Byrd brings tech background, strong leadership skills to Executive Committee

— By Jennifer Gomori, POJ Editor

Police Officers Labor Council (POLC)

667 E. Big Beaver Road, Suite 205 Troy, MI 48083. (248) 524-3200

FAX: (248) 524-2752

POLC membership: www.polc.org

Executive Committee

CHAIR: Steve McInchak

Flat Rock Police Dept.

VICE CHAIR: Brian McNair

Chesterfield Township Police Dept.

Greg Alexander

Oscoda Township Police Dept.

Leigh Golden Flint Police Dept.

Ryan Strunk

Battle Creek Police Dept.

Robert Gaiser

Caro City Police Dept.

Troy Taylor Oak Park Public Safety Dept.

Adam Byrd

Van Buren Township Police Dept.

John Huizdos

Bloomfield Township Police Dept.

DIRECTOR:

Robert Figurski Warren PD (Retired)

Member Services

Christopher Watts

PUBLICATIONS

Executive Editor: Jennifer Gomori

Newly appointed POLC/GELC Executive Committee member

Adam Byrd is very familiar with assuming leadership roles in his career and community.

A Van Buren Township Police Officer and POLC member since 2006, he’s served as his department’s Patrol and Dispatchers Local Union President since 2009. Byrd began his law enforcement career as a Detroit Police Officer in 1999, where he served until April 2006.

“Based on my skillset, I have several attributes I can share with the board,” Byrd said. “With my years of experience as Union President, I want to utilize the knowledge I’ve obtained at the next level by assisting all of the (local) units in a leadership role with the board.”

Byrd is Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police (MACP) Accreditation Manager for Van Buren Township Police as well as a grant writer, and a Fair and Bias instructor. He has also worked in community policing and patrol.

“We’re one of the few departments that are an accredited organization,” Byrd said. “Part of that landscape is providing fair and impartial bias police training to all department personnel. I’m a certified instructor authorized in teaching my agency though Fair and Impartial Policing (FIP).” FIP provides implicit-bias-awareness training for law enforcement in North America. Byrd works with a Van Buren Township Sergeant to maintain MACP Accreditation for their department.

“I’m very organized and it takes a lot of organization to do this level of work,” he said. “We became accredited in 2021, a process that can take longer than a year. Accreditation allows an agency to visit their standard operating procedures and have researched best practices and adhere to those best practices. Without it, there’s no guidance as to what is a good process. When you have a collective group of professionals coming together to create and adhere to the best practices, you have a department that consistently follows the best practices in law.”

In his community, Byrd serves as the President of the Board of Christian Faith Church and previously served as the President of the board of Mission Pointe on the Lake Home Owners Association.

He has a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Marygrove College, where he graduated magna cum laude. As Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Revolutionary Designz, a web development, graphic, and printing company, Byrd knows it’s important for the Union to keep up with changing technology.

“My focus is innovation with technology,” Byrd said. “Coming from a Union President’s perspective, one of my goals will be trying to get the Union on board with providing all of our units access to settled contracts. This will allow them to research options while they’re in negotiations.”

He strongly supports working with others in leadership positions to achieve common goals.

“Number one, we should have a consensus of our expectations from our chiefs and be able to sit down and work in mutual partnership so the citizens are serviced and Employees have better working conditions,” he said. “Another thing we have to do is be actively involved with our politicians so we can explain to them our points of view in an organized fashion. Police reform legislation is consistently changing. We must have our finger on the pulse of that to understand those changes. So, when politicians have questions, we can tell them some things are misinformation, or validate information and say, ‘That’s not going to work, but this will.’” d