Region-06

I had the opportunity to attend a few days of our Region's Mobile Field Force assesment in Springfield recently. Assesments are scheduled for every other year for both the Mobile Field Forces and the WMD SRT's. The assesments, among many other things, are efforts to determine a unit's readiness for deployment. I would like to convey to all of our Region 6 administrators and not just those who have offficers on the team, how impressed I was with the performance of our team under the command of Deputy Chief Curt Kelty. Unless you have personally worked in the environment that these teams are trained to operate in, its hard to imagine the chaos that can be involved. It takes strict team discipline and strict personal discipline to operate professionally in these environments. The Region 6 team has these qualities. I would like to congratulate the Region 6 MFF on its recent accomplishments in its first team assesment.

ILEAS makes squad-car camera grants

URBANA -- Three Illinois police departments that previously had no video cameras for their squad cars now have one each, thanks to the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System Foundation.

The nonprofit arm of ILEAS raised the money to pay for one of the digital cameras; the two others were donated to the foundation by Panasonic and CDS Office Technologies.

The ILEAS Foundation then randomly selected three departments out of about 70 that qualified for the cameras to receive them. Those chosen were the Lake Land College Police Department in Coles County, the Sidell Police Department in Vermilion County, and the Vermont Police Department in Fulton County.

Angela Page of ILEAS said the agency is not allowed to use federal homeland security money to pay for the cameras, but they are among the most often requested items by small departments.

The video camera, the Panasonic Arbitrator 360, is valued at $5,600.

The ILEAS Foundation was formed in 2009 to support local law enforcement agencies in Illinois outside of the standard government grant process. It raises private funds to pay for state-of-the-art equipment and professional training for officers and deputies that are not covered under homeland security, Page said.

Pictured is ILEAS Regional Planning Coordinator Jim Pearson congratulating Vermont PD Chief Shane Woods.

On October 4, 2010, the Region 6/7 and Region 6 ILEAS WMD SRTs met at the Hanna City Work Camp in the Peoria area for a joint training event.  It provided a great opportunity for the teams to get to know each other and work together.  Not only this but the training was enhanced by the addition of the Bartonville National Guard Civil Support Team which provided the wet decon asset and all of their support equipment. Also participating as part of the Region 6/7 team was the Peoria Police Department ordinance disposal team. Their robot equipment participated in the training enhanced by their new ILEAS funded equipment allowing the robot to be operated out of line of sight of the target.  The Region 6 team also brought their ILEAS funded air truck for training. Dr John Wipfler and RN Colleen Ragon were on hand as part of our local Special Tactics and Trauma Team.  Congratulations to these units on this training effort.