Conference Sessions — Thursday

ROOM: North Pavilion 1

As communities see rising shooting incidents, investigators need real-time intelligence to help them identify the shooters and close their cases quicker.

Ballistics IQ provides investigators the number of firearms involved in their shooting incidents within minutes, but also identifies the best cartridge case for entry into NIBIN. With Rapid Ballistics technology, within hours, investigators receive actionable intelligence if their case is linked to any other shooting incident in the BIQ system.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• What is Crime Gun Intelligence
• Best practices for implementing Ballistics IQ
• Benefits of rapid crime gun intelligence
• Funding and Grant opportunities to acquire ballistics scanning technology

ROOM: North Pavilion 2

A high-level overview of an in-depth training program that looks to better police officers' mental health. From peer support, faith based, online resources, private practitioners to in-patient care. Officers and department options for good mental health. Illinois specific job protections for officers seeking mental health treatment. How agencies can motivate officers’ participation in these programs and encourage officers’ buy in. The mental health component of the Safe-T-Act will also be discussed.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Recognize the need for proactive mental health services for first responders. Reduce officers’ stress levels, negative reactions to stressors and self-harming behavior. How to recognize PTSD and how to reduce its affect on officers. Help agencies build the capacity to break through the historical barriers to good mental health for police officers.

ROOM: North Pavilion 3

L.E.O.S.A. is the federal law which authorizes active and retired/separated law enforcement officers from anywhere in the U.S. to carry a concealed firearm everywhere in the country. This course explains the law as it currently exists and explains the limitations and potential pitfalls, in order to help active and retired officers stay in compliance.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• To know and understand L.E.O.S.A. and how it pertains to the individual officer
• Who is and is not covered By L.E.O.S.A.
• How to stay in compliance with L.E.O.S.A. and potential pitfalls while traveling when carrying under the law.

ROOM: North Pavilion 4

Leadership is always a much-discussed topic and concern within the law enforcement profession. Leadership is a complex and dynamic topic. In such discussions, the styles of those tasked with leadership responsibilities are often the primary focus. Yet there is style, which is important, and then there is substance. Often overlooked are the mechanics of the formal leadership processes that guide the functions and operations of an agency. If a chef’s recipes can make or break a restaurant, which they can, so too should we view the policies of a police agency. A bad recipe can leave a bad taste, or worse. A bad policy can undermine a department’s operations, or worse – much worse.

Bad policies can destroy officer morale, misdirect resources, complicate procedures, create inefficiencies, and impede effectiveness. Bad policies can cost millions in civil damages, litigation defense, and remediation efforts. In policing, officer safety should always be a priority concern, and bad policies can, and do, place individual members at risk. Bad policies can cost lives. Bad policies can also undermine the very public safety mission of a police department. Even as all of this is true, policy development is often foolishly approached much like art. The untrained observer is left to just know supposedly good policy when they see it. Such is a recipe for disaster. Thankfully, there is a better approach for police policy development.

Each law enforcement agency should ensure that all of its policies (and their associated procedures, rules, and written directives): (1) Rest upon a foundation that is both consistent with and supports Constitution and the law. (2) Are focused on setting the best possible trainable and attainable standards.
(3) Are based upon principles that embrace six core pillars: Clarity, Courage, Consistency, Confidence, Consensus and Capacity.

Police executives must ensure their policy efforts advance the highest professional standards. An agency’s policies directly impact its ability to achieve meaningful crime prevention, effective responses to violence, and overall enhanced public safety.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
The session will utilize a PowerPoint presentation to organize the concepts within a participatory lecture approach. The participants will be:

• Be able to identify and explain the relevance of the Six Police Policy Pillars consisting of: Clarity, Courage, Consistency, Confidence, Consensus, and Capacity.
• Be able to identify how police policy must be developed within the requirements and in support of the law.
• Understand that all police policy must be trainable and attainable.
• Recognize how the training development process provides a key quality and impact opportunity to ensure agency policies are consistent with the police policy principles.

