Benton County Sheriff’s deputies train to help kids avoid bad situations – Westside Eagle Observer

BENTONVILLE -- More than a dozen law enforcement officers spent the last week in April learning how to teach children self-defense and to avoid dangerous situations through the radKids curriculum.

Lt. Shannon Jenkins, a spokeswoman for the Benton County Sheriff's Office, said the office and its Police Athletic League are partnering with radKids. The program is a nationwide, personal empowerment and safety educational course that teaches children what to do in bad situations, such as bullying prevention, realistic defense against abduction, personal space and touch safety. It also focuses on safety issues at home, school and in cars.

Eleven Benton County Sheriff's Office deputies, two employees of the Children's Advocacy Center of Benton County, a Pea Ridge police officer and two other officers -- one from Utah and one from Ohio -- participated in the training.

Chris Sparks, Police Athletic League president, said the Sheriff's Office trained 15 deputies in 2010 to be radKids instructors. There is only one full-time instructor left with the Sheriff's Office, he said. Sparks, a part-time deputy, is also an instructor.

Sparks said the league has trained over 1,500 children since 2010. The program is taught each summer when the league holds its youth academy, he said.

Jenkins said the league reaches dozens of children each year with the academy but wants to be able to reach hundreds each year with more instructors. The goal is to be able to offer the program to schools, after-school programs, churches and other organizations dealing with children, she said.

Steve Daley, founder and creator of nonprofit radKids, was the instructor at the training.

Daley said he started the program in 1999. Daley, who was a police officer in Florida, said he was motivated after responding to a call concerning an injured young girl. He said he was talking to the girl and she wanted to know where Daley was when her mother's boyfriend hurt her and it was his job to protect her.

"That was the night my whole career changed, because we need to do more for our children than show up," he said.

Daley said he was assisting a women's safety program and implemented the same program to reach children.

He said over 9,000 instructors have been trained, and they have taught over 450,000 children. Daley said there's been feedback radKids aided in 200 escapes from abductions and helped stop thousands of sexual assaults.

"So it's been a wonderful blessing to do it, and the journey's been long, but we still have to do so much for our kids by giving them their personal boundaries, critical thinking skills, and we use safety to do it," Daley said.

Children have had to use physical force only 11 times in the 200 escapes, "so these kids are recognizing, avoiding and resisting before being hurt, which was the goal," he said.

Jenkins said radKids is about more than self-defense. She said the instructors are learning techniques to teach children about empowering themselves to resist certain situations and avoid dangerous ones.

"The hope is we can get in there, teach these kids everything that they need to know so that they can make informed decisions on how to look at a situation and what is best in that situation," Jenkins said.

One goal of radKids is to get children to own their voices and be able to speak out if someone is making them uncomfortable, she said, adding children need to be able to feel comfortable saying "no."

"The instructors will leave here with a curriculum to teach, to go into schools and go into different programs and actually teach these kids and educate these kids on what they can do," Jenkins said.

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Benton County Sheriff's deputies train to help kids avoid bad situations - Westside Eagle Observer