Clay County Receives Tuition Waiver For Specialized Training

The Clay County Sheriff’s Department has received a waiver to pay for specialized training.

Chief Deputy Rick Lisi said this opportunity is huge for operations in a department with limited financial resources. Lisi said officers and investigators can receive specialized training for things like handling drug labs or child abuse investigations.

“Every and any training I can send my people to, I really want to encourage them to go,” Lisi said. “It makes us better as a team, it helps our community, as well.”

Lisi said that it would cost thousands of dollars to send an officer to complete one of these courses without the waiver. Lisi said the importance on getting these skills in the department has heightened this year.

“In these trying times of COVID, we haven’t had access over the last year to these intensive courses that you just cannot do online,” Lisi said. “You can get some of the class work knocked out online but you need to have some hands on stuff.”

Lisi said this even adds skills to the department’s specialized staff.

“Advanced schools for some of our investigators to go to for the various types of issues we face,” Lisi said. “The grants that are being provided for these things are just amazing. A lot of training that goes into these things, you want that officer when they’re responding to the particular scenes they’re going to, to have those skill sets.”

The Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy provided these tuition waivers to 11 distressed counties.