In a special meeting held on July 24, the City Council of Cottage Grove approved the hiring of Burnsville native Daniel Anselment as the Manager of the new HERO Center, currently under construction in Cottage Grove. Anselment started his career in 2003 as a patrol officer in Burnsville, and is currently a training consultant at the National Forensic Academy in Oak Ridge, TN, where he trains officers, detectives and crime scene technicians in the grim science of excavating and examining human remains. In Minnesota, Anselment served as a police officer and Rice County deputy coroner, and a medicolegal death investigator for the Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner’s Office. Anselment will assume his new position sometime in September, according to a report in the Rivertowns Bulletin. The HERO Center is a $20 million, 47,000-square-foot complex, including indoor and outdoor staging areas where police, fire and EMS can stage mock emergencies such as vehicle crashes, hostage standoffs, de-escalation scenarios and structure fires. The center is expected to open in January.
