(Juneau) Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt recently attended a Law Enforcement Executive Development Seminar (LEEDS) hosted by the F.B.I. in Washington DC. The seminar is meant for midlevel agencies.
Schmidt had two main takeaways while he was there. One, being a presentation by a sheriff from northern New York who discussed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in law enforcement and his personal connections.
“He talked about, you know, a lot of the impacts, people around you, and what we as an organization need to do to make sure that we foster a healthy workplace for our agency,” says Schmidt.
Schmidt says that the sheriff was the best speaker he had ever seen in all the training he has attended and would like to bring him to the state of Wisconsin to talk with local law enforcement leaders.
Another takeaway Schmidt had was the use of body camera video, more specifically forensic analysis.
“You may not know this, but most cameras out there drop frames,” Schmidt says. “So, you’re doing 30 frames per second, and you may have had 5 or 10 frames in that completely gone, missing from the video.”
The sheriff goes on to explain an example that was shown with missing frames from bodycam footage. The video initially showed a sergeant throwing someone up against the wall and kicking them in the leg. Schmidt says that upon further reviewing the video with all the frames in place, it clearly showed that is not what happened.
