Happy new year to all and I hope your hollidays were good. I must apologize to everyone for not posting more but I was in the hospital from oct 17 to dec 8. I'm home now and recovering and had time to think about alot of things.

My January question to the group is "how many of you network or have a working relationship with other agencys in your area?"

I recall listening to Chief Marrs of Oklahoma City after the bombing about the lack of a relationship he had with other agencys in the city until the bombing. His suggestion was that you should not wait until you have an incident like theirs before establishing a relationship with other city agencys. 

I took his words to heart and began to cultivate relationships with state, federal and local agencys that we do not work with all the time but could end up working with at anytime.

First I contacted the detective divisions of our sheriff and police departments and let them know that there was an arson task force and that we have trained investigators and a certified arson detection K9 and would be willing to respond to any fire related incident they needed us to respond to. The detective i spoke to didnt know what an arson detection K9 was, so i educated him and we got a few callouts, even one out of state

That contact resulted in the task force having a better working relationship with the the sheriffs department labratory. They even began to process our scene film for us.

Second I contacted our state fire marshal's office and field office of the BATF and advised them when and where we meet every month and if anyone from their office was free, they were welcome to attend and if they were so inclined please include us in any training or updates they may have

That resulted in the agents assigned to our area comming to some of our meetings and when we did have a case involving the BATF a couple of years later, we wern't strangers

Chief Marrs emphisied that networking "before" you have a big incident was better than trying to work with people that are alredy in your city but you dont know who they are or what they can do for you or you for them. He gave the example of the chief of police's office was down the hall from his, but he really didnt know the man before the bombing.

I urge you to begin 2012 by contacting agencys that you have the potential to work with but do not on a regualr basis and have a sit down and just "get to know them before you have a large incident". In my case I was able to find out just how fast I could get a backhoe and a dump truck from the county at 3am. the request would not be a problem but knowing who i needed to talk to sped things up.

Good Luck to everyone and i hope our efforts as investigators will continue to enhance the fire service and the investigation community, please continue to educate yourselves and be safe