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UTAH A.G. HOSTS NATIONS LARGEST AMBER ALERT INITIATIVE TRAINING
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is hosting the largest training ever held in the nation for the AMBER Alert Initiative on missing and abducted child investigations. More than 250 officers from more than 50 Utah law enforcement agencies are taking the Investigative Strategies for Missing and Abducted Children (ISMAC) course this week in Sandy.
This training will help Utah investigators have a better understanding of what to do from the first call from a panicked parent up to the safe recovery of an abducted child, says Shurtleff. Utahns should be proud that so many officers are so serious in solving missing and abducted child cases.
The four-and-a-half day course provides law enforcement investigators in-depth training on such issues as evidence collecting, profiling suspects, interviews and interrogations, high risk victims, child molesters, cold cases and legal issues related to a missing or abducted child.
This is the most significant training event we have ever offered, says Phil Keith, AMBER Alert Program Director for Fox Valley Technical College. If every state did what Utah has done we would save a lot of kids. I have never seen anything like this and I have been doing this type of training for 40 years.
Fox Valley Technical College facilitates the training for the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs. Participants at the Utah course include federal, state and local law enforcement officers from Logan to St. George, including members of the Utah Child Abduction Response Team (CART), Davis County CART, Morgan County CART, Washington County CART and members of what will soon be the Utah County CART.
We want law enforcement to have all the training and resources needed when a child is abducted, says Lt. Jessica Farnsworth, Utah CART Commander. These are tough economic times and not every agency could afford to send officers to a training like this so we asked if they could bring the training to us.
The training is significantly less expensive to put on because officers normally have to travel out of the state to attend courses. More than 300 officers are expected to participate in an advanced ISMAC course that will be offered in Utah on October 12-16. The ISMAC training will continue until Friday afternoon at the Salt Lake Community College, Larry H. Miller Free Enterprise Center at 9750 S. 300 W., Sandy.
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