The Bourbon County Sheriff’s Office is offering a class to help women learn how to use their strength when it matters most: a female self-defense class.

The idea originated with Kim Schwab, who is an administrative assistant at the BCSO.

“I have two daughters…it gave me peace of mind when they took classes,” Schwab said. Both daughters took classes in other cities.

“I came to the sheriff (Bill Martin)and asked him if there was one in Bourbon County, he said no, but he had always wanted to bring one,” she said.

So the sheriff’s office is sponsoring a female self-defense class on Saturday, April 27 from 10 a.m. to noon, at the Fort Scott Middle School, 1195 E. 12th St.

“It is for women, 12 years and up,” Schwab said. “If a minor under 18, they must have a parent accompanying them.”

“I attended a class in Paola with a daughter, there were a lot of women over 60,” she said.

Registration is on the Bourbon County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page or come by the sheriff’s office to pick up an application, she said.

The first hour is classroom instruction, followed by an hour of hands-on self-defense techniques.

“I feel a lot more confident in a situation,” Schwab said. “Some techniques I’d never heard of, and they teach some preventive techniques.”

For more information contact Schwab at the sheriff’s office, 620-223-1440.

A $12 donation is appreciated to help pay for the instructors time, but not required to participate.

Personnel at the Bourbon County Sheriff’s Office have been making available the Daily Intake Roster, including photos of those arrested at the jail.

This public service has been available on the Bourbon County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page since moving into the new jail facility in June 2018. They had provided the service a short time before moving to the jail, in fact.

But it was too time-consuming,  said Major Bobby Reed.

“It took one and one-half days of time, so we discontinued,” Reed said.

With the help of the Labette County Sheriff’s Office, BCSO built a system that allows quicker delivery of the information to the public.

In recent days, they have been catching up posting the information from the arrests of October until January.

The Daily Intake Roster includes a photo of the inmate, their name and age, their offenses and bond amount and type.

“We did October, November, December and January (arrests) online in about 45 minutes,” Reed said.

“We’ve had a lot of requests from the community of ‘when is it going to be back up?’,” he said.

“It gets the word out,” Reed said. “The public can like our (Facebook) page and when someone comes in, they can see it.”

“We are only doing them by months, we just ran January 2019, so the next one will come out at the end of February.

On February 1, there were 72 inmates in the BCSO, with 15 Linn County inmates included in that total, Reed said.