ICS Training

An Instant Commands System Class is currently being taught. This upper, middle management level course is a structure used to teach management procedures.

There’s a lot of various organizations here today such as the City of Meridian, Meridian Police Department, NAS Meridian, Meridian Public School District. All of these organizations have to know how to work together incase some kind of natural disaster or any other incident happens.

“Take for example the situations we dealt with yesterday with the different threats. We had three different phases of emergency services involved. You had fire, police, and public safety. We do that on a daily basis. We work together well on small incidents,” says Director of Public Safety & Training for the City of Meridian, Douglas Stephens.

It’s when those incidents get larger and federal or state assistance has to be brought in, that this course teaches them where they fit into the big picture of things.

“I mean because you have major incidents that happen at schools. It can be a bomb or a shooting or anything dealing with the weather. So, you still have to prepare. You still have people that you’re responsible for which are students and kids and staff and other people like that, that you’re responsible for.” -Tenesia Evans, SRO Officer, MPSD

“So, we try to blend all parts of city and county and public school districts and other places into these classes, so that when they walk out of here, and you have an incident and it bleeds over city or county lines, you have familiar faces you’ve dealt with in a class before.” -Stephens

Stephens says while there are some downsides to being a smaller town, dealing with familiar faces on almost a daily basis is a huge up-side.