Det. Mike Welsh has been named the Conway Police Department's Officer of the Year.
Welsh joined CPD in September 1996 as a patrolman and became a detective in August 2000.
His personal highlights of the past year, Welsh said, have been the investigations that led to the arrests of the four suspects in the Oct. 26 University of Central Arkansas shooting and Victor Jermaine Smith, a 17-year-old arrested on suspicion of a carjacking/kidnapping on March 25.
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Conway Police Department Detective Mike Welsh was recently named Officer of the Year after being nominated and later chosen by Chief A.J. Gary.
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Both of these investigations moved quickly, Welsh said, with one piece of information leading to others until he and other investigators were confident that suspects had been accurately identified.
"You hate for something like this to happen" Welsh said, "but when it does, you want to get in there and do your part.
"It's satisfying when you make the arrest or find that key piece of evidence."
Other investigations Welsh has worked on have moved more slowly and some, he said, may never be solved.
"But the majority of our big cases will be solved," he said. "As an investigator you've just got to be patient."
Welsh is also trained in hostage negotiation and played a part in the hostage situation at Kimberly Clark in 2001. The Kimberly Clark hostage situation came to a peaceful end, with Dale S. Perkins, 19 at the time, giving up his 1-year-old hostage and surrendering to police.
Before joining CPD, Welsh spent four years as a patrolman for the North Little Rock Police Department and lived briefly in Florida before deciding that the Sunshine State, though at times decent enough for a brief visit, wasn't where he wanted to stay. He filled out a last-minute application to join CPD from the office of his Florida apartment complex, he said, and hasn't looked back.
The Officer of the Year is chosen based on criteria including professionalism, leadership, strategic thinking, progressiveness and championing the department and its mission.
(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit.)
