Sheriff Martin Pace talks with Undersheriff Jeff Riggs during a welcome home party for the sheriff. (Jon GiffinThe Vicksburg Post)

[12/20/04]Sheriff Martin Pace has traveled the Yellow Brick Road. But instead of leading to Oz, this one wound through 10 miles of wilderness around the FBI Academy in rural Virginia, from which Pace has returned after an 11-week training course for law enforcement leaders.

Pace was one of two Mississippi law enforcement officials and 249 nationwide to receive an invitation to attend the program designed for officers in executive positions. The program was held at the FBI’s training facility in Quantico, Va. All of Pace’s expenses were covered by the FBI.

Pace, 46, was appointed sheriff in 1995, succeeding 28-year sheriff Paul L. Barrett, for whom he had been a deputy since two years after graduating from the University of Southern Mississippi. Pace won a special election for sheriff in 1996 and was re-elected in 1999.

Pace worked in all areas of the department before being named sheriff. He is also in charge of the Warren County Jail, the Warren County Youth Detention Center and supervises an overall budget of $6.8 million.

The FBI National Academy was founded in 1935 and counts 37,740 officers among its alumni. The last to attend from Vicksburg was former police Chief Mitchell Dent. Pace is the first officer from the Warren County Sheriff’s Department to graduate from the course.

At Quantico, officers receive advanced investigation, management and fitness training, the latter being why Pace now has a yellow brick in his office.

The Yellow Brick Road, Pace said, was a weekly physical challenge, culminating with a 10-mile wilderness run mixed with a U.S. Marine Corps training course. (The Marines also have a training facility at Quantico.)

“If you walk into someone’s office and they’ve got that yellow brick, they’ve earned it,” Pace said.

Training for the program afforded Pace an unusual opportunity. While he finished up a run on the track one October day, Pace saw President Bush racing around the hills on his mountain bike.

“When we saw him, we started clapping. He diverted his path and rode up to us,” Pace said.

The president spent about 20 minutes talking and posing for pictures with the small group at the track, Pace said.

Pace kept a brutal schedule during the program. Classes in counterterrorism, leadership, law, forensics, media relations and computer crime kept the sheriff up late, writing reports.

Some new counterterrorism techniques will be used in Warren County, he said.

“There will be some subtle changes in how we gather intelligence on a local basis,” Pace said. “The local agencies play a very important role in gathering (counterterroism) information.”

Pace also went on weekend field trips to the command centers of the New York City and Philadelphia police departments.

“The big-city concept is not all applicable here, but some of it is,” Pace said. He mentioned the statistical tracking programs those departments use as one thing he’d like to see here.

Pace said one of the biggest benefits for alumni of the program are law enforcement contacts across the country.

“Almost more than the academics was just the incredible networking,” Pace said. Graduates of the program are given access to a database that lists program alumni across the country, something that will be useful in researching unfamiliar topics and analyzing trends, Pace said.

The sheriff said he pleased with how the department operated in his absence.

“It thrills me to death. Everybody knows their job and did it,” Pace said.