Security Training Available For Churches
February 15, 2018 at 5:20 p.m.
By David [email protected]
Nine people were killed in a shooting at the historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 15, 2015, in Charleston by white supremacist Dylann Roof.
While none of the church shootings in the news over the last few years occurred in this area, a local group has formed to help churches with their security by providing training.
Eric Behling started a safety team at WCC, but it was lacking direction and in its infancy. Donald Wiesehan came on board and provided some recruitment and training. David Parlier, team leader for Open Bible Baptist Church, was in a gun club at Wiesehan’s pistol range a couple of years ago and asked him about training a safety team for his church.
“So when we started doing this one (at WCC), we invited Dave and his team to training sessions and set those up. Some we had jointly with the sheriff’s department, others were just with the individual churches,” Wiesehan explained just a few hours before a school shooting in Florida where 17 were killed.
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“What we’re trying to do is make the training available to any of the churches that are interested so they can have their own safety team.”
The need for churches to have their own safety teams arose from the shootings in places like Charleston,
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Nine people were killed in a shooting at the historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 15, 2015, in Charleston by white supremacist Dylann Roof.
While none of the church shootings in the news over the last few years occurred in this area, a local group has formed to help churches with their security by providing training.
Eric Behling started a safety team at WCC, but it was lacking direction and in its infancy. Donald Wiesehan came on board and provided some recruitment and training. David Parlier, team leader for Open Bible Baptist Church, was in a gun club at Wiesehan’s pistol range a couple of years ago and asked him about training a safety team for his church.
“So when we started doing this one (at WCC), we invited Dave and his team to training sessions and set those up. Some we had jointly with the sheriff’s department, others were just with the individual churches,” Wiesehan explained just a few hours before a school shooting in Florida where 17 were killed.
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“What we’re trying to do is make the training available to any of the churches that are interested so they can have their own safety team.”
The need for churches to have their own safety teams arose from the shootings in places like Charleston,
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