The Collier County Sheriff’s Office was awarded third place honors in the prestigious Championship category during the 2008 Florida Law Enforcement Challenge.
CCSO was presented with the award during a ceremony July 31 in Orlando.
As the first-place winner of its category (based on agency size) in last year’s competition, CCSO competed this year in the Championship category, which pits all ten first-place winners of the previous year’s competition against one another.
The Florida Law Enforcement Challenge is a competition that recognizes and rewards the best overall traffic safety programs in the state. The areas of concentration include efforts to enforce laws and educate the public about occupant protection, impaired driving, speeding, and other areas of traffic safety. The winning traffic safety programs are those that combine officer training, public information, and enforcement to reduce crashes and injuries within their respective jurisdictions.
The competition is a friendly way for departments to increase their attention to traffic safety. Research shows that an increase in traffic enforcement results in a decrease in motor vehicle crashes, injuries and fatalities. In fact, no other single program or strategy works as well as law enforcement in making the roads safer. Traffic fatalities in Collier County have markedly decreased over the past five years, from 79 in 2003 to 36 in 2008.
The competition provides incentives for continuing traffic safety activities. The top three winners in each category are awarded points, which translate into dollars; each point equals $1 toward the purchase of a variety of safety and traffic enforcement equipment. This year the Collier County Sheriff’s Office was awarded 10,000 points for placing third in the Champions category.
The Florida Law Enforcement Challenge is financed through grants from the Florida Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Traffic safety has long been a primary concern of the Collier County Sheriff’s Office and residents alike. The Safety and Traffic Enforcement Bureau continues to respond progressively to set the standard for traffic safety in occupant protection, speed and DUI enforcement.
“But winning an award is really not the point,” said CCSO Sgt. Chris Gonzalez, “The result of these efforts has been a steady decline in the number of lives that were needlessly lost in avoidable traffic crashes.”
