Brunswick Sheriff’s Citizens Academy — Week Nine

I am writing this post nearly a week after last Tuesday’s session, which focused on the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office Special Operations Team.  According to an August 9, 2012 Brunswick Beacon article, the Special Operations Team includes the K-9 enforcement team, the motorcycle unit and the Aggressive Criminal Enforcement (ACE) Team.  The ACE Team is a support unit whose primary functions are traffic enforcement (particularly DWI enforcement) and assisting in the apprehension of drug traffickers in the county.

Topics covered during this session included:

• Facts about alcohol and how it affects the human body
• An overview of the various stages of Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC)
• How to conduct a field sobriety test, and the different types of field sobriety tests that officers may utilize.

One of the Deputies said that Driving While Impaired is like playing Russian Roulette:  the car is the gun, and each drink you have before getting behind the wheel is one more bullet in the chamber.

On Saturday, we learned about the Marine Patrol and had the opportunity to ride the Marine Patrol boat.  We also had the opportunity to observe the K9 units in action.  K9 dogs we observed included drug dogs, bomb dogs and dogs trained to assist with the apprehension of suspects.