biography

Eric R. Nunez has 29 years of law enforcement experience rising to the rank of Chief of Police with the city of La Palma (2010) and then moving on to be the 9th Chief of Police for the Los Alamitos Police Department (2016) both agencies in Orange County, California.  During his rise to the rank of Chief, he has been responsible for recruitment, retention and training of police employees.  As a result, he has overseen the vetting process for sworn, non-sworn and volunteers to include, the entire pre-employment background investigation and process from start to finish.  As a Supervisor, he was responsible for the Professional Development Unit, which conducted Internal Affairs and Personnel Investigations.  As a police manager and executive, he has engaged in contracting and outsourcing these very important functions to private investigation companies.  Chief Nunez is acutely aware of the varying levels of competency, work product, timeliness, high-touch relationship building and costs associated with pre-employment backgrounds and personnel investigations, and understands the expectations of a police manager and police executive.

He is skilled in executive management, law enforcement leadership, emergency management, and statewide legislative advocacy.  He has chaired the boards responsible for the development and management of county wide law enforcement technology systems to include police communications & records management systems, bio-metric security and identification systems, and statewide/national data sharing networks.  He is intimately familiar with local and state government procurement processes and has developed, managed and served as the fiduciary responsible for budgets ranging from 6 to 42 million dollars.

Chief Nunez has an Executive Masters in Leadership from the University of Southern California and Bachelor of Science in Public Administration from the University of La Verne.  He is a trained facilitator for the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance, Michael Josephson's Institute of Ethics and Stephen Covey's 7-Habits.  He currently serves as 1st Vice President of the California  Police Chiefs Association (CPCA) representing 333 police chiefs and their respective agencies.  He is a staunch public safety legislative advocate focused on improving community and officer safety, and securing funding for local mandates that require additional training and standards, improved best practices,  enhanced transparency and increased accountability with the California law enforcement profession.  CPCA will install Chief Nunez as President of their association in April 2020 in Palm Springs, California for a one year term.