Seattle University and members of the law enforcement community recognized Gil Kerlikowske, long-time Seattle Police Chief and President Obama’s nominee for director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, for his ethical leadership in law enforcement at the Celebration of Service, Ethics, and Leadership in Law Enforcement event Friday, April 24, 2009.

Chief Kerlikowske has been a member of the Criminal Justice Department Advisory Committee at Seattle University since its inception in 2004. He serves as an adjunct faculty member in the Criminal Justice Department and teaches “Issues in Contemporary Law Enforcement” a joint undergraduate and graduate course. In 2007-08, Chief Kerlikowske was instrumental in assisting the SU Criminal Justice Department in a range of advisory committee projects and initiatives, the Crime Analysis certificate Program, and in supporting a number of collaborative student-faculty-agency research projects.

Also honored were the 2009-2010 recipients of the Eugene Corr Scholarship, named for the former U.S. Marshal and former assistant police chief who played a major role in ending a police pay-off system in the early 1970s. The recipients included Tammy A. Kynett, King County Sheriff Deputy and first female motorcycle officer in that department, and Sakshi Sharma, current criminal justice undergraduate at Seattle University.

“It is especially fitting that we are celebrating Chief Kerlikowske and the Corr award recipients in a single event,” said Jackie Helfgott, Chair of the criminal justice department. “Chief Kerlikowske models what criminal justice scholars and practitioners have been calling for since the early days in the movement toward ethics and professionalism in policing and the beginnings of of criminal justice as an academic discipline in the 1970s when Eugene Corr cofounded the Seattle University criminal justice department.”

The Eugene M. Corr Scholarship was created to honor Corr's memory and to encourage others to live his ideals of service, integrity, and courage. After he retired from the police department, Eugene went on to found the Criminal Justice program at Seattle University. He later served as a member of the Washington State Parole Board and was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as U.S. Marshal for western Washington. At his death in 2005, Eugene Corr was celebrated as the most significant law enforcement official in Seattle history.

Attendees included Gil Kerlikowske and his wife, Anna Laszlo, a former Seattle University adjunct professor, senior representatives of the Seattle Police Department, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the King County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Marshal’s Office. The event is sponsored by the Seattle University Criminal Justice Department in the College of Arts and Sciences.