Crime & Safety
Statham Police Bring New Meaning to Phrase 'Protect and Serve' with Community Classes
The city's police department has a number of neighborhood watch meetings and community-oriented classes already planned for the first half of 2012, beginning with this Thursday evening.
Rather than limit their responsibility to the community to include merely performing traffic duty, chasing bad guys and responding to calls for assistance, officers with the take a much broader view of their jobs as law enforcers.
Instead, they enhance their integral role within the city of Statham by bringing new meaning to the phrase “To Protect and Serve” and educating residents about ways they can help protect themselves. One way they accomplish this is through a series of neighborhood watch meetings and community-oriented classes offered in downtown Statham once a month.
The 2012 meeting schedule kicks off this Thursday, Jan. 19, with a class focused on prescription drug abuse and storage. According to a recent press release from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Director of National Drug Control Policy R. Gil Kerlikowske has named prescription drug abuse “a silent epidemic … stealing thousands of lives and tearing apart communities and families across the nation.”
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Prescription painkiller overdoses have more than tripled in the last decade and now kill more Americans than cocaine and heroin combined. As recently as 2010, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed that 1 in 20 people in the U.S. ages 12 and older reported using prescription painkillers non-medically.
This very important, not-to-be-missed meeting will educate residents of Statham with regard to proper storage of prescription medications and ways families can avoid becoming a statistic. Thursday’s meeting will be hosted at .
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Future Statham Police Department meetings are scheduled to include:
- Feb. 16 — Household first aid at the Statham Police Department
- March 15 — Severe weather indicators and action at the Statham Police Department
- April 19 — Self-defense awareness at Statham City Hall
- May 17 — Vacation planning at Statham City Hall
- June 21 — Subject matter TBD at Statham City Hall
All meetings are free to attend and will begin promptly at 7 p.m. If you would like more information about any of the meetings/classes listed above, call the Statham Police Department at 770-725-5992.
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