Anessa L. Westmoreland

Biography

Anessa L. Westmoreland began her career in Law Enforcement in 1995 as a Communications Officer with the Covington-Newton County 911 Center in Covington, Georgia. While employed with Covington-Newton County 911, she was promoted and assigned as team leader in 2003. As a team leader, Westmoreland supervised six communications officers, investigated complaints/libelous incidents, and reviewed and updated departmental policy.

Westmoreland was selected to serve as CALEA Accreditation Manager in 2006 and became responsible for maintaining the center’s accreditation files and preparing for the center’s accreditation in 2006. Westmoreland successfully prepared and maintained all the accreditation files and the Covington-Newton County 911 Center received CALEA Accreditation at the November 2006 CALEA Conference in Reno, NV.

In 2008, Westmoreland decided to pursue other interests in the field of Criminal Justice and accepted a position at the Newton County Juvenile Court as a Juvenile Intake Officer. As a juvenile intake officer, Westmoreland was responsible for managing a case load of juvenile offenders for compliance in juvenile programs and responsible for enforcing sanctions for non-compliance.

When the agency received a grant for a program for female juvenile offenders, Westmoreland supervised the program and screened each applicant for acceptance into the program. The Girls STEPS program was an intense program that was created for female juvenile offenders and their care givers. Westmoreland facilitated the Girls Moving On™ curriculum and Nurturing Parenting™ curriculum for the program. She also supervised the Truancy Program, which required regular meetings with elementary, middle and high school students and their families. In addition, Westmoreland served on the Child Fatality Review Board.

In 2014, Westmoreland decided to advance in the field of Criminal Justice and accepted a position at the Newton County Sheriff’s Office as a deputy. In 2015, she was promoted to the position an Investigator in the Criminal Investigation Division. In this position, Westmoreland investigated property crimes, crimes against persons, and crimes against children. She also served on the Multi-Disciplinary Team for child abuse cases.

In 2017, Westmoreland joined the staff of the Georgia Public Safety Training Center’s Instructional Services Division assigned to the Instructional Development and Delivery Section.  In this position, Westmoreland was assigned to the Instructor Training Instructional Team and taught public safety personnel from state and local agencies classroom delivery and lesson plan development. 

Westmoreland has also developed online training courses for communication officers, and law enforcement. In 2018, Westmoreland was involved in the production of a documentary for a video-based learning course discussing public safety stress, PTSD, line of duty deaths, suicide, and best practices for public safety agencies.

In 2019, Westmoreland completed the APCO Certified Public-Safety Executive Program (CPE) and was voted Class President for class 05. The CPE program is an executive leadership program that consists of two 12-week online courses in addition to the nine-day capstone seminar.

Westmoreland earned a Bachelor of Science degree in criminal justice from Mercer University in 2003 and a Masters of Education degree from Troy University in 2005. In September 2019, Westmoreland accepted a new position with Covington-Newton 911 as the Operations Manager.