Dave Bohrer / The Meridian StarThe Raymond P. Davis County Annex houses several Lauderdale County offices.

Lauderdale County employees will be re-certifying and training in the upcoming months, with 20 employees across four departments attending nine conferences.

The Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors approved travel requests for the Sheriff’s Department, the Tax Assessor’s Office, the Road Manager and E-911 dispatchers on Monday.

Complete travel costs were not included in Monday’s agenda.

The Sheriff’s Department comprised the bulk of travel requests, with 10 deputies and investigators traveling to six different conferences.

Joe Mercado, David Creel, Chris Swanner, Marisa Combs and Allen Wyman will attend a Glock Armorer’s Course in Hattiesburg on March 26.

The $250 course, available to law enforcement or security personnel, will train (or re-train) attendees to safely use and maintain their weapons in the one-day class, according to the Glock Training website. 

Sheriff Billy Sollie said that the employees would likely take approximately three county vehicles for the trip. The training will cost $1,250 and be paid for out of the department budget.

Charles Pickett and Everett McShepard will attend a Death and Homicide Investigation training in Monroe, Louisiana from April 1-5. The training, by the Public Agency Training Council, “is for anyone who will be responding to death scenes” and will “provide the information, knowledge and skills necessary to investigate and interpret homicide and questioned death scenes,” according to the website.

Sollie asked the board to approve the $1,050 registration cost, $724.44 lodging and $492 per diem, or approximately $50 per day for each attendee. The training will be paid from the department’s budget. Sollie said they would likely share a county vehicle.

Recently promoted Toby Pinson will attend the New Detective Training in Orange Beach, Alabama on April 3-4. 

According to the “cvent” website summary by Dolan Consulting Group, the course “gives an introduction to 4th and 5th Amendment Issues encountered by detectives… (and) also introduces the detective to the dynamics of interacting with victims and victim’s families.”

Registration costs $390, lodging will be $472.34 and the per diem will be $153, all paid out of the department’s budget.

Fire investigator Robby McClure asked to attend the Mississippi Fire Investigations Association Spring Seminar in Gulfport on April 3-5. The training, $175 for registration, $357 for lodging and per diem of $164, will be paid out of the department’s budget.

Clifford Holloway will attend a new training for the department, potentially relieving some pressure off of board attorney Lee Thaggard, according to Sollie. Holloway will attend the Legal & Best Law Enforcement Practices course in Birmingham, Alabama on April 8-9.

This training, also from the Public Agency Training Council, will address the “intense public scrutiny” of law enforcement officers and legal liability.

“This course is structured in such a way as to assist officers and agencies in making an assessment of their particular level of risk-exposure by examining court decisions that have interpreted acceptable standards of conduct by officers,” according to the course description. 

The $295 registration fee will cover courses in liability, tort law, use of deadly vs. non-deadly force, in-custody suicides or medical needs of arrestees, high-speed pursuits, risk assessment/ reduction and qualified immunity among others. 

Lodging will be $144 and per diem will be $92 and will be paid for, along with registration, out of the department budget.

Sollie said only Holloway would attend the new training to access its value for other deputies. 

Sollie noted that per diem is set by a federal standard and varies from city to city.

“Each one of these trainings has a specific topic that makes a person more effective in their investigations,” Sollie said.

Sollie noted that the trainings allowed deputies and investigators to learn from one another and meet their peers.

In total, supervisors approved $5,728 of travel for the Sheriff’s Department.

The supervisors’ agenda didn’t include costs for the remaining 10 travel requests, but County Administrator Chris Lafferty noted that some will be reimbursed by state departments, such as the Tax Assessor’s office.

Two employees from the Tax Assessor’s Office will attend an International Association of Assessing Officers course in Baton Rouge, Louisiana from May 19-24.

Brad Hampton, part of the office’s mapping department, will attend Course 600 – Principles and Techniques of Cadastral Mapping and Michael Giuliano, a real property appraiser, will attend Course 201 – Appraisal of Land. 

Course 201 will teach about estimating the market value of land and Course 600 will introduce the cadastral mapping field and allow students to plot deeded descriptions. 

Rush Mayatt, the road manager, received approval to attend the April 3 Local Public Agency Training as part of his LPA recertification. Mayatt said the training will help him acquire funds from the Mississippi Department of Transportation for future projects. Mayatt said the training would be free, other than travel in a county vehicle. 

Public Safety Academics & Consulting will host the “Planes, Trains and Automobiles: A Dispatcher’s Guide to Transportation Disasters” in Flowood on May 13-14 and “Behind the Badge” in Pearl on June 24-25, both courses available to dispatchers.

Neither the website nor the Facebook page for PSAC listed their summer courses and a call to confirm the courses wasn’t immediately returned. 

Lafferty said that the costs for trainings might not appear because they’re budgeted at the beginning of the year but that many are reimbursed by the state because dispatchers and assessors must be certified per state statute.

“That’s routine travel so a lot of that is reimbursed by the state,” Lafferty said. “They have to be certified so a lot of times that type of stuff doesn’t (have documentation) because it’s budgeted for at the beginning of the year. But if it’s official travel and in our agenda there is some supporting documentation.”

Official travel does require a cost estimate emailed to Lafferty before its included in the agenda. 

“Anytime we spend money we have to have supporting documentation,” Lafferty said.