NAPO Provides Valuable Input for Officer Safety Efforts

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Meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder, NAPO's Executive Director, Bill Johnson
sits directly across from the Attorney General. Tuesday, March 22, 2011.

Bill Johnson, the Executive Director of NAPO provided vital law enforcement input at a meeting hosted by Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 for the launch of the Law Enforcement Officer Safety Initiative. 

A national trend has indicated that attacks on law enforcement officers have significantly increased over the past year. NAPO applauds the Attorney General’s efforts to combat future injuries and we are working in conjunction with the Department of Justice to solve this problem.

As a key contributor in the development of the Bulletproof Vest Partnership program (BVP) and the law enforcement leader on implementation and improvements, we know firsthand the importance of body armor.

However, it is critical to consider that Public Safety Officers Benefits should not be contingent on officers’ compliance with departments’ body armor wear policies and due to too many unforeseeable circumstances to justify making payments of death benefits contingent on compliance with a blanket policy.

Attorney General Holder also discussed the VALOR program (Preventing Violence Against Law Enforcement and Ensuring Officer Resilience and Survivability) in one of the several steps to protect law enforcement officers. Rank-and-file directly benefits from this program by eligibility for education, training, assistance and resource materials.

For the FY12 budget, President Obama has requested a line item allocation of $3.5 million for VALOR. This is the first time VALOR has been included in a White House budget. NAPO supports the VALOR program and will provide up-to-date information regarding VALOR to our members.

The VALOR program works with RISS (Regional Information Sharing System). RISS is a national program divided by regional centers to provide assistance in investigation and prosecution efforts. NAPO supports RISSafe Officer Safety Event Deconfliction System; a program that builds on RISS by providing internal methods to share investigative efforts.

NAPO is proactively involved in the BJA production of a law enforcement safety toolkit. If there is any specific information you would like NAPO to draw attention to please do not hesitate to reach out to our Director of Government Affairs, Rachel Hedge at 703-549-0775 or by email: info@napo.org.