Welcome to the New England Crisis Negotiator’s Association (NECNA) website. We are a Not-For-Profit organization committed to sharing information and resources with front line law enforcement crisis negotiators. One of our goals is to pool together the resources of our membership so we can obtain the best possible training for all concerned. We operate as both a collective voice, as well as a collective resource, regardless of department size or agency affiliation. Thus far 2009, has been an active year for NECNA. In April, we held our Annual Conference at the Sea Crest Resort in Falmouth, MA, and were honored to host to the National Council of Negotiation Associations (NCNA). For those of you who were unable to attend, you missed one of our best groups of speakers and presenters from all fields. Representatives from the NECNA Executive Board were involved in making recommendations and revising the National Guidelines. The revised guidelines have been finalized and should be found on our website shortly. As we mentioned in 2008, this year we revised our logo and the membership voted from a field of finalists during the conference. We are moving away from the interlocking leaf and our new logo represents a geographic outline of the New England states. Shelley Williams of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections was elected into her first term as NECNA Secretary. We would like to express our gratitude to Donna Collins of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections who held that position and did a fantastic job for us. This summer we were solicited for our position on the legal use of frequency disruptors by the National Council. The proposed legislation would involve the limited legal use of these devices by law enforcement during crisis incidents. Rather than each organization opine individually on the subject, NCNA solicited all of their members so we could speak as a collective voice. The NECNA Executive Board voted on this issue and unanimously voted to support this proposed legislation. There have been a number of documented cases, both locally and nationally, where various communication devices have hindered law enforcement efforts in containing incidents. We believe these devices, if used appropriately, can be effective in containing outside communication during active resolution attempts. Currently, your individual state representatives are busy planning our mid-year regional training / instruction blocks. The Board has been very busy planning the 2010 conference and just negotiated a one year contract with Ocean Edge Resort in Brewster, MA. Our next conference will be held Monday, April 26 – Wednesday, April 28, 2010, at Ocean’s Edge. For those of you who have been with us from the start, you know this brings us back to where it all started a decade ago. We hope to commemorate this significant milestone with a memorable atmosphere and some of our best presentations. As you know, we have one of the most affordable conferences available. We make every effort to be good stewards of our membership’s monetary contributions and our primary goal is to give you the best we can at an affordable rate. This year we anticipate suffering a loss based on our contract value and our established conference fees. We do this as a way of sharing with you, our membership, some of the funding we have been able to save over the past ten years. We understand many of you pay for this conference from your own personal funds, and that current financial hardships have negatively impacted both agencies and families, at every level. But we would hope you would consider attending our Tenth Annual Conference because it is a milestone all of you played a part in achieving. Ten years of negotiators talking to fellow negotiators. Please take sometime and look around our website. We welcome any suggestions or comments you may have. You can submit an electronic message to any of us simply by clicking your cursor over our name on the Home Page. If you have any training in the area that is open to the membership, and you would like us to post it on our site, please take the time and send it to us.