FOP Lodge #81

Last week, July 22-24, our Lodge’s President, V-ce President, and the Secretary attended the FOP Biennial Conference in Rock Island, Illinois.  During the three days, we’ve listened to several speakers talking about topics ranging from political lobbying for new laws to leadership among the supervision within the police department.  The last topic was very interesting with the speaker being a retired Lt. Col. Danny McKnight, who was the Commanding Officer of the 3rd Ranger Battalion during the failed operation to capture the Somali warlord in the Battle of Mogadishu.  His speech on what a leadership should be was very interesting and informative.  On Saturday, there were numerous elections for various State Lodge posts with the usual “politicking” taking place during breaks in the meeting.  Due to the severe weather in the Chicago area the night before, the V-ce President and the Secretary were forced to leave early and head home to help out with the “water disasters”.  All in all, the conference was a good experience and we’re looking forward to the next one in 2012.  We will try to post some photos from the conference in the future.