Wayne County Sheriff's Office provides safety training for religious leaders following church attacks
The Wayne County Sheriff's Office provided a training session on Monday for local religious leaders on emergency preparedness planning and training for their congregations.
The sheriff's office is the first in the state to offer anything like this, and authorities say it's because recent events have sparked a need for it.
"We were thrilled to find out they were going to offer this training," said the Rev. Dave Tucker with Fort Street Presbyterian Church in Detroit.
Tucker told CBS Detroit that following the attacks on Crosspointe Community Church in Wayne and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, he was happy to get the message that the Wayne County Sheriff's Office would be offering training on how to prepare for an active shooter.
"Obviously, that's what gave us pause and got us talking about the opportunity to get some training," said Tucker.
Dozens of local clergy members came throughout the afternoon on Monday to hear from the sheriff's office about what could be done to prepare for an emergency.
"People are talking about not going to churches anymore, and synagogues, and things like that. And we don't want that to happen, so we're putting ourselves in position to train those parishioners, those pastors, those leaders," Wayne County Sheriff Raphael Washington said.
Washington said it's a sad reality, but it's important for both the leaders of congregations and parishioners to always have an eye out for suspicious behavior.
"If it doesn't look right, it's probably not right, so we talk about that a lot," he said.
The sheriff's office says that this was just the first session, and they look forward to continuing to have more classes like this with local religious leaders.