By MATT PIKE
The Buchanan County Sheriff's Office is launching a new program this fall to better educate young students about law enforcement.
Captain Mike Hess says flyers have been sent out, and in late August, the Sheriff's Department will bring the Deputy Sheriff Program into the schools.
"And we'll run two during next school year, with the second one beginning end of January, first part of February, depending on the timeline we get," Hess says on the KFEQmunnity show. "And it's going to be very similar to the Explorer's Program, it's just going to be focused with our agency, and of course we'll have a lot of input from other agencies as well."
Hess says the idea to launch the Deputy Sheriff's Program came from the deputies assisting with the St. Joseph Police's Explorer Program, which took place early this summer.
While the Explorer Program is for students from 14 to 20 years who have completed eighth grade, the Deputy Sheriff's Program will be geared towards third to eighth grade.
"We'll introduce kids to patrol vehicles, specialized units, different equipment that we use, and we'll branch out into the fire side of things and obviously focus on safety and how to do things in their own home safety wise, gun safety, everything you can think of that we're going to preach to children to be safe and cautious is what we'll focus on," Hess explains.
Hess says the Sheriff's Office loves to engage with and educate students, and says the idea for the program came from school resource officers
"They came to me and were like hey we can do our own program so let's do it," Hess says. "We put it together and it really is focused heavily on the student and education in different ways, but it's also going to be fun, including dog demonstrations, they're going to be exposed to special response team victims, everything you can think of that is kind of the cool things we get to see, the kids will also get to experience."
Flyers were sent out at the end of the school year for the program for parents to sign their students up for the August session and will be sent out again at the beginning of the new school year.
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