Le Mars Police Chief Kevin Vande Vegte explains to Le Mars residents how to best avoid scams during a town hall meeting held Wednesday evening at the Le Mars Convention Center.
(Le Mars) — Nearly 60 people attended last evening’s town hall meeting hosted by the Le Mars Police Department. The event was at the Le Mars Convention Center and several people were interested in knowing about scams, active shooting incidents, and about the new school resource officer.
Officer John Vickery serves as the school resource officer and he informed the gathering he visits each school every day. Vickery says, at first, the students were uncertain and apprehensive to approach him. However, Vickery informed the interested crowd that as time progressed, the students have gotten accustomed to him, and have approached him with issues and concerns.
Vickery says he never sets a pattern with his school visits, and he never parks in the same location. He says one aspect of the position that was overlooked when he began his duties as the school resource officer is how much he has interacted with the teachers to assist with classes. He says teachers have asked him to discuss the dangers of smoking and drug use with their classes, as well as other topics of concern for students. Le Mars
Police Chief Kevin Vande Vegte informed the people about scams, and reiterated that a person should never give out any personal information to phone calls, email messages, or mail. He says often times it is difficult to retrieve any money that is lost due to a scam. Vande Vegte says the scammer will be a slick salesperson that will touch your emotions in order to get you to send money. He says the best method to fight scams in to
simply hang up the phone, delete the email, or throw away the scams that come through the mail. Vande Vegte says one thing that is usually certain is if you fall victim to a scam, it is very likely you will be targeted again.
Assistant Police Chief Justin Daale and Senior Officer Jeff Kramer discussed active shooting incidents with the gathering. Kramer and Daale says it doesn’t need to be a shooting incident with a gun. It can also be a person with a knife, or other type of weapon. The two police officers says the one thing that is common with an active incident is the perpetrator has a plan,
and the individual is intent to having large numbers of fatalities and causalities. Both officers say there is no negotiation with a person that is intent to cause harm. They emphasized when an incident happens, you need to react by leaving the scene if possible, or causing a distraction to the criminal subject, and sometimes you may need to confront the subject and
throw anything at the individual. Daale says one of the worst things to do is to remain in the vicinity. He used the Virginia Tech shooting episode as an example saying the individual anticipated people to hide under a desk, and he walked up to them and shot them.
