Primeaux receives Distinguished Service Award

John Primeaux, an officer with the Concordia Police Department, was presented the Distinguished Service Award during the Concordia city commission meeting on Wednesday.
Concordia Police Chief Ric Fredrickson presented the award to Primeaux.
“We as law enforcement officers are kind of expected to do a lot of stressful things and deal with a lot of difficult situations, but once in a while something will come up where an officer goes above and beyond what would normally be expected and we did have a case where this happened,” Fredrickson said.
Fredrickson said that on February 11 of 2020, Primeaux received information that a person was threatening to harm himself and made it widely known. It was also known that the person had a negative opinion of law enforcement.
Police officers responded to the person's house and contacted him, but he was uncooperative and wanted to be left alone.
“At first the person become extremely angry and wanted the officers to leave,” Fredrickson said. “Some of the officers backed away and got out of sight. Officer Primeaux continued to talk to him and was able to establish a rapport. This is where he went above and beyond. After 15 minutes of visiting, Officer Primeaux was able to convince the man to go to the hospital to get help.”
Fredrickson said that through Primeaux's patience and negotiating ability he was able to get the person to a facility where he could get help and keep everyone safe.
“After this incident, we are on very friendly terms with the person, and he was thankful for Officer Primeaux's patience with him,” Fredrickson said.
The person later stated that there was a gun taped under the table he was sitting by during the incident, and had thought about grabbing it.
Fredrickson also announced that Primeaux has also been promoted to senior officer.
Also during the meeting, city of Concordia employees were presented service awards.
Those receiving awards, their position and number of years of service, include:
Bruno Rehbein, building inspector, 20 years; Jeff Roberts, well operator, 20 years; Bill White, dispatcher, 20 years; David Gilkeson, mechanic, 15 years; Brad Swihart, detective corporal with the Police Department, 15 years; and John Christensen, firefighter/paramedic, 10 years.
In action taken during the meeting, the commission approved a cereal malt beverage license for 4 Kids Fuel & More LLC for 2020.
The commission approved having city manager Amy Lange sign an agreement with Campbell & Johnson Engineers, PA, in the amount of $15,275, to be paid for from the capital improvement fund, for engineering services for the purpose of design, bid specifications, bid letting and construction inspection on a mill and overlay project from Ninth Street and Lincoln Street to Matthew Street.
The project is part of a multiple-year plan to repair city streets.
An ordinance to allow the city website to become the official publication site of all legal publications was approved by the commission.
As was stated before, the city will continue to use The Blade-Empire for its publishing, but will also add a section on the website to post all publications, including non-legal items such as help-wanted ads.
The commission also approved a resolution defining the corporate city limits of the city to note the changes made.
On July 1, the commission approved an ordinance to bring the 4 Kids Fuel & More property into the city limits.