ROOM: North Pavilion 5

To help first responders and security professionals improve safety by ensuring members understand how to develop and maintain situational awareness while working in high-stress, high-consequence, time-compressed environments. To help departments identify opportunities for improving high-risk decision making outcomes and show them how to implement strategies to help members improve critical thinking and resilient problem solving skills. To explain the process of what the mind and body go through in an officer involved shooting and how to cope with the aftermath. We hope departments members are better equipped to develop and maintain situational awareness and they make better decisions on emergency scenes. I recently wrote a book on this and I will speak about some of the chapters.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Understanding what ‘complacency’ is and how we can avoid it
• Understanding how we train to fail and how we can prevent that in the future.
• Tips for how to incorporate Situational Awareness into training
• Understanding how human error occurs from:
  • Slips in judgment -Inadvertently doing something different than what you intended to do.
  • Lapses in memory –Forgetting to do something or losing your train of thought in the middle of a task.
  • Flawed decision making –Doing the wrong thing while believing it was the right thing to do.
  • Human error can happen to anyone at any time, even your most experienced and most well-trained members.
• Situational awareness (SA) barriers flaw and impact the (recurring) three-stop SA development process:
  • Perception –Gathering intel about what is happening (size-up).
  • Understanding –Comprehending the meaning of the intel (sense-making).
  • Prediction –Anticipating the outcome of future events (visioning).
  • Situational awareness is the foundation for dynamic decision making.
• Dynamic decision making involves making high-stress decisions that are:
  • High-risk–The decision-making environment is very hazardous.
  • High-consequence–Decision errors can cause catastrophic outcomes.
  • Time-compressed –Quick decisions are essential due to rapidly changing condition.
  • Dynamic decision makers usually only get one chance to get it right.

ROOM: North Pavilion 1

The Aurora Sportsmen’s Club, Inc. (ASC) has been in operation for 70 years and is incorporated as a Not-For-Profit Illinois Corporation dedicated to training, education, conservation, and outdoor shooting sports. It is a multimillion-dollar facility that hosts local police departments and federal law enforcement agencies. The Club is just south of Waterman, Illinois on approximately 270 acres with an additional 247 usable contiguous acres.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Participants will receive an overview of the facility.
• Instructor will discuss budgets and training packages for law enforcement agencies.
• A discussion will be held on the advantages of using an outdoor range as opposed to an indoor shooting facility.

ROOM: North Pavilion 2

Preparing for your retirement should start years in advance, but it's not too late to plan. In this presentation, you will learn about the four vital areas of your personal finances that require your attention. These areas are 1) Investments 2) Insurance 3) Taxes and 4) Estate planning. The presenter will show you how to spot weaknesses in your personal finances and how to remedy them.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Learn how to protect your investments during inflationary and volatile times
• Tax strategies to deploy before current tax rates go back up in 2026
• How to recognize if you have too much or too little insurance
• What estate planning documents you need to have or update

ROOM: North Pavilion 3

The average lifespan of a police facility is 40 to 50 years, although new facilities strive for 50 to 75 years. If your facility was built 40 years ago, many changes have occurred since it was first constructed. Amazing things have happened – just think, the Commodore 64 was released that same year with a whopping 64kb of RAM. Apple released the first iPhone in 2007, just 15 years ago! And these changes affect the work environment for your police officers. Whether building a new facility or exploring the option to make improvements to an existing facility, there are factors to consider to help ensure your facility can adapt to the ever-changing needs of your police staff and community.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Understand how improvements can provide a police station that is welcoming and inclusive to the community and staff alike.
• Discover how technological changes impact the size and type of spaces needed to meet the changing needs of staff and citizens effectively.
• Discuss trends in incorporating mental Accelerant Detection Canine (Arson Dog Demonstration) health/social worker professionals into a department and the facility.

ROOM: North Pavilion 4

This class will provide fact-based information and debunk the numerous nutrition, health and wellness “fads” that exist. I will empower attendees with science-based information to make positive changes to their nutrition, fitness, and overall health. Attendees will leave this training session with the knowledge and resources to have better informed conversations with their personal physicians and ultimately become the best advocates for their own health optimization. This course is designed for administrators/supervisors as well as line staff. This program is interactive and will take a commonsense approach to explaining the subject of health, wellness, and fitness. The training will cover in detail - not vague suggestive terms - how to build a successful wellness/fitness program for individuals as well as organizations.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Insulin Resistance, Inflammation, Heart Health, Disease Prevention and how they are related.
• Guidance to help attendees understand their own blood work and how it relates to overall health.
• Employee Wellness Program development with a focus on Nutrition, Supplements, Fitness Training, Financial Planning and Mental Health Awareness.
• How to gauge success in wellness/fitness programs to include pre- and post-testing options and how to fund them.
• Nutrition instruction that will discuss in detail what to eat for reduction in bodily inflammation and health optimization. Macro nutrient based nutritional protocols will be an area of emphasis during class instruction.
• How proper nutrition protocols directly relate to improved blood health markers, disease prevention, insulin response and reduction of bodily inflammation.
• The importance of adequate sleep, stress reduction, hydration and recovery.

