CCSO Earns Sheriff's Association Triple Crown

The Charleston County Sheriff's Office has accomplished something only 47 others across the country have been able to do.

The National Sheriff's Association (NSA) presented Sheriff Al Cannon with it's Triple Crown Award at its recently held annual conference. The award recognizes NSA accreditation by three agencies: the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), the American Correctional Association (ACA) and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC).

Of the 3,083 sheriff's offices across the United States Charleston is only the 48th one to achieve the Triple Crown.

Sheriff Al Cannon was also recently invited to join the Major County Sheriff's Association (MCSA), a group of about 90 county sheriff's who police counties with populations of 500,000 or more.

"This is a tremendous honor for Sheriff Cannon to be invited to this," Assistant Sheriff Mitch Lucas said. "Charleston County doesn't qualify to be a member of this based on simple population figures, they reached out to Sheriff Cannon and invited him to become a member of this based on some of the work he's done nationally and internationally, and the fact that there's no members from South Carolina and they want to get as much representation as they can from around the country."

Lucas added that membership in the MCSA means Cannon, and by extension Charleston County, will have a voice in high-level discussions on issues affecting communities around the country and in developing policies to combat them.

"This is a group of sheriffs like Lee Baca from Los Angeles, Rich Stanley from Minneapolis, all of the bigger metropolitan areas are represented there, and the group as a whole represents about one third of the population of the United States, so when they get together they have a voice that has to be reckoned with, especially in D.C.," Lucas said.