December "Men's 710"
Gets Silverhill Police Update

     "We will begin a 'Neighborhood Watch' program in January," Chief Kim Wasdin explained to the "Men's 710" Breakfast and Speaker Fellowship meeting at Zion Lutheran Church in Silverhill at its December meeting. "There is crime in small towns, and sometimes it is big. We have recovered $50,000 in stolen property in the last two months, much of it in Silverhill. One hundred guns alone were recovered--imagine those in the hands of criminals!" You get the sense of why Chief Wasdin is a big booster of community involvement with the local police. All of public safety personnel this Christmas time of year are stressed with problems from suicide to fire control to crime, and community support is vital to assure that problems are dealt with.

     Violence happens in police work. Chief Wasdin noted that "there were 158 officers killed in the line of duty already by November 1 this year, four of them female." To some extent, the death rate relates to understaffing. We ask a lot of our public servants. "Police work holidays and weekends. I am fielding eight to 10 calls and inquiries every day. We keep the crooks guessing by having a constantly changing schedule." It is necessary to schedule attendance at mandatory public safety continuing education activities, over 30 hours a year for chiefs and 15 hours a year for staff.

     Silverhill Police Chief Kim Wasdin (standing) discussed law enforcement issues and fielded questions from Zion Lutheran Church's "Men's 710" at its December meeting.

     At this time Chief Wasdin is the only full-time officer in Silverhill, but there are two part-time and three reserve officers to help cover the community. "Simply put, we've got to have community assistance. In January we were receiving 32 calls per month, but as of November we were at 100 calls for service a month. A call requires generation of a report and an investigation, not to mention provision of statistics to the Silverhill Town Council monthly." (This level of service is pretty remarkable when we consider that Silverhill pays its police less than Pritchard, which was established about the same time as Silverhill and is now a suburb in Mobile. That places Silverhill's police pay at the bottom of the heap for all of Mobile and Baldwin Counties.)

     Wasdin fielded a variety of law enforcement questions at the Men's 710 group. She was accompanied by Officer Heath Mosley and "Meg" the bloodhound. A brief discussion of Baldwin's canine "Child Abduction Response Team" was followed by a demonstration of Meg's tracking capabilities, concluding the meeting.

     Kim Wasdin is a career Law Enforcement officer, having begun her work with the Orange Beach Department of Public Safety in the late 1980s. She completed the South Alabama Police Academy and commenced work as a Patrol Officer in Elberta, then joining the Foley Police Department in 1999. Her commitment to Silverhill began in January of this year. She has been Chief of Police since October.

K-9 Support Comes to Silverhill

     The name of the organization is "C.A.R.T." and "our team lives here in Baldwin County," Reserve Officer Heath Mosley explains. He and "Meg" the bloodhound are components of Baldwin's canine "Child Abduction Response Team."

     As Mosley tells it, he was just up in Kentucky with family, but by Christmas time last year he had come home with two bloodhounds! He discovered that the dogs were very trainable. In fact now 14 months old, Meg has completed her "Entry Level" and "Man-Trailing" tests with the American Bloodhound Club. "She is now working on her MTI and MTX tests," Mosley notes. He has been from Texas to Virginia to Kentucky to train and test-out Meg. The reason "To be a good working team you must be committed to train on a regular basis, weekly, monthly, and be able to train out of town on a regular basis."

     Officer Heath Mosley (Handler) and "Meg" the bloodhound comprise Silverhill's component of the the Baldwin "Child Abduction Response Team." They serve with the Silverhill Police Department and participated in a tracking demonstration at the December meeting of Zion Lutheran Church's "Men's 710." When tracking, the two are tethered together as Meg follows the scent of the missing victim. If violence is expected, the two are accompanied by a regular police officer or police team.

     Mosley and Meg work as a team. They are a resource for "The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children." They are a "Bloodhound Team." His canine commitment to Silverhill's Police Department and Baldwin County has required thousands of his dollars, but "in the end the reward of giving back to our communities makes what Meg and I do as a team worth it. We are free to the public, and we help all police departments that need a tracking team."

     Officer Mosley and Meg accompanied Silverhill Police Chief Kim Wasdin to the December Meeting of Zion Lutheran Church's "Men's 710" Breakfast and Speaker Fellowship. Wasdin discussed the importance of having Mosley and Meg close at hand and how they are an asset to Law Enforcement. In child abduction situations or lost Alzheimer cases, finding the victim quickly saves lives.

     Handler Mosley and Meg did a "hot track" demonstration outside the church. Jackie, a friend of Mosley's, "took off on foot from the church and headed west, hiding behind a tree a block away," as Wasdin described the event. "An article of paper which had Jackie's scent had been placed in a plastic bag sometime before the event. It was opened for Meg to sniff. She began tracking after being told to work. She tracked Jackie to his hiding place within a couple minutes. Bloodhounds have a great sense of smell and have tracked trails 12 or more days old," Wasdin noted. She was quick to report that "I am very proud to have Heath and Meg as part of our Silverhill team and am very pleased with our results so far."