News Photo by Temi Fadayomi Alpena County Sheriff Erik Smith talks in his office on March 21 about his recent experience getting FBI leadership training.

ALPENA — Alpena County Sheriff Erik Smith is looking to make even further strides in improving the Sheriff’s Office using the knowledge and skills he developed from a recent FBI leadership course.

According to Smith, the training he underwent was at a leadership conference held in Quantico, Va., at FBI Headquarters earlier this month.

“The training I went to was a leadership course put on by the National Sheriffs’ Institute,” Smith said. “It was actually at the FBI Headquarters training out in Quantico, Virginia.”

Smith said that the primary purpose of the course was to have the sheriffs self-assess themselves constantly and find out ways to improve through proper communication both internally within their departments and externally with the community.

“The majority of the training was a self-assessment looking at my personal traits,” Smith said. “This is who I am and these are the best ways to communicate with others, and what others can do to communicate with me effectively, and how to bring that back and (have it) work among our office, our staff, our executive team, or the midline supervisors. Not only internally at our office, but also how do you communicate with the stakeholders in the community and make everything work together and be effective as an organization.”

A change that Smith is hoping to implement is better service to the communities in Alpena County with the hopes of being able to do some of the community interactions that inspired him to join law enforcement.

“When I was in Little League, I saw a sheriff’s deputy,” Smith said. “He came in uniform, and actually coached quite a few, because he just got out of work. That drew me into law enforcement, but not only did it draw me into law enforcement at a young age, I learned to respect law enforcement and didn’t fear them and thought that they were good role models. When you’re doing that community outreach, type of stuff, it builds public trust.”

Smith said citizens are unlikely to see any major changes as far as how deputies conduct themselves; rather Smith is now able to communicate and execute his goal better than previously.

“What this does is reinforce my goal,” Smith said. “It gets us moving in that direction better because it has shown me that the communication amongst our staff has to be better. And I have to provide that communication, I had to provide that goal, that goal that direction. But I think it’ll just get us there quicker.”