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AWARD WINNING!

AWARD WINNING!

Yes, your Parsons Police Department is an award-winning law enforcement agency. Recently, I was asked what awards we have received - great question.

Traffic Safety Award

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The American Automobile Association (AAA) has a nationwide traffic safety program that recognizes law enforcement agencies that have a combination of community outreach or education, engineering, and enforcement activities with the goal of reducing crashes in their communities.

For the past five years the Parsons Police Department has been an award-winning agency. In 2020, the Department received the AAA Platinum Award. AAA defines this as: Platinum Awards are given to communities that have documented new, perhaps innovative, traffic safety programs, projects, or initiatives for the previous year. These communities have also demonstrated outstanding success with high scores in all scoring categories.

The Parsons Police Department is one of 43 law enforcement agencies - comprising 32 police departments and 11 sheriff's offices - throughout the state that were honored with AAA Kansas Community Traffic Safety Awards for our 2020 work to keep roadways safe through a variety of initiatives and programs, despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only 26 of the 43 agencies achieved the Platinum status that Parsons did (20 were police departments). There are 371 law enforcement agencies in the State of Kansas.

The awards have been presented annually since 2011 by AAA Kansas to community law enforcement agencies for their efforts to foster and improve local traffic safety successfully and cost-effectively. The agencies are scored and recognized for their efforts in multiple categories, including education, emergency medical response, enforcement and traffic engineering collaborations and solutions.

Excellence in Policy & Training Management

Your Parsons Police Department was also awarded Gold Award Status by Lexipol LLC for Excellence in Policy & Training Management. The program uses metrics that look at the operating policies of the agency, quick policy modifications due to law or court decisions, participation in a daily training bulletin training program, the percentage of staff that have completed the DTB process over the past year and validation that policies have been reviewed and signed off by staff.

Parsons was only one out of 17,985 local law enforcement agencies nationwide. Of those roughly 4,500 were qualified to be a participant in the Lexipol evaluation. Nationwide less than 400 agencies received the Gold Award Status. This equates to Parsons PD being in the top 2.2% of agencies nationwide and in the Top 9% of agencies qualified to participate in the evaluation program nationwide.

What are the Recognition Levels?

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This is how Parsons PD rated:

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As you can see, Parsons PD far exceeded the minimum requirements for the Gold status.

Parsons Police Annual Report is a Winner!

Another area that the agency received praise from was part of the 2019/20 CRI-TAC Grant that was administered by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) from the Department of Justice (DOJ). During the exit interview with the team from IACP in reviewing our community outreach efforts, and in developing a community survey (that will be administered later in 2021), the agency was complemented on our Annual Report. We were told that our Annual Report was one of the best in the nation in its thoroughness, transparency, and depth of information.

Annual Reports are not statutorily mandated, but they are the report to the community on work volume, crime rates, arrest and traffic data, crash information, use of force reporting and offer accountability and transparency to the stakeholders of a community - our citizens.

Of course, these awards and other achievements of your police department can occur only through the hard work of the officers and staff of the Parsons Police Department.