Sheriff Leon Lott held a press conference today, on a farm in Lower Richland County, with members of the Richland County Posse to demonstrate the techniques that Posse members use and go through to train both rider and horse. The Posse is called upon to deal with many different scenarios that affect the safety and security of our citizens. Sheriff Lott stated that the Richland County Sheriff’s Posse was formed for the purposes of having a group of riders that would be available to the Sheriff’s Department when mounted searches or assistance to community safety would be advantageous.    

Sheriff Leon Lott stated that the Posse consists of 25 members from numerous counties throughout the state who train weekly, rain or shine, and incorporate subjects such as search techniques, first aid, community relations, tracking, wilderness survival, evidence handling, equine first aid, compass use and navigation, radio communications, rope-work and rappelling, as well as working with search aircraft and tracking dogs. The Posse is made up of mounted and ground personnel who are dedicated and professional and are chosen as if their lives or our citizen’s lives depend on their performance; because they may.   

For this reason Sheriff Leon Lott sent Investigator Holly Wagner, Senior Reserve Deputy Patricia Meyer and Reserve Deputy Clifford Fisher to the Southern Police Institute’s Mounted Police School, held in Tampa Florida, in January of this year. The three Richland County Deputies were part of a class of eleven police officers, from across the Southeast, who attended the Southern Police Institute program -- who all learned more effective ways to utilize mounted patrols to deter crime, locate missing persons, control crowds and affect arrests. 

March 21, 2008