Lawrence Police Department wins Douglas County preparedness award

The Douglas County Emergency Management Board, which also serves as the county’s Local Emergency Planning Committee, presented the Lawrence Police Department with the 2026 Organizational Preparedness Partner Award on July 1. The annual recognition highlights planning, collaboration and community preparedness, and county officials selected Lawrence police for work that goes well beyond answering calls for service.

The department’s Kids Camp and Teen Police Academy were cited as examples of the way it builds public trust and familiarizes young residents with law enforcement before a crisis ever hits. Its role in planning each year for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament was also part of the award, with the department using the Incident Command System and the Incident Action Planning process to organize local, regional and state law enforcement partners around a shared playbook.

That planning matters in Lawrence because tournament week brings large crowds, tight timelines and pressure on streets, radio channels and command staff across the city and on the University of Kansas campus. By running the same structure every year, the department keeps a tested framework ready for the kind of fast-moving disruption that can strain Douglas County’s emergency response system.

The award also lands as Lawrence and Douglas County build toward the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Douglas County Emergency Management has been coordinating a Unified Command that includes the City of Lawrence, Douglas County, eXplore Lawrence and the University of Kansas, with Brandon McGuire, Jill Jolicoeur, Ruth DeWitt and Julie Murray among the leaders helping steer the effort. County Emergency Management Director Robert Bieniecki has said the partnerships built over the past two years are intended to leave a lasting legacy of collaboration and preparedness.

Douglas County Emergency Management’s own staffing and facilities show how much is riding on that coordination. In its 2025 annual report, the office said it had three full-time and one part-time in-office staff members, plus three duty officers. The office also said it would move in May 2026 to the new Public Safety Building, which will house Emergency Management, Emergency Communications and the Sheriff’s Office.

The preparedness awards have become a countywide marker for that kind of readiness. In 2025, the committee honored firefighter and paramedic Tiffany Saturday and Douglas County Consolidated Fire District No. 1, underscoring that the program recognizes both individual leadership and agency-level performance across Douglas County’s emergency network.