CDP participates in BCOC education symposium

The Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) recently participated in the Black Chief Officers Committee’s (BCOC’s) annual education symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The BCOC is comprised of more than 500 black chief officers in the United States, United Kingdom, Africa and the Caribbean, who work to improve the educational and other professional development of minority fire and emergency services personnel.

CDP Superintendent Tony Russell was among those who attended the week-long event.

The CDP’s participation in the symposium builds on a relationship it created with the BCOC in 2021 and 2022, when it participated in the organization’s annual symposiums in Miami, Florida; and St Louis, Missouri; respectively.

Those engagements resulted in the BCOC board visiting the CDP campus in 2022 and earlier this year to learn firsthand about the dozens of free training opportunities the center has for those in the emergency management and fire service communities. The visits also provided the CDP with information from the BCOC about ways to make firefighters in underserved communities more aware of those opportunities.

According to recent data, about 12 percent of those who attend CDP training identify as firefighters and, of those, less than one percent identify as being black.