COLUMN: Beefing up security with enhanced security training

Submitted photo.

Ellis County Sheriff Johnny Brown.

After taking office as your Sheriff, I became concerned for the safety of those who work in, and for those citizens who conduct business at, the Ellis County Courthouse. As many counties across America began beefing up their security at courthouses, we did the same by examining where we needed to tighten up security and training our deputies to better respond to any dangers.

With the help of our Training Academy, we began researching a newly developed program that would certify those deputies responsible for the security at the courthouse as security specialists. Through our research, we met retired U.S. Marshal Randy Harris, who’s one of the developers for the TCOLE certificate course. As we worked with him to build our program, he could see how serious we were about the safety of our courthouse and hosting reality-based training that would challenge officers to be their best. Because of this, he felt he could complement our program with his 20 years of experience in providing security at courthouses for the federal government and, together, we started hosting TCOLE’s 40-hour Courthouse Security Specialists course.

This past Friday marked the third certification course we’ve hosted together, which has been a big success for not only the Ellis County Sheriff’s Office, but also for a number of other sheriff and constable offices and city marshal’s offices. This weeklong course included all five components needed to achieve the TCOLE certification. We saw about 60 law enforcement personnel from across the state sign up and attend, whether they needed one, two or all five days to complete the work needed for their certificate. We also had several deputies newly assigned to our courthouses who completed their training.

The topics covered included security screening, explosives recognition and awareness, firearms training and scenarios that included the use of Simunition, which are simulated bullets filled with a paint-like substance. When you’re doing scenario training with Simunition, your “suspect” is shooting at you as you’re shooting at them. Scenarios using Simunition are as realistic as you can get because there’s a world of difference between this type of training and an annual firearms certification where you’re shooting at a paper target at a range. That paper target doesn’t shoot back at you.

What makes our Simunition training program so effective for officers is it adds a level of stress, similar to the stress that officers might see in a real-life incident – and it makes them think on their feet and make decisions that have the best outcome, with the safest result for everyone affected by the incident.

It’s scenario training like this that prepares our deputies for how it feels to be under fire. They learn about handling their stress; they learn about making split-second decisions. The scenarios require that they process everything that’s coming at them all at once while having to make the right call under all of that duress.

In addition to specialized training like the security specialist course, our Training Division puts on or hosts courses almost on a year-round basis for our deputies as well as other agencies. The courses we offer range from the core classes required by TCOLE, such as cultural diversity, special investigative topics and crisis intervention training, to the more advanced ones that lead to specialized certifications. We take a bit of a break from training in the fall, but that’s to allow our Training Deputies to focus more of their training efforts toward crime prevention and working with our communities on preventing crime, especially in the holiday season.

Please, everyone, let’s keep our military and service personnel in our thoughts and prayers. We enjoy our rights and freedoms because of their service and safekeeping of our great nation. Y’all have a Blessed Week.

Johnny Brown has served as Sheriff of Ellis County since Jan. 1, 2009, and is a graduate of the National Sheriff’s Institute. He has been in law enforcement for more than 20 years and holds a Master’s Peace Officer’s Certificate with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education.