BIRMINGHAM - Officials from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Birmingham Police Department were in the nation’s capital Thursday to take part in the Justice Department’s first Community Policing Awards Ceremony.
As representatives of one of the 12 cities that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch visited on her Community Policing Tour over the past 15 months, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, U.S. Attorney’s Office Law Enforcement Coordination Manager Lyndon J. Laster, Birmingham Police Chief A.C. Roper and Birmingham Police Deputy Chief Henry Irby III attended the afternoon ceremony in the Great Hall of the Robert F. Kennedy Main Justice Building in Washington, D.C. The awards ceremony took place during National Community Policing Week.
The attorney general presented awards for Distinguished Service in Community Policing to recognize individual state, local or tribal sworn police officers and deputies who exemplify remarkable achievements in innovative community policing strategies, criminal investigations and field operations.
Birmingham was the second city on Lynch’s Community Policing Tour when she visited in June 2015. Birmingham was among the first six cities named in March 2015 as a pilot site for DOJ's National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. The attorney general undertook her tour of cities to highlight important and innovative work in police-community relations, and to examine ways in which those programs can be applied to other jurisdictions.
On her visit to Birmingham, Lynch met with some recent graduates of Birmingham's Youth Citizen's Police Academy, a program of the Birmingham Police Department and the Mayor's Office of Community Policing and Revitalization, in association with the Woodlawn Foundation. She addressed cadets at the Birmingham Police Academy and held a roundtable discussion with community leaders at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
