Dodge County Explorer’s Post Wins National Award
5 August 2018 News
(Left to Right: Lieutenant Cole Weber, Explorer Brennan Giese, Captain Easton Meier)
During the week of 07/15/2018 and 07/20/2018, three explorers attended the Nationals Law Enforcement Explorer Conference held at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. The event was hosted by the Indiana State Police. The conference is attended by explorer posts from across the nation, including as far east as Baltimore and as far west as Los Angeles.
Dodge County Law Enforcement Explorer Captain Easton Meier, Lieutenant Kole Weber and Explorer Brennan Giese (all of Beaver Dam) attended and competed in numerous competitions and seminars. Explorers where chaperoned by Deputies Pansier and Jackson.
Throughout the week, explorers competed in several team events including Traffic Stops, Domestic Response, Arrest and Search, NEVOC (emergency vehicle operations) and Shoot / Don’t Shoot. Explorers also took part in several individual events including a physical agility test and a written entrance examination. Seminars attended included Use of Force, Active Shooter as well as a seminar on Drug Trafficking. While not taking part in events and seminars, explorers took part in a career fair as well as team building events with other Wisconsin posts from Appleton, West Bend, Madison, Two Rivers, Hudson, Kenosha and Racine.
Our explorer post worked extremely hard to raise funds for their trip to Purdue University and also trained hard. Their hard work paid off as they were awarded 1st place in the nation in the Shoot /Don’t Shoot event. This incident places the explorers in several simulated potential deadly force situations that law enforcement officers may see in the field. These are by far the most stressful incidents a law enforcement officer could ever be faced with. The judges (federal law enforcement agents) indicated that our explorers handled the situations presented to them better than they had ever seen. That is a credit to not only the explorers, but the explorer advisors who trained and mentored them.
The Dodge County Law Enforcement Explorer Post has been in existence since 2008 and was formed by Sheriff Dale Schmidt and many other advisors have assisted. The current lead advisor who took the program over from the sheriff in 2016, Deputy Dustin Waas, began with the sheriff’s office as an original explorer in 2008. Since 2008 the explorers have won many awards at state conferences and this is the 3rd national team award that the Explorers have won. They have earned the reputation of being one of the top explorer posts in the state of Wisconsin and these explorers deserve a great deal of credit for the hard work and dedication that they have put in to make the explorer post what it is. This program has also turned into an excellent recruitment tool for the sheriff’s office.
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