San Francisco police Chief Greg Suhr Tuesday received a plaque recognizing the city’s “Avoid the 8” anti-DUI campaign as the best multi-jurisdictional effort of its kind in the state in 2010, a campaign spokeswoman said.
The plaque was presented to Suhr at San Francisco City Hall by Christopher Murphy, director of state’s Office of Traffic Safety, which provides funding for anti-DUI efforts.
The funding allows local agencies to band together to run sobriety checkpoints, conduct saturation patrols, and send out information to the public warning them of the dangers of drunken driving.
In the annual California Law Enforcement Challenge, which judges each county’s anti-DUI efforts in a variety of categories–including enforcement, effectiveness, and public information–San Francisco’s Avoid the 8 campaign was named in May as the best in the state for 2010, Avoid campaign spokeswoman Jan Ford said.
The campaign consists of eight agencies in San Francisco, including the Police Department, sheriff’s department, California Highway Patrol, U.S. Park police and various campus police departments, Ford said.
About 15 officers and chiefs were on hand at City Hall for the award presentation, she said.
Last month, the Avoid the 8 campaign was also named the third-best in the nation as part of the National Law Enforcement Challenge.
Representatives of the campaign will travel to Chicago in October to be honored by the International Association of Chiefs of Police for their third-place ranking.
Two regions in Tennessee took first and second place in the national contest.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
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