By Rob Ginter - Staff Writer
A Morehead man and Rowan County Senior High School graduate is protecting and serving the streets of Lewis County.
Joe Templeman was sworn in as a Lewis County Sheriff’s Deputy and has graduated from Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice Training (DOCJT) at Richmond. Templeman was hired by the sheriff’s office in July 2009.
Templeman was a recipient of the physical fitness excellence award in his class of 27 officers in the DOCJT.
“The minimums to get that award is you have to do 46 pushups, 46 sit-ups, a mile and half run in 12 minutes and 30 seconds, 300 meter run in 52 seconds and bench press 1.11 percent of your body weight,” he said.
“I like the family atmosphere of the department,” Templeman said. “I like patrolling to keep the community safe and helping people. I wanted to be in law enforcement since high school.
“We did legal training over the Kentucky Revised Statutes, physical training, consisting of running, lifting weights and what is called defensive tactics which are skills to defend ourselves in case of an attack.
“My favorite part about the academy was vehicle operations and fire arms,” Templeman said. “I liked the structure of the academy as well, where you knew what you were going to do each day.
“I wanted to work in an area where I didn’t know as many people,” Templeman said. “I’m still close to home and I had family members recommend work for Sheriff Lewis. The sheriff is known for his drug work and really well known in law enforcement and I had heard he was a really good person to work for.
“The toughest thing about my job is the stress of multiple things going on at one time and trying to remember all the information you need to get,” Templeman said. “It’s normally time critical before it’s too late to get the information.”
“There were many funny stories about the academy,” Templeman said. “Being pepper sprayed was horrible. All I remember was everyone running around in circles hunched over with snot running out of every orifice, screaming. It was probably the worst pain I ever felt. I would describe it like sand in your eye with your face lying on the coals of a fire with a wolverine scratching your eyeball. It was that bad and there was nothing you could do about it, it was 25 minutes worth of pain and when you get in the shower later that night it comes back because the water reactivates it.”
“There was my cousin Anthony Anderson that was a state trooper that I looked up to and I grew up knowing a few other officers from church and other places and I liked what they did,” Templeman said. “I’ve got a friend that works for the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement and he helped me out and talked to me about it anytime I had questions. He helped me get into my career and Steve Howard on the Morehead Police Department helped me a lot.
“I’ve been pretty busy here lately,” Templeman said. “With the weather here lately I’ve been pretty busy with that, we’ve had some burglaries, a shooting which was a murder for hire case here in Lewis County.”
Templeman graduated from RCSHS in 2005 and then attended Morehead State University before entering into the Richmond law enforcement academy.
