Tarleton’s Dr. Alex Del Carmen Honored for Professional, Civic Service

Dr. Alex Del Carmen, left, receives the Gary W. Sykes Award for Professional Achievement in Law Enforcement from ILEA Director Gregory Smith.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, December 3, 2021

STEPHENVILLE, Texas — Dr. Alex Del Carmen, Associate Dean for Tarleton State University’s College of Liberal and Fine Arts, has received one of the highest honors given by the Institute for Law Enforcement Administration, recognizing his work in organizational change benefiting the profession and involvement in community service and civic activities.

Created in 2012, the Gary W. Sykes Award for Professional Achievement in Law Enforcement is given annually by ILEA, part of the Center for American and International Law. Recipients are role models to law enforcement officers, support personnel, criminal justice professionals and citizens.

Dr. Del Carmen is regarded as an authority on racial profiling and police practices. He has trained thousands of police officers, including all of the Texas chiefs of police since 2001. He also has worked as a federal monitor in two of the largest police reform cases in the United States and is a guest instructor at the FBI’s National Academy in Quantico.

“I am deeply humbled to be the recipient of the Gary W. Sykes Award and accept it with a sense of humility and obligation to continue my work with the law enforcement community,” he said. “This is truly one of the greatest honors of my career.”

He was instrumental in establishing Tarleton’s School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Public Administration within the College of Liberal and Fine Arts in 2014. He worked with other university faculty to gain approval from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for Tarleton’s first PhD program. The doctor of philosophy in criminal justice started in fall 2019 and is now one of the university’s most popular programs.

In 2016 Dr. Del Carmen organized the first U.S. Conference on the use of federal consent decrees to implement police reform. The national forum in Fort Worth has become an annual opportunity for members of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, federal judges and monitors, law enforcement executives and key community leaders to exchange best practices and lessons learned. More than 300 lawmakers and police officials attend.

As part of his work at Tarleton, Dr. Del Carmen has made academic presentations in the Czech Republic, Scotland, Belgium, Slovenia and Wales. He was named a Fulbright Specialist in 2018 by the U.S. Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and World Learning, and he was appointed a member of the International Evaluation Panel in 2020 at the Police Academy of the Czech Republic in Prague.

Prior to joining Tarleton, he chaired the criminology and criminal justice program at UTA. He is an instructor in the Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas and has been an instructor in the Arlington Police Department Training Academy. He is certified as a grant evaluator/reviewer for the Department of Justice and continues to work in the nation’s largest police reform case in Puerto Rico as a Court Appointed Special Master.

Dr. Del Carmen earned a PhD in criminology and criminal justice from Florida State University in 1997. His research interests include law enforcement, racial profiling, crime prevention and corrections. He has published over 50 refereed academic manuscripts in internationally recognized journals and nine books.

His most recent book is Racial Profiling in Policing: Beyond the Basics (2020, Kendall Hunt). Other works include Lombroso: The Father of Criminology Redefined, co-authored with Randall Butler and Robert Steven Jones (2018, Kendall Hunt), and Racial Profiling in America (2008, Prentice Hall).

Learn more about the College of Liberal and Fine Arts at www.tarleton.edu/colfa/. For more information on Tarleton’s School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Public Administration, visit www.tarleton.edu/criminology/.

A founding member of The Texas A&M System, Tarleton State is breaking records — in enrollment, research, scholarship, athletics, philanthropy and engagement — while transforming the lives of nearly 17,000 students in Stephenville, Fort Worth, Waco, Bryan and online. True to Tarleton’s values of excellence, integrity and respect, academic programs emphasize real world learning and address regional, state and national needs.
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