Fifth and sixth grade students from five rural schools were booked into jail last week.

Students from Moffett, Brushy, Central, Liberty and Gans schools played out the role of an inmate; they got booked into the Sequoyah County Jail, they stood before a judge and were sentenced. The students were also fingerprinted and underwent a retinal scan.

Sheriff Ron Lockhart said the Sequoyah County Sheriff’s Office in cooperation with Sequoyah County school district’s conducted “Operation Safe Kids.” Lockhart said there was no inmate contact while the students were at the detention center.

“We are planning on doing this every year. The kids really seemed to enjoy it,” Lockhart said.

The sheriff’s office offered free retinal scanning and conducted a field trip to the Sequoyah County Jail. Every day last week, different schools loaded their students on a bus and headed to the Sequoyah County Courthouse.

The students toured the courthouse and spoke to Kyle Waters, Sequoyah County assistant district attorney. They also saw different equipment and learned different techniques on how law officials track people.

“They (the students) were excited. We had a good response from them and the parents seemed thrilled,” Carla Fivekiller, Brushy School principal said.

The trip to jail was part of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) 10-week curriculum overseen by School Resource Deputy Robert Gude and sponsored by the Sequoyah County Sheriff’s Office.

Gude said he is hopeful that the tour will teach the students to make educated decisions in life so they won’t come back to jail.

“We are trying to educate them about what can happen if they make uninformed decisions. I also hope this gets the kids more familiar with deputies and other law enforcement,” Gude said.

He said sometimes young children have a bad outlook toward law enforcement. He “hopes this helps the children be more comfortable when deputies or any other law enforcement comes around.”

After the students left the jail and returned to school Gude brought a retinal scanner to take pictures of the students’ eyes. Students had to have permission from their parents to participate.

“This is really a great thing,” Gude said.

Lockhart said the Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association provided the retinal scanner machine.

“The scanner,” Gude said, “takes a photo of the iris, which will be stored in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database.”

Gude said each child’s information will be held in the data base until they are 18 years old then it will be erased.

Lockhart said the DARE program in the rural schools is going well.

“The rural schools were left out of certain programs and we are glad to be bringing some back to them. We are very proud of this program,” Lockhart said.

According to information provided by the Sequoyah County Sheriff’s Office, “Iris recognition biometric technology positively determines the identity of an individual by capturing a high-resolution digital photograph of the individual’s iris. The unique features contained in the iris are compared against a data base and the identity of the individual. Iris recognition was proven to have the greatest biometric accuracy, with no false matches in over two million cross-comparisons, according to Biometric Product Testing Final Report.

Iris recognition technology is being used worldwide in transportation, military, law enforcement, banking, and information technology industries to positively and quickly verify an individual’s true identity.”