Chief Huff makes plans to better serve community

The Kimball Police Department consists of seven officers, all of who are certified, a first in the two years since Chief Darren Huff has been in his position. Chief Huff has been working tirelessly to make sure that all of his officers are a trained asset to the community of Kimball and shared his plans for the upcoming budget year concerning the department.

Some of Huff’s plans include an up to date, advanced, in house training regiment that utilizes the skills of the current officers. Now that the department has a certified detective, Sergeant Bremer, a Special Response Team (SRT) commander, Captain Trout, and both Chief Huff and Bremer have training concerning K-9 handling, Huff feels more confident than ever in his team of officers. He wants his officers to be a present yet approachable force in the community.

“Being a proactive rather than a reactive department is a priority along with making sure that we’re always identifying issues and that we’re out and keep our community policing at the forefront. Relationship building is important as well. We’re trying to make sure we are approachable and accessible to the community,” Huff said.

Huff has made sure to assemble a team of officers that have a wide range of skill sets. It is in this way that Huff hopes to keep a lot of the training that the officers go through in house, therefore, cutting down on costs.

“Captain Trout is a certified firearms instructor. Sergeant Bremer is a certified field training officer(FTO), through the state of Nebraska. Officer Bouse is our taser instructor, and Officer Thomas is a grade two Jiu Jitsu instructor as well as a ground fighting instructor. I myself am certified through modern warrior and am the current defensive tactics instructor. All of this means that we can train in house and keep down on costs,” Huff said.

The department has new officers, Hitch and Thomas. Thomas comes from Denver and has experience in Jiu JItsu and was in the Marine Corps.

“I came from the Denver Metro area, which is a fairly busy area. I was able to have this opportunity to come and work for the Chief. I jumped at it. I’m a grade two Jiu Jitzu instructor, and I teach ground fighting. I have taught all over the world such as Spain, Germany, Ireland… I could go on and on. I was a Marine Corps Scout Sniper for six years. I’ve done special operations with the Navy and the Army in Iraq. I’ve been around once or twice. I’ve seen a lot of stuff and I talked to the Captain, Chief, and the Sergeant and they said come on up here and we’ll show you some more. So that’s why I’m here,” Thomas said.

Officer Hitch recently graduated from the academy on February 21 and has been working closely with Sergeant Bremer.

“I really enjoy being on task here at the police department. I’m very ambitious, and I’m very zealous about what I’ll be doing here and what I have done here already. I’m working with an excellent team. The rest of the guys at the police department are just outstanding to work with and very helpful with teaching me what else I need to learn that I didn’t learn at the academy. Out of all the things that I learned at the academy, the most interesting was the drug training. So I look forward to working with Sergeant Bremer and under him as he teaches me what he knows since he’s got a lot of advanced training with drugs. I’m excited to be on board,” Hitch said.

Another exciting asset to the department is the knowledge and detective certification of Sergeant Bremer. In the past, the department did not have proper training when it came to detective work concerning handling evidence and a crime scene. Many cases were thrown out because of improperly handled evidence. With Sergeant Bremer in the department now, he can direct things like investigations so that they are handled properly. Chief Huff hopes that this will aid in Kimball seeing an increase in convicting criminals.

Huff also entertained the hope of being able to hold training courses concerning different officers’ specialties. This would draw in officers from the surrounding area to Kimball for their training. This would mean Kimball would get traffic from officers possibly involving lodging and and other costs pertaining to their training trip.

Huff has hopes for the department concerning K-9 training. He would like to acquire a dog that would be trained in narcotics and hopes to have a second dog trained in bomb detection.

“We already have the dog for bomb detection. We would like to raise money through donations and fundraising to get the dog for narcotics detection,” Huff said.

Having these dogs on hand would greatly improve upon the good work already being done by the Kimball Police Department. Also, since both Chief Huff and Sergeant Bremer have K-9 handling certification and training, there would be no added costs for officer training concerning acquiring the K-9 for the department.

The police department also has an added asset in that they have a School Resource Officer now, Officer Smith. This allows them to be a better presence at both schools in keeping the children and teenagers safe.

“We want the kids to feel comfortable talking to the officers, to view them as approachable. Hopefully, this will work toward the children feeling comfortable with coming to us with maybe a problem or to report crime happening within the school,” Smith said.

The SRO is active with Chief Huff’s vision of Project FUN, a proactive program that teaches kids to be good citizens.

Project FUN isn’t the only way the police department has been reaching out to the community. They are also active with Shop With a Cop during Christmas, even though the program is raising money year round. The police department is also working with helping various businesses with active shooter training. They have already worked with some banks and the schools in this area. Some officers are going to complete a first response training so that they might be able to administer more than basic first aid since more often than not they are the first on the scene of an accident. They also have planned a women’s defense class that will be taught by Chief Huff and Officer Thomas.

The police department’s involvement in the community and their increased visibility has been key to decreasing some criminal activity. This will allow the department the chance to focus on the areas that might be seeing some problems.

“We are starting to see an increase in crime reports and calls for assistance. We believe that this reflects the community’s increased confidence in its law enforcement. We have also seen a decrease in violent crimes in Kimball. We have seen increased drug activity, but hopefully now, with the new training the officers have received and with Sergeant Bremer’s experience, we’ll be able to focus on decreasing the drug activity here in Kimball,” Huff said.

Huff also said that he sees the community being more comfortable coming forward with information concerning crime activity and that has allowed the officers to better do their jobs.

“We hope to really focus on staying visible, having that proactive approach to law enforcement and, hopefully, by doing that we can prevent crime as opposed to always stopping it as it happens. We’ll still do that, obviously. We just want to work to make Kimball nice and safe,” Huff said.