Crowning achievement: MCPAAA celebrates 15 years of success

One of the most vital parts to a city being able to maintain a balanced budget and offer a variety of services are the many volunteers that donate their time each year. The Mesquite Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association is a group of graduates of the Mesquite Citizens Police Academy that daily donate time to helping the Mesquite Police Department with various tasks.

"Our first group graduated from the academy in September 1997 and the association was formed after that. Since that first class there have been 28 additional classes," said Barbara Dunn, association president. "The first 10 years we only did ink and card finger printing for children. We really didn't have a lot of publicity or transportation the first 10 years. We also didn't really have any equipment."

The association is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year and Dunn said the last five years have seen a huge increase on the amount of time its members spend assisting the police. The academy won its first state award as association of the year in 2008 and its second this year.

"We only spent maybe a total of 90 hours per year assisting the department the first five years. Now we have volunteers that will spend that much time assisting in a month," Dunn said. "When we won our first award in 2008 we had two other local departments contact us about helping them set up their own associations."

The volunteers have evolved from the early days of just doing fingerprinting to now being responsible for many other tasks within the department. Among the things the association is now responsible for includes maintaining the department's skywatch towers, driving a platescan vehicle and fingerprinting children.

"Since 2008 we have gotten more than 80 stolen vehicles recovered and performed more than four million plate scans," Dunn said. "We have done a lot more over the last five years mostly because we have had the publicity and people know who we are now. I think our biggest accomplishment is being able to take over a job that an officer would be doing. This allows the officer to be back on the street so they can catch the bad guys."

Dunn said she hopes the association will grow even more over the next five years.

"I would like to see more citizen vehicles on the street and more volunteers," Dunn said. "We need to be able to get out into the neighborhoods more to have a bigger impact."

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