Last night, participants in the the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office’s 2015 Citizens Academy graduated from the program, each receiving a certificate and sheriff’s office challenge coin.

The group also gave the sheriff’s office a plaque and donated $100 to Douglas County Safe Kids on behalf of the sheriff’s office.

The 14 participants in this year’s academy learned many things, including active shooter response, emergency vehicle driving and weapon deployment. I understand they even got to do the shoot-or-don’t-shoot exercise I wrote about in Lights & Sirens Wednesday that I did on Saturday with the Lawrence Police Department’s Crisis Intervention Training.

The sheriff’s office Facebook page has been featuring photos of the academy’s activities since its start in late August. The Sheriff’s Office Citizen’s Academy is designed to give participants a working knowledge of the duties and responsibilities of the Sheriff’s Office with hands-on instruction at many locations.

Below are a couple shots from their experience, courtesy of the sheriff’s office:

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Today, 63 attendees from 13 local law enforcement and other organizations complete their weeklong 40-hour Crisis Intervention Training. Locally, there will now be 42 Lawrence police officers and 11 sheriff’s deputies certified in CIT.

As I explained in yesterday’s Lights & Sirens, CIT is designed to help law enforcement and others de-escalate situations involving people in a mental health crisis.

Here’s a photo the Lawrence Police Department shared on its Facebook page of the training in progress.

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There haven’t been a ton of blotter items worth reporting this week, which I consider a good thing for our community. But here are the tallies from the Lawrence Police Department’s 911 call log.

As always, I’ll remind you that this is a list of noteworthy calls I pulled from the Lawrence Police Department call log. Not all calls yielded police reports, and many may have gone unsubstantiated. The list is meant to give you an idea of what kinds of calls police are responding to within a given time period.

This list is a collection of calls that police responded to between Thursday and Friday mornings:

Violence

– Disturbance (verbal or physical arguments): 4

– Stabbing: 1

– Domestic disturbance: 3

– Fight in progress: 3

– Battery: 2

• Criminal threat: 1

Traffic

– Noninjury accident: 13

Medical

– Medical: 5

• Alcohol poisoning: 1

• Suicide threat: 1

Miscellaneous

– Suspicious activity: 8

– Noise or Nuisance: 5

• Vicious animal: 2

• Alcohol complaint: 1

Welfare

• Adult welfare check: 4

– Runaway: 1

Property crimes

– Burglary: 4

• Auto burglary: 8

– Theft: 9

– Criminal damage: 2

– Trespassing: 7

• Stolen vehicle: 4