you were recognized for the great efforts over the past year.
Task Forces, Agencies and individuals were rightfully acknowledged and awarded for great work. I
was especially thankful to be able to see retired Captain Harold Terry of Lehi be presented with the Robert B Hutchings Memorial
Award.
I’d like to thank all of our vendors, businesses and individuals that donated items or financial support
and especially Rocky Mountain Information Network and Rocky Mountain HIDTA for their support, sponsorship and donation to
our conference.
Well this is a brief conference wrap up but it was a great conference and thank
you for making it such.
Guy Gustman
