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LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF)- Law enforcement officers representing agencies from Lafayette to Knoxville to Etowah and 15 others attended a week’s long seminar in La Follette hosted by the La Follette Police Department. Training was in the classroom and in the field. If you saw all the cruisers parked along North Indiana Avenue at Lobertini Bridge on Thursday morning, you saw some of the outdoor training.
The instructor for the course was W.G. “Buck” Campbell who serves as the statewide training coordinator for the Tennessee Highway Safety Office’s Training program. Campbell was certifying officers in LIDAR and Radar. Those officers are now certified to train other officers.
“All LPD patrol units have Radar as well as most of the detective units and my unit,” said LPD Chief Matthew Forsyth. LPD has one handheld LIDAR device.
Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) for police is pretty much a high-tech stopwatch using countless laser pulses at a vehicle. It measures how long each pulse takes to hit the vehicle and bounce back. It instantly calculates the speed by tracking the quick changes in distance.
Radar for police bounces radio waves off moving vehicles. It’s the Doppler effect, and it calculates the frequency shift to measure speed.
The seminar wrapped up its week of training late Thursday morning concluding with the field training session. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-06/12/2026-6AM-PHOTOS COURTESY OF WLAF’S CHARLIE HUTSON)