SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Everyday police officers come face-to-face with burglaries, shootings, drug-busts, and all of the challenges involved in the effort of stopping criminal activity in its tracks, but on Tuesday they were being recognized for those heroic actions.
A total of 11 members of the West Virginia State Police were honored Tuesday during the annual awards ceremony. They were being presented with the Meritorious Service Medal, Lifesaving Medal, Superintendents Award, and Superintendents Civilian Award.
“It’s just for troopers that have gone above and beyond, whether it be officer-involved shootings, investigations, things like that,” West Virginia State Police Corporal, Jillian Yeager said.
Yeager was receiving the Superintendents award Tuesday. She said it’s an award given to one trooper for that year, and it’s based on exceptional work in criminal investigations.
Yeager works in the Crimes Against Children’s Unit, and she said a lot of that work within her unit is done in secret to not bring attention to the sensitive situations involving criminal acts against children, but she said it feels good to get recognized for it once in a while.
“We do a lot of work in the shadows for a reason, just trying to save kids and advocate for children, so it’s big, especially for our unit, for sure,” she said.
Yeager said the unit’s work involves keeping kids safe specifically from sex offenders on the internet, as it has become such a widespread and mostly unregulated platform where child predators are given free-reign to lure kids in, adding that it has led them to have to tighten-up surveillance on the internet as almost nothing is protected, especially children.
“The internet is all-encompassing at this point and predators are now using the internet as a tool to solicit and groom children, whether it be as meat for child exploitation or to send them child exploitation images,” she said.
She said bringing awareness to those threats is now the major focus of the Crimes Against Children’s Unit.
“So, that’s one of our big pushes is to try to teach internet safety to kids and guardians, just watch your kids at all cost,” said Yeager.
Here is a list of the troopers receiving the 2023 awards:
Meritorious Service Medal:
F/ Sgt. S.B Huffman
S/ Tpr. J.R Garrett
TFC K.A Filer
Cpl. C.L. Mollohan
Lifesaving Medal:
Sgt. J.R. Wince
Cpl. D.T. Stallings
Sgt. J.D. Carson
Sgt. S.A. Nazelrod
Tpr. R.L. Morgan
Superintendents Award:
TFC J.B. Yeager
Superintendents Civilian Award:
Connie Beavers