The Lawrence County Sheriff's Office will be hosting a Law Enforcement Academy running between now and July of 2015. Sheriff's Auxiliary volunteers will be participating directly in some of the instruction alongside future deputies in order to learn more about how the Sheriff's Office functions and in order to pick up skills relevant to our mission. As the academies are not hosted in Mount Vernon every year, this is an unusual opportunity for us to access this training.
The Auxiliary's first Weapon's Retention class was held today at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Mount Vernon. Volunteers spent the morning learning about firearm safety in the home, in vehicles, and when carrying on the street. They got time to practice trying to disarm each other and protect their weapons from being taken by an attacker. Whether or not we wear uniforms, if we own or carry weapons, we have an ethical responsibility to not let bad guys get them from us.
The Sheriff's Auxilary will be providing a tutorial session at the upcoming USAPrepares expo in Lebannon, Missouri (6-7 April) on how to start a county Sheriff's auxiliary. This will be a nuts and bolts presentation on the type of paperwork needed, staffing requirements, how long you can expect it to take, how to write the mission statement and so forth, with access to additional resources.
Samaritan's Purse, the international Christian relief organization, is still recruiting individuals and teams, including youth groups, to help rebuild homes devastated by the Joplin EF-5 tornado. As we approach the holiday season and look forward to spending time visiting with family, it is important to remember that some of our neighbors are still without homes.
We have a number of training opportunities upcoming, including a CCW class, local CERT Training, the Portable Radio Fundamentals, CERT Train-the-Trainer, and Disaster POD training. Read on for details. Updated 6 Nov: filled in details on 2-way radio training. CCW
We have scheduled the CERT Introductory course for 8 and 9 June (Friday evening and Saturday) in the Lawrence County Emergency Operations Center. This is a free training required for all LCSA volunteers. Several of us have also decided to have their older children or family members go through the training. We need at least 15 people signed up to run the course, so please RSVP.