Area officers from the Nolan County Sheriff’s Office, Sweetwater Police Department and Texas Department of Public Safety were trained over the last two days in high performance tactical police driving maneuvers.  Four specialized driving instructors, all Troopers with the Texas Department of Public Safety and one intern came to Sweetwater to offer the instruction that covered two days, Monday, July 9 and Tuesday, July 10.

The instructors for this course were Texas DPS Troopers from Eastland, Graham, Plainview and Brownwood who really put on a top notch school and challenged the participants.  The City of Sweetwater and Avenger Field Airport were gracious to allow us to utilize a portion of the airport for this training.  TSTC provided a classroom and the local TXDOT office provided the orange traffic cones, most of which survived the two day encounter.”

Daniel Olds, with Stamford Police Department, received the “Top Driver” award for Monday’s session and Sgt. Todd Jones, with Sweetwater Police Department, received the award at the conclusion of Tuesday’s session.

“I certainly want to express my appreciation to local DPS Sergeant James Arnwine and NCSO Chief Deputy David McDonald for orchestrating and organizing this very beneficial training.  Our NCSO Deputies truly gained a great deal of knowledge of what the limitations are on a variety of police vehicles.  It was really nice to see the cooperation and joint effort with members of the Sweetwater Police Department, our NCSO Deputies and some local area Texas DPS Troopers all participating together.” said Sheriff David Warren.

“Unfortunately, many peace officers in Texas lose their lives every year in police vehicle related incidents.  I felt it was vital to provide our personnel with this type of training to help better equip them for high performance police driving situations, so they will be safer when that type of driving is required of them” said Sheriff David Warren.