Jasper County Sheriff’s Office conducts School Shield Security Assessor Training

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office recently hosted the NRA School Shield Security Assessor Training that brought multiple law enforcement officers from multiple agencies to Jasper County.

The training was brought to the attention of the JCSO by Michael Ware, who is a member of the Iowa Firearms Coalition. Ware told Jasper County Sheriff John Halferty about the program that had yet to be offered in Iowa.

“We are both passionate about awareness and school security,” Halferty said. “I contacted the NRA about the training to get a better feel for it and then I agreed to host the training in October of this year.”

The training was held at Iowa Speedway and the Newton Senior High School. The purpose of the exercise was to train law enforcement officers in assessing current security measures at the schools in their communities and identifying opportunities to improve them.

“The training is basically designed for first responders, mainly law enforcement and emergency management personnel,” Halferty said.

The training included instruction from current and former law enforcement NRA instructors, a school site visit and an abbreviated assessment of a local school. The JCSO sent three deputies to the training and will conduct several assessments of local schools in the future.

“They learn to figure out, is there is a safety or a security issue here that may need to be addressed?” Halferty said.

This training will allow for the JCSO to maintain safety and security in the local schools by being able to identify and improve upon the security components and emergency protocols that are already in place.

“As a result of this training, I now feel better equipped to assess and identify opportunities for our local schools to make adjustments to their security components and emergency response protocols. Anything we can do to make our schools and children safer, is worth our time and effort,” Lt. Aaron Groves of the JCSO said.

Lt. Kiel Stevenson of the Marshalltown Police Department added, “School security is a top priority and something we take very seriously. The School Shield program provided the tools and resources necessary to assess the schools in our community.”

Iowa Speedway served as the classroom site for training attendees to learn from their instructors. The site visit was completed at the Newton High School where those in the course conducted the real world assessment.

“The ultimate goal was when they completed the training all of these different agencies and officers can now go back to their area, to their jurisdiction and they can perform these school assessments,” Halferty said.

Contact Dustin Teays at 641-792-3121 ext. 6533 or dteays@newtondailynews.com