ROOM: North Pavilion 5

This presentation will touch on the challenges that face new law enforcement executives that no one may have told you. A good look for emerging leaders such as Deputy Chiefs and Sheriffs that hope to hold the top position in law enforcement. This course will touch on topics which impact current executives but rarely get talked about. Topics such as managing elected officials, navigating political realities, entry and exit plans, and managing the unwanted major crisis. There is so much to know about the real challenges and mitigation strategies.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Understand the challenges of taking on an administrative role
• How to manage relationships of voters and influencers to the best of your ability
• What to think about when you walk into a major crisis
• Discuss employment contracts and other agreements you may not have considered

ROOM: North Pavilion 6

Based on a 20-year career on the street, training for the fight, is a detailed and comprehensive survival presentation. How to prepare mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually for any type of critical incident. Discussions include resiliency, triggers, and navigating your way through the respective agency policies and aftermath. More than slides on a screen, I go into great detail about an Officer involved ambush including the tactical plan to the Officer down rescue. Also in the chat are crime scene photos and audio depicting a real-life situation that had to be controlled by the Officer’s on scene. After the fight was over what was left was carnage. I explain how we dealt with the trauma and devastation as a unit and a department over the next few years all the way to my retirement. I provide a list of resources and advocates for assistance to maintain a healthy work and home life before, during and after a career in the first responder community.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Students will walk away with hands on methods to maintain a healthy professional and personal life that is sustainable for their careers and relationships. Additionally, I provide resources that I have personally utilized with highly desirable outcomes. Awareness training is a vital portion. Making folks aware of what could happen and how to navigate both positive and negative issues to maintain resiliency and stay safe.

ROOM: North Pavilion 1

"Gait—the way people walk or run—has been used by laypersons to identify criminals for over a hundred years. However, the modern use of gait analysis in the forensic science began in 2000 when a podiatrist linked a suspect to a crime by the distinct features of the way they walked. Since then, striking advances and standards have developed in the new, growing field of forensic gait analysis. This strong, structural framework has enabled forensic gait analysis to become a valuable tool to assist law enforcement in solving crimes.

Recent research has established a standardized, transparent method of analyzing and recognizing features of gait among individuals that offers significant validity, reliability, and accuracy. To that end, forensic gait analysis has played an important role in over 100 criminal cases in the United Kingdom and has begun to be utilized in the United States.

With increasing frequency, perpetrators are captured on surveillance video, and at times—even with their faces obscured or hidden—a suspect may be associated with a criminal by their gait.

This presentation will explain the scientific foundations, limitations and current methodology of forensic gait analysis, as well as precautions to be aware of when utilizing gait. With video surveillance increasing, and phone technology that allows for the recording of crimes becoming more ubiquitous, the need for forensic gait analysis—both to exonerate and help convict—is certain to grow, and with it, the need for law enforcement to understand when and how to utilize forensic gait analysis.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Understand when and how to employ forensic gait analysis in investigations
• Understand the limitations of employing forensic gait analysis

ROOM: North Pavilion 2

High level overview of a state certified course in law enforcement interactions with the LGBT community. Discussing the various law updates from federal case law, EEOC requirements, USDOJ requirements for all holding facilities under the Prison Rape Elimination Act and Illinois specific requirements under the ILCS. Discuss interactions, community bridge building, handling calls for service, arrests, reports and housing. Illinois Domestic Violence Act requirements and reporting hate crimes. Understanding gender markers on identification cards, driver’s license and passports. What does an “X” mean under the gender marker? Discuss non-binary and its implementation in January of 2024 on State of Illinois ID cards and driver’s license.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Increase officers' knowledge based on a topic that is often in the news today. Help build partnerships with this community for better interactions, crime prevention, establishing intelligence sources for high profile cases and grow the agency's' diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) rating.
• Help agencies recruit from this demographic to be a better representation of the communities they serve.

