The Minden Police Department is gearing up for a lot of training starting in August. The department has begun its first ever in-house in-service training. It’s going to take a couple of months because there is so much to do.
Officers have been training over this course of this year to become instructors in a variety of areas including use of less-lethal force (bean-bag shotguns), defensive tactics, first aid / CPR, and Intoxilyzer use. This month they will begin training the rest of the department in what they have learned, increasing the knowledge and abilities of the entire department.
Firearms training will now be held twice annually instead of once. “We’re going to be doing more scenario-based training with simulation rounds, simulation guns,” said Police Chief Jared McIver. “I want us to be very well-trained. You respond how you trained, you react how you trained. We’re going to give the officers the very best training they can get so they can react to situations in the safest, most effective way.”
The Special Response Team (SRT) has been training in different schools around the parish during the summer to ensure that they are very familiar with the different schools in case they are called out to handle any dangerous situations. They have also been training on a smaller scale using abandoned buildings around town.
The department is fully staffed right now, which is unusual across Louisiana. “With being fully staffed, we can actually be proactive now,” said McIver. “We can now do more of the things that need to be done to keep the city safer.”
Being fully staffed is allowing the department to do some things they’ve never done before.
“We’ve started a criminal patrol team,” said McIver. “They’re going out and gathering intelligence, working problem areas, working alongside narcotics and the criminal investigation division.”
They are also looking far away and ahead to try to avoid serious issues.
“We sent two guys to the [Mexican] border about a month ago.They’ve come back with a ton of intelligence and things that we can start utilizing here because whatever is happening at the border is happening all over the United States right now. They [the border enforcement] are just on the front lines. With this information, maybe we can head it off before it gets here.”
These officers learned about how prevalent human trafficking has become (almost to the level of drug smuggling), how to spot drug smuggling and weapon smuggling, and gained an awareness of cash being sent both ways across the border.
Police Chief McIver is also looking at more home-grown issues, specifically the large number of people who are driving without a license or insurance.
“We have a lot of wrecks here in Minden,” said McIver. “And it’s discouraging when people don’t have insurance when you’re mandated to have insurance. We’ve got people driving around with no insurance, no driver’s license, things like that. Law-abiding citizens are suffering for this. So if people don’t have proof of insurance, we’re going to take their license plate and tow their vehicle.”
The Minden Police Department strives to be one of the best-trained organizations in Louisiana. They are already getting a good reputation and are starting to attract officers who are currently working with other departments. With the support of the citizens of Minden, they will continue their efforts to become the best police department in the state.