Editor's Note: The following information was submitted by Brown County Sheriff John Merchant

Brown County Sheriff John Merchant recently spent 3 days at the 27th Annual Crimes Against Children Conference in Dallas, Texas.  

This conference is the largest in the nation with over 3,900 law enforcement officers, prosecutors and other professionals who work closely with children attending.  This conference covers almost any topic relating to the investigation of child abuse and topics dealing with all aspects of thesafety of children.

Training was broken down in to 1/1/4 hour segments with over 20 different classes  to choose from   during each segment,  so a wide variety of information was available,  all  in the name of child safety.  

Classes varied from cybercrime investigations, computer labs, child trafficking, kidnapping, exploitation, child abuse investigations, first responder responsibilities at child crime scenes, physical and mental injury and identification, at-risk youth interviews,child  burn injury investigations, forensic interview techniques,working with child victims, FACEBOOK investigations, victims of abuse telling their story to aid law enforcement in proper gathering of evidence and successful  prosecution of child predators , Tribal issues relating to missing and exploited children, sex offender registration trends and updates, etc. etc.

Over 200 speakers and specialists  presented information to those attendingBand many times the classrooms were at maximum capacity.  This was one of the most informative conferences in the name of child safety that I have had the opportunity to attend.