Tomorrow night, the Seattle Police Foundation hosts its annual awards banquet downtown, honoring SPD personnel from around the city who’ve made an extra-big difference in their communities over the past year. When the SPD Media Relations team downtown sent out the event announcement, we asked for an advance copy of the Southwest Precinct award-recipients list; the precinct subsequently granted our request for photos of the honorees. 
The West Seattle-based honorees are one sergeant, four detectives and two officers, starting with, at left, the department-wide Community Ambassador Award recipient, Community Police Team Officer Kevin McDaniel, and at right, the Southwest Precinct Officer of the Year, John Kiehn. The event program describes Officer McDaniel’s work in the High Point area: “He is assigned to High Point as a full time liaison to ensure that emerging problems are quickly identified and dealt with. … Perhaps his most important role has been working with those young residents who are involved in at-risk activities. He freely gives of his time, responding to issues that many would not see as ‘police’ problems, but with his unique abilities he often manages to resolve them before they do become criminal in nature.” (This WSB story includes one example.) Officer Kiehn (involved in this recent quick-arrest case) is a former U.S. Marine lauded as “very energetic and has volunteered for virtually all available training, becoming in a few short years a Field Training Officer, Crisis Intervention trained and qualified as a Long Rifle Officer. … There are those ‘great officers’ who always seem to find the bad guy by being in the right place at the right time. Officer Kiehn isn’t one of those officers. His success comes from good, old fashioned police work combined with a high degree of competency, especially around computers. A self admitted ‘computer geek,’ he quickly mastered the new Records Management System and has been a key resource to others who struggle with the system. He routinely uses Law Enforcement databases to assist in locating suspects and readily shares this knowledge with others. …” Then there’s the Impact Award, going to several teams around the city including the Southwest Precinct Detectives:
From left, meet Southwest Precinct Detectives Brian Ballew and Shayne St. John, Sergeant Jeff Durden, and Detectives Ed Garcia and Nick Bauer. As prolific as property crime has been in our area, these guys have broken some big cases, and the info about their award explains:
The role of the Precinct Detectives is to provide follow up resources to the Precinct in terms of investigating property related crimes. The detectives that are assigned to the Southwest Precinct have taken this role to an entirely new level. In addition to developing an aggressive investigative stance they have, through their leadership and commitment, brought a renewed sense of team to the Precinct. They regularly attend roll calls in order to share information with fellow officers about crime patterns and potential suspects. This has created momentum and valuable information to all three patrol watches, Community Police and Anti-Crime Teams to achieve precinct goals, but more importantly, to make neighborhoods safe from predatory criminals. On more than one occasion the Detectives have self-deployed into the field in uniform because they felt their fellow officers needed additional staffing due to training and/or sick leave absences. On another occasion they responded to the scene of a major fire and assisted in directing traffic. Both their Captain and Lieutenant have noted the extraordinary impact this has had on all aspects of the Precinct.
The Seattle Police Foundation, by the way, is not part of the police department; it’s an independent, nonprofit foundation (as described here).
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