February has been a busy month for training. We held the 2023 Crystal Bath Memorial TCO Symposium Feb 16th and 17th. The event attracted 66 telecommunications officers and first responders from all over the state for this two-day training event. Some topics included in this year's symposium were "Doing time in Dispatch," Positive Interactions with Difficult People, The Dispatcher's role within the Incident Command System, and Mental Wellness. We also had a highly rated set of breakout sessions, including information and resources for maritime/coastal response, wildfire response, and air medical resources.

A special thank you goes out to our sponsors for this event, including Tango Tango, Keevin it Reel, Fishing with Fern, Chris's Marine, Texas Coast Comfort Solutions, Crossroads Church, Country Villa R.V., and Twisted Designs.

We held several Electronic Control Devise (Taser) training classes and had officers from several departments join us.

On Feb 22nd, we held an 8-hour Standardized Field Sobriety Test (SFST) class. In this course, we conducted a "wet lab" where several volunteers were dosed with alcohol to predetermined levels within a controlled environment. The officers in training were then able to conduct SFSTs on these volunteers to build their confidence and experience conducting SFSTs on people at different levels of intoxication.

On Feb 21st, we held the Glock Armorers Course. This class brought 36 police officers and armorers from across the state to Aransas Pass for this one-day course that covered all the ins and outs of Glock pistols. In this course, we had several APPD officers who are now better prepared to inspect and work on Glock firearms for our department if needed.

On Feb 24th, Captain Jones and Detective Poe were invited to the McAllen DPS Headquarters to be final evaluators for the TCOLE Advanced Instructor Certification Course. They evaluated and graded the instructors during their final presentation. All students passed their final evaluations and are now eligible to become Advanced TCOLE Instructors, which make up less than 5 percent of all TCOLE Instructors. APPD currently has 5 Advanced Instructors and several more who are close to gaining this certification.

Also this month, TCOS Murphy and TCO Simpson attended a social media for Law Enforcement Course, HSEO McCarty attended the ALERRT ERASE Instructor course, and Detective Kent attended a Homicide Investigators course.