Five Owasso police officers received top honors during the 2023 Buckledown Awards at the Tulsa Tech Owasso campus on Thursday.
Now in its 30th year, the annual Buckledown Awards honor state law enforcement for outstanding performance in the areas of traffic safety, occupant protection and impaired driving.
Recognition is based on the individual officer’s initiative and use of enforcement and prevention efforts designed to reduce traffic collisions and their resulting injuries, deaths and property damage.
Sgt. Jonathan Foyil and Officers Jarod Mitchell, Keith Trujillo, Claudio Tello and Caleb Reese were the top 10% of all Owasso patrol officers for Traffic Enforcement. Together, these five officers accounted for about 40% of the entire department’s traffic stop count, which totaled around 18,302 stops for 2022.
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“There is no way to determine how this enforcement affected more in-depth statics such as collisions, reckless driving, road rage occurrences and so on,” Lt. Nick Boatman said. “But we are extremely proud of their individual efforts to curb one of Owasso’s biggest complaints to police on a daily basis, which is ongoing traffic complaints.”
Officers Alfred Bell and Walter Riddle, both night shift officers, led the department in the area of Impaired Driving Enforcement by being the top two officers for our agency in Driving Under the Influence and Actual Physical Control of a Motor Vehicle While Under the Influence of Intoxicants arrests during 2022.
“These officers spend a lot of time on the actual enforcement of DUIs while on duty,” Boatman said. “We are proud of these officers as well for making Owasso roadways much safer during peak DUI times.”
The Buckledown Awards has grown from a small local traffic safety program to the largest law enforcement recognition program in the state of Oklahoma — one that both Owasso and Collinsville PDs continue to participate in.
