Police Chief Dale Armour Receives Traffic Safety Award

Algood Police Chief Dale Armour was named the Tennessee Highway Safety Office’s 2021 Director’s Award winner.

Armour said the award was for the department’s work addressing citizen traffic concerns. He said as a smaller agency, he went to the Highway Safety Office in search of additional resources.

“They were able to provide us with a grant for some overtime so I could bring officers in,” Armour said. “To work some of these hot areas where complaints were coming in on speeding. And I borrowed some equipment from them. In the meantime, we started taking advantage of some of their training opportunities. They do a lot of DUI, accident investigation, drug recognition expert training.”

Armour said that while the award felt validating, there was still work to be done. He said he believes if he can better educate his community on traffic safety, he can avoid ticketing and create a safer environment for all.

“I would rather educate than to ticket,” Armour said. “I feel like if we can just get the public here to understand that we need to slow down, and that there’s children out here playing and there’s a lot especially right now as the weather starts to break a little bit we’re going to start to have more pedestrians walking. I would much rather just educate the public first and say ‘Look, do what you’re supposed to do, and we’ve got a safe community.'”

Armour said they originally received a $5,000 grant in April to do this work. He said that they’ve applied for an additional grant and are waiting to hear back. Armour said that while they don’t expect to ever stop speeding completely, he and his department hope to continue to educate the community and implement tools to make Algood a safer place.

He said that there have been talks with the city council about potential infrastructure developments, such as speed bumps, to curb speeding. Armour said that those discussions are not something the department has sway over.

Armour said that THSO is a great resource for smaller agencies and that he would not have known about the many tools it has to offer had he not reached out himself.