About Us

The Chatham County Law Enforcement Officer’s Association was established in 1972 when Tam de StAubin donated the land to the Chatham County Law Enforcement Officer’s Association to build their building and Range on, with the stipulation that when the CCLEOA vacates the building it will revert back to the de StAubin family.

The Law Enforcement community built the building themselves and it was completed in 1976. * The Articles of Incorporation of Association paperwork was completed in 1977. In 1983 we completed the paperwork for our Tax Exempt/Non-Profit Status. “Big Law” David Seagroves was President for 3 years in the late 80s and during his Presidency we had a few firsts:  first time it was mentioned in the minutes to give people “not in law enforcement” membership, first time the wives were invited to the Christmas Party, and first 2 scholarships, of $250 each, were given out.

In the 1990s Kyle Barber became President. He & Bill Harman poured the concrete at the Range (29 years ago). MADD of Chatham County was started out here! 1990: The Constitution and By Laws were redone to include “Agencies”, added 1 more Board of Director member , and clarified “Honorary Member” from only “those who shall be elected by the BOD” to also include “employees of a law enforcement agency who shall be elected by the BOD by a majority vote.” And gave out 2 more scholarships. In 1991, Al Craven was elected as the Secretary/Treasurer. Sixteen years later (2017) he gave up the secretary position to Cathy Judge and Al Craven died in 2018. He was a member for more than 40 years.

Bill Harman has been a member since 1984-35 years- and has seen it all happen out here; from the building not being big enough to hold everyone and cases being solved because of the different agencies all coming together and talking about things going on in their area. He’s also seen it dwindle down to next to nothing in membership.

In 2006, with Shorty Johnson as President, we pulled 2 family names from the Angel Tree at Christmas time and we bought gifts for each family member and groceries for their Christmas dinner, too! In 2009 President Shorty Johnson, with great effort and lots of personal time; and with the assistance of Bill Harman who was a Major in the Siler City PD, got the Range opened back up and the Siler City Police Department paid $100 for each of their officers to be members. This way the officers could come out and practice whenever they wanted to and the PD had a range to qualify their officers on. Good deal all the way around. ($35 of the membership fee was to be sent in to the NRA to register them as a member of NRA, as we needed a certain percentage of our membership to be NRA members also, for us to get the insurance we have.) In 2010, with Shorty Johnson still President, we now have the Siler City PD and the Pittsboro PD paying for officer’s memberships and using our Range for qualifying and we gave away 2 (two) $500 scholarships.

2011-2017, Shorty Johnson was re-elected as President each year because no one else knew what all was involved in keeping this Association together and Shorty was doing such a good job at pulling us along. However, the pull took its toll and Shorty finally stated that he had to stop for the year 2018. He gave us about a 3-4 month notice so we could find someone else. We hated to see Shorty stop; we were uncertain of the Association’s future without him at the helm. Once the shock wore off and another member stepped forward; we realized that it would take all of us working together to help our new President make our Association bigger and better.

For 2018 we voted in Mike Koszulinski as the new President. We had 18 new members join and 13 new members with the Liberty PD joining, also, for a total of 31 new members gained for 2018! Mike K. found a storage container that we are using for the Range items and extra storage and it was cheap. We have placed yard markers on the Range and have also implemented the Red Flag Policy to show that the Range is in use. All of our documents have been gone through, brought up to date and we have made “New Member Packets.” We have a Facebook page, an email address for the calendar of rentals, and a website!  We gave out two (2) scholarships, after receiving 5 applications from 3 high schools. (We had a committee of 3 to read over the applications and essays and make their recommendations to the Board of Directors.) There were two (2) work days during the year and a lot was accomplished, both inside and outside. And we ended the year with a great Christmas Gathering of T-Bone Steak Dinner and gifts for everyone! We also, on a very sad note, lost Major Al Craven on December 1^st, 2018 and assisted the family in the final arrangements for his funeral. We had two (2) plaques made to Honor him; one we gave to his wife, Mary, and the other we hung on our new “Memory Wall.”

In 2020, Bill Harman became our President and has done a wonderful job.