Police Chief Jeff Jackson and Assistant Chief Mike Campbell display the six awards the department received during a Governor's Highway Safety ceremony.  

For years the Mount Carmel Police Department has specialized in traffic safety. This year we got the opportunity to show off a number of our special efforts by participating in the States first ever “2004 Tennessee Law Enforcement Challenge.” This Statewide and National competition was sponsored by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and co-sponsored by the Tennessee Governor’s Highway Safety Office. 

 We as all other participating police and sheriffs departments began the competition by completing an application explaining the size of our department and how we are manned and structured. We then had to put together a one inch binder complete with photos and explanations of all the traffic safety programs that we had in place during the year of 2004. This application took nearly three weeks to complete but the results were well worth the effort.

     After the judging was completed by the IACP we soon learned that we had done quite well on the State level and the results were as follows:

·       We won the 1^st time entry award out of all the participating agencies in the State.

·       We won 1^st place in our category of any State agency with 1-10 man departments.

·       We won 1^st place in the special category of “Child Passenger Safety due to all the work we had done with our “Child Passenger Safety Demonstrator,” better known as our “Half Car.”

·       We won 1^st place in the special category of “Pedestrian Safety” due to the student crossing guard program at our elementary school.

     After the judging was complete on the State level we were automatically entered into the National competition. We won 1^st place in the State for an agency our size. We won 1^st place in the Nation for an agency our size.  We competed against a number of large agencies such as Florida Highway Patrol who won 1^st place in their category of 1,600-3,000 officers, and New York State Police who has 3,000 plus officers and won 1st place in this category. So the competition was tough. But there could only be one for the “Best of the Best” award which is the “Clayton J. Hall Memorial Award: This special award honors the memory of Clayton J. Hall, former Director, Police Traffic Services, NHTSA. Mr. Hall was a highway safety leader who helped develop the Law Enforcement Challenge (formerly known as the Chief’s Challenge) concept and many other innovative traffic safety programs during his life. The Clayton J. Hall Memorial Award is presented annually to the law enforcement agency that best represents what a comprehensive traffic safety program should be. All agencies entered in the Law Enforcement Challenge are considered for this award.

                  The 2004 Award Recipient: Mount Carmel Police Department

        We are very proud of our police department for doing so well in the States first ever traffic safety competition. Our officers work hard to ensure the safety of our citizens. But everyone must know that we did not develop these traffic safety programs for the competition. These programs were there in place years before the decision was ever made to enter any type of competition. We feel we owe the motoring public, and the citizens of our town these safety programs so they may drive or be passengers in any vehicle, on any street in our town, and do so in the safest way possible.

     The programs we have in place will stay in place only to be expanded on, and we will continue to add new traffic safety programs as needed.

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