SMART PRACTICE VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Commissioner John W. Bizzack, Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice Training:
 The Department of Criminal Justice Training is one of four of the major departments in the Kentucky Justice Cabinet.  We train anywhere between eleven and twelve thousand criminal justice officials annually, which extends to every police officer in the state of Kentucky.  We have an 18 week basic training course which is required for all police officers in Kentucky and each year each officer has to come back to DOCJT training for annual in-service updates and career development training.  And we declared that the one single course that all officers would have to take that year was NIMS compliance training.  We had several different titles for it, but NIMS compliance was basically what it was about.  We also integrated it into our basic training.  We integrated it into our telecommunications training, and training for the coroners as well.  And what occurred was an effort in one year to get all police officers on the same plane of thinking about homeland security issues.

Jerry Huffman, DOCJT Training Instructor:
We developed the curriculum for NIMS training by organizing a committee that would research through FEMA and also homeland security offices as to what was not only mandated in terms of NIMS requirements  but also what would also be beneficial for our police officers.  FEMA provided to us training for our instructors who would be teaching in this homeland security course.  They also provided for us information that would help us to develop our objectives for the course, and not only that, they were available to us to answer questions and provide information for us that benefited us greatly in putting this course together.

Cpl. Jake Adkins, Richmond Kentucky Police Department:
On campus here they have a basketball tournament every year, state basketball tournament.  Our group, our class was split up into groups, and we went over to the basketball arena and prepared for a disaster there, how to evacuate the people, what kind of hazards are there, potential terrorist targets and things such as that.

Sgt. Aaron Thompson, Pikeville, KY Police Department
We learned how to interact with other agencies, how to work as one agency, and then they gave you information on people who you could contact on a federal level, so if you couldn’t handle the situation on a local level, you knew where to take, where to direct your questions to in order to get accomplished what you need to get accomplished.

Commissioner John W. Bizzack, Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice Training:
In Kentucky for example, with 120 counties and 368 different police departments, this state can’t afford to have 368 different ways you handle an event or 120 different ways to handle an event.  Other states face the same problem.  Kentucky is miles ahead of other states because we have been able to have one single cohesive starting point when and if something should occur that is under the banner of homeland security.

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