Tools

Lee County Sheriff's Office Hosts Officers from Across Alabama for Traning

Stefanie Tiso

Story Created: Apr 4, 2008 at 5:29 PM CDT

Story Updated: Apr 4, 2008 at 5:29 PM CDT

It's the last day of an advanced crime scene techniques course at the Lee County Sheriff's Office. NBC 38's Stefanie Tiso has more on the course. About 55 officers from agencies across Alabama attended the three day long seminar. It's the first seminar like this to be hosted by the Lee County Sheriff's Office.

“Before now we did not have a facility that was capable of conducting this type of training since we constructed our new Sheriff's administration building part of that construction included a classroom,” said Sheriff Jay Jones.

A classroom the Sheriff says he wanted to use to educate and train... law enforcement and criminal justice topics. Just the topics instructor Jan Johnson touched on with officers who came from Opelika, to Limestone County, to Orange Beach, Alabama. “We're training the students on advanced techniques of crime scene investigation and the latest technology,” said Johnson.

Training Johnson said is critical in the ever changing field of forensics.

“Gosh it's been great. A lot of great information came from it,” said Lt. Frankie Peterman with the Ozark Police Department.

“It's very important to the officers to get this type of training so they'll know what's available so they can adequately process their crime scenes for physical evidence which puts the bad guy behind bars where he belongs,” said Johnson.

Lt. Peterman said the workstation on trajectory was most helpful for him.

“It'll actually give you an idea of where the person was standing when they were shooting, where the person was standing who actually got shot, and it can give you an idea of where to look for the bullet, fragments of the bullet it can also give you an idea of the area, where they shot from,” he said.

Just another tool, officers can use to find a suspect. The Lee County Sheriff's Office hosted the seminar with support from Lee County District Attorney Nick Abbott and the Regional Organized Criminal Information Center.

“Making sure that we become known as an agency that is very dedicated toward training and education and also providing opportunities for other agencies, not only in East Alabama, but throughout the state to come and train,” said Sherifff Jones.

In June, Sheriff Jones says his office, along with the National Association of School Resource Officers will host school resource officer training.