Greetings once again.

It seems that after months and months…and months of writing variations on the same theme (in the interest of public health and safety we are not doing any public events, but we are hoping for a change in the not-too-distant future…), it appears that we can now see a time when that policy will change.

The SAC has authorized a fall Citizens Academy class in Birmingham – the first in eighteen months! – and our board of directors has determined that we will began to hold in-person gatherings beginning this summer, and that we will plan for a fall chapter “retreat” at a nearby destination to allow us to, shall we say, reconnect with one another and begin anew. We’re thinking about a summer event centering around the FBI installation at Redstone Arsenal, and we hope to do home-and-home baseball games with the Trash Pandas and the Barons, as well. Bear in mind that all these events are contingent on the public health situation at the time, but at this point the trend line looks encouraging enough to allow us to be hopeful and to make plans.

The first thing we expect to offer is a late July members meeting – an FBI After Dark event – to be held in a private dining section of a Birmingham restaurant. We intend to follow that with a similar event in Huntsville soon after that, then make those members meetings regularly-occurring events.

Meanwhile, there should be a notice forthcoming any day now about a virtual members meeting, where we will host our “other” ASAC, Andy Loftin. Look for details about this Zoom meeting in the next several days; we do hope you will join us to see and hear all he has to say.

We had a good and productive face-to-face meeting with The Wellhouse, and we hope that we’ll be able to work very actively with them on Human Trafficking matters in the months to come. And I’m personally excited that we are about to embark on our first cooperative venture with our FO’s explosives expert, John Bates, as he conducts outreach and educational events to raise awareness about explosive and incendiary materials and efforts to secure them by potentially bad actors. We’ll be co-sponsoring a workshop in Huntsville on May 12th, and we hope that there will be many more to follow.

Let me sum it up by saying thanks for staying with us during this most unusual period. We’re going to make every effort to repay your faith and trust in this organization, and we look forward to seeing you very soon.

--- Paul H. Franklin, President FBI Birmingham CAAA