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4th Annual Fairfax County Police Honor Guard Training Seminar

Participants of this year's training seminar. (Photo: Lt. Ken Baine)

Featured Author:

Lt. Ken Baine

Lieutenant Ken Baine serves as Commander for the Fairfax County Police Department’s 40-person Honor Guard. Prior to his 20 years on the police department’s honor guard, he served on the burial and flag team in the Marine Corps.

Under Lt. Baine’s supervision, the FCPD Honor Guard participated in over 100 assignments in 2007. He has written his agency’s 175-page Honor Guard SOP and developed and hosts an annual conference attended by officers throughout North America.

For more information about attending FCPD’s Honor Guard Training Conference, contact Lt. Baine through his PoliceLink profile.

More articles from this author:

• Honor Guard 101: Urn Procedures
• Honor Guard 101: The 21 Gun Salute
• Honor Guard 101: Presenting the Colors

The Fairfax County Police Department Honor Guard will be hosting a three day training seminar June 28th, 29th and 30th, 2009. This will be our fourth seminar. We have received very positive feedback from previous attendees, including this past year’s contingent from Canada.

We have broken down the training into seven training stations which we will rotate every 75 minutes. We will have class room instruction on how to prepare a line of duty death Teletype Message (TTY), Honor Guard budget and equipment companies from which to purchase supplies. Mr. Chris Cosgriff, the chair of the Officer Down Memorial Page (www.ODMP.org) will give a presentation on ODMP on day one of our seminar. Day three we will transport the class to a funeral home/cemetery to practice a mock line of duty funeral.

There is a small fee of $150.00 per student to support the costs of hosting the seminar. Each student will receive a copy of our Honor Guard SOP’s, a FCPD Honor Guard windbreaker and a barbeque dinner on the first night.

The class size is limited to forty-two students and is on a first come first serve basis to keep things fair. This class generally fills up in less than a month. We are limiting the enrollment to four students per agency. Once we receive your registration form and payment I will send you an e-mail confirming your team members are enrolled.

We have partnered with Staybridge Suites Hotel if you are traveling in from out of town. This is a very nice hotel and their rooms have kitchens with refrigerators. The hotel serves a hot breakfast every morning as well. Their rate is $150.00 per night for a king or two double beds, which is below the GSA room rate for this area. We are encouraging all attendees that are coming in from out of town to stay at this hotel due to its close proximity to our training academy. This hotel is five miles from Washington/Dulles International Airport and two miles from our training academy. The hotel provides a shuttle service to and from the airport and we can provide a shuttle from the hotel to our training academy daily. The hotel has blocked rooms at this special rate two days on each end in the event you wanted to come early or stay later for sightseeing etc.

We are planning on sending a TTY out on this training seminar sometime in January if needed. If you know any other police departments that may want to send team members please forward this article to them.