ROOM: North Pavilion 3

The smart / secure city movements have generated worldwide interest in how integrated sensor systems can enhance public safety. The prospect of more efficient and effective operations have been realized by some of the cities that have embraced these movements. These systems are, however, not without their challenges. Entry costs and concerns about privacy and civil liberty impacts. This panel will examine the safe/secure city concepts assessing case studies of successful implementation. The focus will be on providing guidance for practitioners looking to adopt these concepts.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Understand the concepts of safe / secure cities and the benefits of implementing those programs
• Identify challenges and mitigation measures for establishment of safe / secure city programs
• Establish planning processes for adoption of secure/safe city concepts to support public safety

ROOM: North Pavilion 4

Presentation will focus on the use of equestrian related activities and equestrian related therapy as a means to help treat and alleviate PTSD and anxiety for veterans, first responders and Emergency medical personnel.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
The attendees will come away with a basic understanding of the use of horses in the role of reducing symptoms of PTSD.

ROOM: North Pavilion 5

This presentation will demonstrate how new technology will help officers manage depression, anxiety, and suicidal tendencies using the latest technology and psychological best practices.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Understand the basics of neuro bio feedback
• Experience a live demo of brain mapping
• How neuro technology can help with Officer Screenings
• Understand how we can change our emotions in any circumstance to be more self-regulated

ROOM: North Pavilion 6

One of the greatest threats to America today is Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE). According to a report from the Department of Homeland Security, among DVE’s, “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists-specifically white supremacist extremists (WSEs)- will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland.” Since its creation, online media has provided an easy platform for extremists to grow and flourish. Extremists have been able to recruit, spread propaganda, harass, and organize without definitive regulation or monitoring. The internet has become a virtual university for hate and the nerve center for training, recruitment, and terrorist activities around the world.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center and Beyond Barriers USA have created a series of law enforcement trainings/workshops focusing on understanding and combating DVEs. The trainings/workshops explore the main websites/platforms, terminology, and online chatter of extremists and how to properly monitor them to prevent violent attacks in the community. These workshops are presented by the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Director of Research, Rick Eaton, and Simon Wiesenthal Consultant & Founder of Beyond Barriers, Jeff Schoep, and Simon Wiesenthal Coordinator for the Mobile Museum of Tolerance and Managing Director of Beyond Barriers, Acacia Dietz.

Simultaneously, regional collaboration enhances the ability to prevent misinformation from extending among citizens. As agencies are able to collaborate better, leaders can determine accurate intelligence on constantly developing emergencies and crises before sharing them with the larger society.

Proactive prevention of crime is the cornerstone of a safe community. By collaborating on strategies for patrolling and collecting routine intelligence, agencies can ensure no aspect of neighboring communities goes unchecked.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Develop a comprehensive understanding of the different ideologies and motivations driving Domestic Violent Extremism, with a specific focus on white supremacist extremists (WSEs), in order to accurately identify and assess potential threats.
• Acquire advanced skills in monitoring and analyzing online platforms and social media channels used by extremists, enabling the timely identification of individuals or groups involved in hate speech, recruitment, propaganda dissemination, and planning of violent activities.
• Enhance the ability to recognize behavioral indicators and patterns associated with radicalization and extremist ideologies, empowering law enforcement personnel to proactively identify individuals at risk and intervene in the early stages of the radicalization process.
• Learn about the initiatives and tools developed by organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center to combat hate and extremism online and explore opportunities for collaboration between law enforcement agencies and non-profit organizations.

ROOM: Conference Room 1

The DuPage County Arson Task Force is relied upon to assist many agencies with suspicious fires that occur in the county. Specially trained arson dogs often assist fire and police investigators with determining how fires started. While investigators could often take hours or days to sift through evidence, an arson dog can search a building in a matter of minutes.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Learn the process in which arson dogs are trained.
• Arson dogs are able to identify between 30-60 different types of hydrocarbons, which are used to start fires.
• Discover how arson dogs can use “scent discrimination.”