HARTFORD, Conn. — In this week's First and Finest segment, Brian Foley from Connecticut State Police, joined us to talk about a breadth of topics.
Among them, the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd that is underway. As a former police officer, Foley says that most officers do not watch trials, he says they do pay attention to them, but try not to watch too closely.
"You are taught early on, not to follow trials, and what's going on with your caseloads because it's going to be depressing," said Foley. "So, no, I haven't been watching it, I don't need a trial to show me what's right and wrong."
Foley says our emergency officials are closely watching the trial to of course monitor our safety here in Connecticut, especially when the verdict is determined, should there be any backlash in response.
Additionally, Foley addressed the recent string of violent events across the country; an attack in California, Georgia, the U.S. Capitol, just to name a few.
After these past few weeks, state police here in Connecticut are keeping their eyes on issues across the country to again make sure we are protected here in Connecticut.
"You know it has been tough to watch over the last week, I mean what is your brand of hate right now," said Foley. "We work closely with the ADL, who is basically our greatest partner in the anti-hate and stopping hate crimes, but look at the best thing you can do, with the department of emergency services, and public protection, and see that they have a trooper assigned to the FBI down in New York city, and they watch everything that is going on nationally."
From there, Foley says that officers must remain up to date on their trainings, remain vigilant and prepared should something happen.
One thing Foley says is promising, is a recent seizure in Waterbury. Police in that city finding several different types of drugs, and illegal guns.
Foley added that the suspects were known to police for prior incidents as well.
While getting the drugs off the street is one step to making our state safer, Foley says, it isn't necessarily their main focus.
"This is not about a narcotics investigation, we could chase narcotics all day if we wanted to, it doesn't have that great of impact," said Foley. "The greatest concern is right now, is the violence in our cities, in our urban areas, so, they are looking at the narcotics offenders who are most likely to have firearms, and firearms with them."
Foley says cities and towns across Connecticut continue to try to get as many illegal guns off of the streets as possible.
Another topic discussed in Sunday's segment, was how SWAT teams in our state stay up to date with their training.
Hartford Healthcare and Hartford Hospital now have a new state of the art Sim center. What is a Sim center? It is a simulation training area, a place where SWAT teams are able to get realistic training for additional types of emergencies.
"It's mostly for medical training purposes, but they have a lot of military and law enforcement in there too," said Foley. "This is not just an active shooter training, but a lot of critical incident training, certainly active shooter is one of them."
SWAT teams learned how to to respond to those types of emergency situations, as well as lifesaving measures in the case that an officer or K-9 is injured.
Tune in every Sunday morning at 8am for our First and Finest segment where we get a weekly update from Connecticut State Police.
HERE ARE MORE WAYS TO GET FOX61 NEWS
Download the FOX61 News APP
iTunes: Click here to download
Google Play: Click here to download
Stream Live on ROKU: Add the channel from the ROKU store or by searching FOX61.