Polk County Sheriff Dennis Anderson has been honored by his peers in the Polk County Chiefs of Police and Sheriff’s Association. West Des Moines Police Chief Jack O’Donnell says Anderson was given the Leadership Excellence Award. Particularly the chief says Anderson’s collaborative style means trusted leadership, as he doesn’t care who takes credit as long as it serves the community and law-enforcement to work in cooperation and partnership. The chief says Sheriff Anderson’s been instrumental in fighting drugs, work on communication issues, and overall improving the quality of law enforcement in Polk County. That collaboration is a key to doing a good job says O’Donnell, who heads the police force in a suburb of Des Moines. The 26 agencies from federal to local that work in Polk County do best when they work together, and he says it’s “imperative” that they cooperate and share information without caring who gets the credit. O’Donnell doesn’t know if he can recommend their strong level of cooperation to all local government law-enforcement agencies across the state but suspects it could set a good example. He offers it as a model for cooperation, not just in words but in actions, working together for the community regardless of boundaries. O’Donnell says the agencies’ biggest challenges are fighting crime and drugs while their budgets are under limits…and cooperating and sharing resources helps them do that. He says “Crime really doesn’t have boundaries.”