WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) is pleased to announce that the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Police Department is featured as its “Community Policing in Action” photo contest winner for the month of July.

The winning photo features Officer Elmar Cannon spending a quality moment with a young boy in Dallas’s Rosa Parks Plaza area. Officer Cannon regularly patrolled that area, a transportation hub for buses and light rail in Dallas’s West End, and the same area where five officers were killed and nine were injured on July 7, 2016. Officer Cannon was one of the officers injured, but has since returned to duty in another area.

To read the full article, which includes an interview with DART Police Chief James D. Spiller, and to learn more about DART's community policing efforts, visit the COPS Office e-newsletter, the Community Policing Dispatch. To view the winning photo, visit the COPS Office website, Twitter, and Facebook pages. Photo courtesy of the DART Police Department.

The COPS Office piloted the photo contest in 2015 to highlight positive community policing efforts across the country. After receiving an overwhelming number of submissions, the COPS Office made the photo contest an annual event. The 2017 contest garnered close to 200 photos during the one-month submission period. To learn more about the “Community Policing in Action” Photo Contest, visit photocontest.

The COPS Office is a federal agency responsible for advancing community policing nationwide. Since 1994, the COPS Office has invested more than $14 billion to advance community policing, including grants awarded to more than 13,000 state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies to fund the hiring and redeployment of approximately 129,000 officers and provide a variety of knowledge resource products including publications, training and technical assistance. For additional information about the COPS Office, please visit www.cops.usdoj.gov.