Grayson College hosts annual law enforcement conference

DENISON, Texas (KXII) -Both students interested in criminal justice and local law enforcement professionals got a chance to learn at Thursday’s Law Enforcement Forensic Conference in Denison.

“So eye opening to really know what’s going on in the world,” said Denison senior Emily Brewster.

The 19th annual Conference was held at Grayson College for Denison High school Students to learn more about criminology.

And for the local law enforcement, “this is free training for 40, 50, 60 police officers,” said Steve Cherry, Criminal Justice Instructor at Denison ISD.

The conference is an all day event with various presentations and speakers , “we had a speaker on prison gangs,” Cherry said.

As well as a presentation on human trafficking, “it’s a very big problem, Texas is number 2 in the country,” said speaker Ronna Cross.

Cross is also the Chairman and President of Refuge City, a nonprofit that provides refuge to children who have been sexually exploited.

Cross hopes to educate the teens on the signs and warning of sex trafficking, “most kids don’t know what trafficking is so they wouldn’t know if they’re actually being trafficked or being groomed for trafficking so that’s what we’re raising their awareness about.”

She also hopes they teenagers keep an eye out for their friends, “a lot of times what we want see for ourselves, we’ll see for our friends so they won’t be thinking about it for them but they’ll like start nudging each other and like start talking about maybe a friend of theirs,” Cross added.

Gabrielle Darby and Emily Brewster, Denison seniors love the networking opportunities the conference provides.

“Many people here are from all over North Texas and they’re not just police officers, they all work in different fields of criminology and it’s really nice to see everybody being able to come together,” Darby said.

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