officer-weppler

Knoxville Police Officer Joe Weppler was presented with an award by the State of Iowa’s Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau on Friday. 

The Jim Meyerdirk Award for Academic Excellence recognized Officer Weppler as the valedictorian of his Drug Recognition Expert class earlier this year. He passed the program with a cumulative academic average of 98.7%. The program consists of 10 classroom days and 8 days of out of state certification. Officer Weppler commented that it was a great feeling to be recognized for all of his hard work. 

“It feels nice to be recognized for this award. Going through DRE school, I went through with a lot of great guys. A lot of guys in my class, including myself, putting a lot of time and effort into being the best that we could be during this training. We spent countless hours every night after class studying, making flash cards, going over the materials covered from that day and looking ahead and just trying to prepare ourselves the best that we could. So, it feels nice to be recognized for this award.”

Iowa’s Drug Recognition Expert State Coordinator Todd Olmstead presented the award and said he was happy with how well Officer Weppler retained and applied all the information in the program.

“It’s always exciting to see the officers learning and excelling at the material that is thrown at them and it’s a lot of material every single day. And to see Officer Weppler soak it up like a sponge and really then be able to apply it during the field certifications and now out on the actual streets to remove those drug impaired and alcohol impaired drivers from our roadways to keep our roadways safer is really gratifying.”

Officer Weppler added that he is looking forward to using everything he learned in the program to keep the community safe.