Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 27, 1990 TAG: 9004270679
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: NEAL THOMPSON NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
And now, if Virginia police get their wish, there'll be LETN.
Law Enforcement Television Network could give Virginia police a peek at how police in other parts of the country handle things like the war on drugs, gang violence, the Ku Klux Klan, courtroom security and wife beating.
"And they are able to be aware of what you are doing right here in Virginia," said Robert Sadler, sales manager for LETN.
Sadler gave his pitch Thursday to a few hundred members of the Virginia Sheriff's Association at its spring conference at the Blacksburg Marriott.
He explained how LETN could help save departments money because officers could learn new law enforcement techniques and methods just by watching the tube, rather than being sent to an academy for a two-day seminar.
LETN is a 10-month-old private national network based near Dallas that provides satellite broadcasts 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday, of news and training programs to 1,700 departments nationwide.
"And we're adding 150 more each month," Sadler said.
LETN is scheduled to begin airing soon at four police departments in Virginia as part of a one-year pilot project. One is the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department, which expects to get hooked into LETN in a few weeks, Chief Deputy Milton Graham said.
The pilot project is being financed by the state Division of Risk Management, which provides liability insurance for police departments. The premise is that a better-trained officer is less of a liability risk.
At the end of a year, the division will look at whether LETN's training programs reduced liability and will then decide whether to pay for more departments to get LETN.
"We're trying to do some training that helps officers keep up on the latest court rulings and the latest training out there," Graham said. "So if they're doing their job properly, hopefully it'll help them avoid getting into a situation that will be a liability for us."
Members of the sheriffs' association say they would like to see the state finance their subscription to the network, which would cost somewhere between $288 and $588 a month, television sets not included, depending on the size of the department.
But if the state doesn't come up with the bucks for all departments - which isn't very likely, some officers said - most departments probably won't be able to afford it themselves.
"It might work for the bigger departments with a large number of men and bigger budgets, but in these rural departments working on shoestring budgets, it's just not gonna work," Floyd County Sheriff Russell Quesenberry said. "It's good, but it's expensive, very expensive."
Thursday, Quesenberry and other association members watched three TV screens in the Marriott's ballroom that displayed videotapes of a typical LETN broadcast.
They watched news blurbs on recent drug busts in Winchester and Staunton and a controversial wife-beating case in Indiana. They also watched a short training program on security measures that can be taken to prevent violence in the courtroom.
Another perk, said Sadler, "There's no commercials."
LETN is owned by Westcott Communications, which owns other specialized-training broadcast companies for such industries as automobiles, computers and airlines.
The company estimates it will have 5,000 law enforcement subscribers on the local, county, state and federal levels. It also is aiming at campus, port authority, transit, airport and military police, according to literature provided by Sadler.
Graham said his officers won't usually watch LETN on the job, but LETN programs will be videotaped for special training sessions and for officers to watch at home.
"It seems to be excellent programming. A lot of the people they have presenting the programs are the tops in their field," Graham said.
LETN not only airs training programs and national news updates on interesting cases, but also provides segments on stress management and motivation.
The brain behind the project is former Dallas Police Chief Billy Prince and police author and instructor Neal Trautman, who appeared on one of the programs shown Thursday.
LETN has news bureaus in Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and Washington.
by CNB