Sheriff reaching out to teach how to interact with law enforcement
When you’re a 16-yearold driver who’s been pulled over for the first time, you might be feeling nervous, scared and ultimately unsure of what to do.
Floyd County Sheriff Dave Roberson is working on changing that by bringing his presentation on the do’s and don’ts of law enforcement interaction to local schools.
He was first approached by Pepperell High School teacher Alana Ellenburg about doing a presentation at the school. Ellenburg teaches High School 101, a class dedicated to teaching students life skills and how to navigate high school.
Originally, the presentation had been more about driver safety and certain consequences and choices young drivers make, but Roberson decided to tweak it a bit and focus on how a
driver should interact with officers if they’re pulled over.
“Recently, especially in the last week, all eyes have
been on law enforcement and vehicle pull-overs,” Roberson said. “We really want to teach young drivers how to interact with law enforcement and make sure they’re not scared.”
Some of the points he went over were the usual behavior of an officer, staying in the vehicle and finding a welllit area to pull over.
“We want our officers and the drivers to be safe,” Roberson said.
Since he posted pictures of the presentation on social media, there’s been more interest at other schools about it. Many people asked if he would bring the presentation to other schools, which he said he would be more than happy to do.
Roberson has now reached out to both the county school board and the city school board about talking to high schoolers.
“We usually go to the middle schools to talk about law enforcement, but this way we’ll be interacting with students who are actually driving,” he said.