Crime-prevention conference next week
The Spokane County Sheriff’s Office will hold its second annual Citizen Crime Prevention Conference in Spokane Valley Tuesday and Wednesday at Neighborhood Watch, 1121 W. Gardner Ave.
The conference will offer an array of seminars on topics of interest to area individuals and businesses. Registration is $12 per day or $20 for both days and can be made in advance by logging onto the sheriff’s Web site, www.spokanesheriff.org, and following the Neighborhood Watch link.
“After last year’s conference, one of the most frequent comments we got was that people wanted more information tailored for businesses,” Neighborhood Watch Coordinator Diana Somerville said. “So we added seminars on business continuity and workplace violence.”
The business continuity seminar will focus on helping local businesses draw up a recovery plan and help in planning crisis management in case of emergencies like Hurricane Katrina or the eruption of Mount St. Helens, or in cases of terrorist attack.
“Any more, if you are a business that supplies a product and you don’t have a back-up plan on what you will do in case of an emergency, other businesses aren’t going to contract with you,” Somerville said. “They can’t count on you.”
The workplace violence seminar will look at dealing with hostile individuals in the workplace and will address recognition, prevention and personal safety.
Other seminars will include: internet safety, gangs, traffic related training, personal safety, illegal drugs, crime scene investigation, home security, domestic preparedness and neighborhood watch, sex offender crimes and fraud and identity theft.
“We have some impressive people coming in to teach these seminars,” Somerville said. “Officer Craig Chamberlain will be there to teach the traffic safety class. We have Dr. Sally Aiken, the chief medical examiner for Spokane, coming in to help teach the crime scene class – that’s for people who like watching CSI and want to know what really goes on at a crime scene. Carrie Johnson, one of the forensic unit managers, will be involved in that seminar as well.”
Other instructors include Robin Ball, co-owner of Sharp Shooting Indoor Range and Gun Shop, who has been involved in Second Amendment issues and firearms crime issues, and Cary Pritchard, who is a digital forensics expert with the Sheriff’s Department, who will teach the Internet Safety seminar.
“There really is a lot of information available here,” Somerville said. “The two-day conference is broken up so you can take several different seminars and learn quite a bit.”
The conference includes a continental breakfast from 8 to 9:15 a.m. and lunch. Attendees will receive a notebook full of useful information.