The Rockdale County Sheriff's Office recently held training for its personnel regarding the Georgia Child Abduction Response Team.

Overall, 105 RCSO employees attended the CART, or Child Abduction Response Team, training. CART is a team of individuals from various state agencies who are trained and prepared to respond to a missing/endangered or abducted child. CART is able to pull together resources to aid in the search and rescue efforts and to assist the agency that initially handles the investigation. Since it is often difficult for one individual agency to have all of the necessary resources and because some agencies have never encountered this type of investigation, CART can aid agencies in a missing/endangered or child abduction case.

Over the past few weeks, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Cindy Ledford with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation held several training classes at the Rockdale County Sheriff's Office to educate personnel on what CART is, the criteria for CART, and how to activate CART.

About 105 RCSO personnel learned that the following occurrences justify a CART activation: the non-family abduction of a minor child (under the age of 18); the abduction of a minor child with endangerment circumstances; and/or any other abduction or missing child investigation that requires immediate response in order to protect the well-being of the child. 

"I want to thank ASAC Ledford for teaching RCSO personnel about CART over the past several weeks," said Sheriff Eric Levett. "This training was essential in the commitment of the RCSO to protect the citizens of Rockdale County, especially in the case of a missing or abducted child."