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LEAPS
Houston
Jeff Moore - LEAPS Chairman
Executive V.P., ASSIST Gulf Coast Region
State Chairman, �Assault Against A Security Officer�
Blue Moon Investigations Security & Protection
Hello again from the Gulf Coast Region. My name is Jeff Moore and I am the chairperson for the Houston LEAPS program. We are pleased to announce that we meet on the last Thursday of every other month at the �New South Central Houston Police Department Station. Many thanks go out to my good friend, HPD Officer Joe Sanchez, for all his assistance in coordinating the speakers and setting up the bi-monthly meetings. We have had some great speakers over the last several months who have made these meetings informative as well as very interesting to attend. We hope to see everyone at our next meeting Sept. 27, 10 a.m. to noon.
Our guest speaker in March was a very good friend of mine, Sgt. Mike Hill with the Houston Police Department. He spoke about a new program called Police and Clergy Team. This is a very unique program started in Houston, Texas. This program incorporates the Houston Police Department and the local churches with the apartment communities. PACT provides a volunteer husband-and-wife team to move into an apartment community to live for a period of time. These volunteers act as counselors for the residents. They work on getting themselves embedded within the community and gaining the trust of the residents. They are available to help every resident with any and all problems they may be facing. These teams are very well trained and informed on the different types of agencies available to help provide welfare services such as food, electricity, transportation, employment, abuse victim�s rights, etc. They work not only with the residents but also act as a buffer to work out problems with the apartment managers, police and private security if needed. The basic concept of this program is the residents have someone available that cares about them and is in their corner to help them when they are in need. To date, PACT has been very instrumental in helping many youths stay out of gangs, as well as helping women get away from abusive partners. This program is proving itself to be a success in cleaning up apartment communities. We, as security professionals, hope to work with the new PACT program to do our part in making our communities a safer place to live.
Our next guest speaker, Sr. Police Officer Frank Webb with HPD, was in May of 2007. Webb is part of the HPD Crisis Intervention and De-escalation Team. We learned that in 1955, there were more than 550,000 mentally ill persons in mental hospitals in the U.S. Today, we have less than 50,000 in these mental facilities. This equates to more than 500,000-plus mentally ill people on the streets all over America. The result is a very high chance that the police or private security will come into contact with these individuals on an everyday basis. This is where this team comes into play. At this meeting, we learned how to approach and deal with the mentally ill. This team is specially trained on the different types of mental disorders and what ways seem to work best with each type of disorder. Webb shared stories about police officers who, in the past, have tried to deal with persons and have been overpowered and even killed due to their lack of understanding and training in dealing with mentally ill persons. We were shocked to find out that, until recently, police officers got very little training, if any, on these types of issues. There is now new state legislation that makes it mandatory they get 16 hours continuing education training on this topic. We, as security professionals, should receive mandatory training on this topic as well. It could easily save lives for both security officers and the mentally ill.
By meeting every other month, security professionals and law enforcement professionals are getting a chance to interact with each other off the street. It gives us all a chance to see how much we have in common. We must find common ground to stand on if we want to achieve our goals of making our cities a safer place to live. As we all know, we can not do it with out each other. This is why it is very important we learn to respect each other and to work together as a team. I would like to see more security company owners and their officers getting involved with the LEAPS program in Houston. It is only two hours of your time, for which you earn continuing education hours, and is a great way to learn more about all types of security issues and ways to work hand-in-hand with law enforcement. We must all take a part in supporting our profession if we want others to do the same.
I hope to see all of you at our next meeting Sept. 27 at the New South Central HPD Station, located at 2202 St. Emanuel, Houston, Texas. If you have any questions about these meetings or our ASSIST meetings in Houston, please do not hesitate to contact me at
[email protected]. I will be happy to answer your questions. Until next time, take care out there and be safe. Remember, it does not work unless we all take part and make it happen.
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