Mount Prospect Officer Friendly now Officer of the Year

Dirk Ollech is known to many as Officer Friendly.

But to his peers on the Mount Prospect police force, he is Officer of the Year.

Ollech, a 10-year veteran of the force whose assignments include breath-test operator, bicycle officer and trainer in first aid and CPR, received the department's 30th annual Officer of the Year Award this week.

Ollech serves as one of the department's Internet safety instructors and spent several years in the Crime Prevention unit as Officer Friendly. His work in 2011, however, showed he is far from friendly to criminals.

Officials said Ollech distinguished himself as a patrol officer on the midnight watch last year, making 78 self-initiated arrests, including nine of intoxicated motorists. He also issued 146 moving violations.

“While the quantity of arrests is remarkable, it's the quality of the arrests that caused Officer Ollech to stand out,” Police Chief John Dahlberg said.

In addition to his work on the street, Ollech also showed himself to be a leader, mentoring other officers, Dahlberg said.

“It's a really great honor because there are a lot of great police officers in the department,” Ollech said afterward. “And to be singled out is really special.”

Among those also honored Monday night were three runners up: Officer William Ryan, Investigator Anthony Lietzow and Investigator Lee Schaps.

Ryan is a three-year member of the force but has distinguished himself during that short tenure.

“You always get the interesting calls,” Dahlberg told Ryan during the ceremony.

On one of those calls, Ryan located a suspicious man in the vestibule of an apartment building and learned he was not a resident. He also noticed that the man's clothing was wet, indicating he had been out in the rain.

It turned out that his clothing matched that of a suspect in an Arlington Heights robbery. The suspect wound up confessing not only to the Arlington Heights holdup but a series of others.

Ryan gained national news attention as well for his arrest of a man who broke into the Mount Prospect Mr. Beef & Pizza and prepared himself a meal.

Lietzow, a seven-year veteran, has been honored six different years.

“No other member of the department's track record comes close to what this officer has accomplished in his relatively short tenure with the department,” Dahlberg said.

Officer of the year in 2005, 2007 and 2009, he was the only officer to gain that distinction three times. He distinguished himself in 2011 on cases like one involving a murder-for-hire scheme.

Schaps, an 18-year veteran, is an officer whose versatility is enhanced by his value as a Spanish interpreter. His work led to the prosecutions of a man for molesting a 15-year-old boy and also an offender who confessed to abusing a 6-month old child.

Village Trustee John Matuszak thanked the officers for their service.

“It's a lot of long hours. It's a lot of hard work. You're dealing with the issues that our residents would really rather not deal with,” he said. “It takes a special type of person to go out there every single day and do that.”