Sheriff, deputy honored for leading DDACTS revolution

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Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre was honored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last Tuesday for his department’s involvement in piloting and developing an analysis-based crime and safety program.

Two years after agreeing to be one of seven agencies to pilot Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety (DDACTS), Webre received the Public Service Award, the NHTSA’s highest honor, from administrator David Strickland.


“DDACTS implementation and stewardship by itself is enough, but frankly, with what the sheriff has done here for this community, I cannot speak more proudly,” Strickland said. “Knowing the sheriff has worked so closely with NHTSA and with the Department of Transportation, it’s men like him that make my job so easy.”


The sheriff said the department installed the program because it helps them with their primary task of protecting and serving the community.

“I accept this very prestigious award on behalf of the men and women of the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office who are motivated by the intangible, by the desire to leave the world as a better place than they found it,” Webre said.


DDACTS provide a forecast of crime hot spots based on past criminal activity, which assists the agency in appropriately allocating its patrol units.


In 2008, before LPSO began the program, they made 150 driving while intoxicated arrests and had 18 alcohol-related driving fatalities. Through last week, LPSO made 430 DWI arrests versus five alcohol-related traffic deaths in 2004.

“DWI arrests are critical, but they are not the only piece of this puzzle,” Webre said. “It’s a very complex multitude of factors that go into keeping highways safe.


“Our goal is zero. Our goal is not to lose a single life. Will we ever accomplish that goal? Maybe not, but that is going to be our goal, and at least we will have something to work towards.”


A more efficient use of a department’s resources increases man-hours, Strickland said, and can prevent cuts in traffic enforcement due to funding issues.

“[DDACTS are] really spreading like wildfire because jurisdictions around the country are facing the same thing, and unfortunately sometimes making a less-informed but understandable decision of cutting back on traffic enforcement in order to reallocate resources to violent crime and to other areas of social ill,” Strickland said.

Capt. Scott Silverii was also presented a Public Service Award. Silverii traveled the country with representatives from metropolitan DDACT jurisdictions and tried to convince additional law enforcement agencies to implement the program.

“When you’re starting a pilot project, that’s grunt work,” Strickland said. “You are paving a new way, you are turning new earth on something that isn’t proven and may not succeed.

“People like Capt. Silverii is the reason why I’m down here and why we have jurisdictions around the country that are not only doing DDACTS, but they are coming to NHTSA and to other jurisdictions asking how they can do it because its been so successful.”

Seven jurisdictions piloted the program in 2008, and NHTSA claims the number swelled to 140 this year.

“We kind of look at ourselves with a very unique geography and culture, and we show that if it works in Lafourche Parish, it is a very flexible and inflictable program and it will work anywhere,” Silverii said. “We’ve actually shown nationwide that it has.”

This isn’t the first initiative LPSO has pioneered. Lafourche, following the lead of Rapides Parish, implemented a full-time No Refusal policy regarding DWI suspicion in October.

LPSO also has an interoffice Traffic Activity Calendar, which coordinates upcoming DWI and insurance checkpoints, among other events, via a color-coded system.

“Our motivation is not an award or recognition,” Webre said. “But for us, this award the icing on the cake, and we certainly look forward to moving ahead and piloting new initiatives and expanding the focus of DDACTS.”

National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator David Strickland presents Capt. Scott Silverii of the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s office with a Public Service Award, the agency’s highest honor. ERIC BESSON