Courtesy Photo | Members of the public visit a Fort McCoy Directorate of Emergency Services display...... read more read more
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Fire and police personnel with Fort McCoy’s Directorate of Emergency Services (DES) took numerous vehicles and equipment to support the 20th annual Monroe County National Night Out event Aug. 1 in Tomah, Wis., and the second National Night Out event in Sparta, Wis.
Hundreds of people attended each event. The Monroe County National Night Out was held for four hours at Tomah’s Recreation Park. It was the second time at that park. Sparta’s National Night Out event was held at the city’s Memorial Park.
Introduced in 1984 by the National Association of Town Watch, National Night Out is a nonprofit crime-prevention organization that works in cooperation with thousands of crime-watch groups and law-enforcement agencies throughout the country. Representatives of the Tomah Police Department said local officials know it helps build relationships that help create safe communities.
Fort McCoy DES had numerous pieces of equipment and vehicles as well as more than a dozen people from both the police and fire departments at both events. Fort McCoy police personnel also educated people about Operation Family Safe at the Monroe County National Night Out, which included EZ child-identification (ID) stations that provided ID materials for dozens of children.
New Fort McCoy Director of Emergency Services Micah Komp described the Fort McCoy support for National Night Out events.
“Fort McCoy has continuously supported these events,” Komp said while attending the Monroe County event in Tomah. “Every year we are invited, and we are happy to support both the Tomah and the Sparta events. We’ve got police and fire and emergency services personnel supporting in both communities. We are absolutely thrilled to be here and happy to support.”
Komp said having DES personnel be a regular part of community events is important.
“Our partnerships with local law enforcement and emergency services is extremely important to us,” Komp said. “We regularly, on the fire and emergency services side, support the Tomah and Sparta communities, and they also support us. And so having these relationships with the community is extremely important. And for a lot of us, we are in the community. We are members of the community. We live here. This is our home, and so being a part of this is a privilege, but it’s something that’s extremely important to us in DES because this is our home. Fort McCoy is part of the community, and those of us who live and work in this area enjoy bringing our families out to events like this as well too.”
Komp also said the idea of an event like National Night Out helps communities build trust with their local first responders.
“I think it’s really good that the men and women of law enforcement and fire and emergency services who are part of the community and who are out here to serve and support the community have a chance to take this great opportunity to meet and interact with the community,” Komp said. “It’s a good chance for them to talk with people in the community and for them to talk with us.”
At the Sparta National Night Out event, DES police Lt. Jeffrey Kingsley led the presence at that location. He said they had a busy night. “We were swamped right up until the end,” he said.
In addition to Fort McCoy people and equipment, each event also had dozens of not-for-profit organizations with various exhibits, information booths, and displays on subjects like nutrition, school bus safety, biking safety, storm spotting, parenting, water safety, electricity safety, seatbelt use, boating safety, all-terrain vehicle safety, poison control, mental health, and first aid.
The next National Night Event for Monroe County and Sparta are planned for August 2024.
Fort McCoy was established in 1909 and its motto is to be the “Total Force Training Center.” Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.
The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on the Defense Visual Information Distribution System at https://www.dvidshub.net/fmpao, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”
Also try downloading the Digital Garrison app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base.
| Date Taken: | 08.02.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 08.02.2023 15:37 |
| Story ID: | 450548 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 436 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Fort McCoy supports two 2023 National Night Out events; supporting building first-responder relationships with local communities, by Scott Sturkol, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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