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Youngstown police honor their own at annual awards ceremony
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Police Chief Robin Lees says he wants his officers to be proactive, and the majority of those who received honors Thursday at the annual departmental awards ceremony were rewarded for doing that.
Officers received awards for meritorious service, excellent duty, investigative work, life saving, as well as letters of commendation.
Victoria Turnage-Allen was also awarded the department’s Community Service Award.
Three of the officers who received the Excellent Duty Award – Mohammad Awad, Brad Ditullio and Joseph Moran – were honored for consistent high performance daily throughout the year.
Awad garnered several awards including the Firearm Reduction Award, given to officers who seize a minimum of five guns per year.
Awad said his success in securing weapons comes through traffic stops. He said his goal every day he is on the street is to find an illegal gun.
The leader in the department for seizing guns in 2014 was Officer George Anderson, who got 10 working a beat primarily on the North Side.
Moran also received awards in several categories and was feted for work he did in thwarting and making arrests in a string of burglaries in progress.
Moran said calls in progress are his favorite to respond to because they are almost always felonies.
“I like them because of the importance of the calls,” he said.
Ditullio said he is thankful for the honor because it shows his work is recognized on a consistent basis.
“It’s an honor and a privilege protecting the citizens of Youngstown,” Ditullio said.
A committee of supervisors and patrol officers nominates and decides which officers should receive awards.
One of the officers winning an Investigative Award was Kelly Jankowski, who was lauded for her work in October as a member of the department’s Family Investigative Services Unit.
Jankowski went undercover online and investigated a man suspected of being involved in child pornography. Her work led to a search of a Hollywood Avenue home and the arrest of a former part-time teacher, Paul Rektor, 35, who pleaded guilty to child-pornography charges earlier this year and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Lees said Rektor was one of the top five child pornographers in the state.
Jankowski said she decided to ask for training to detect such crimes on her own because no one had been doing it in the city.
“I said somebody needs to be involved in looking at this,” Jankowski said.
The awards committee also gave Lees an Excellent Duty Award, for several accolades he has won recently for his career in law enforcement, which the committee said puts the department in a good light.