HomeNews7th PDAC honors Officer of the Year

7th PDAC honors Officer of the Year

Excellent police work: Officer Joseph O’Reilly was named Officer of the Year in the 7th Police District. Pictured are (from left) Capt Michael Gormley, O’Reilly, 7th PDAC Chairman Mike Myers and Inspector Benjamin Naish. WILLIAM KENNY / TIMES PHOTO

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In the hands of police, a cell phone can be used as an effective crime-fighting tool — especially when the phone belongs to a criminal. Officer Joseph O’Reilly of the 7th Police District demonstrated how it’s done in January 2015 as he identified and captured a serial burglar with that singular piece of evidence. Throughout the rest of the year, O’Reilly captured an armed robber red-handed as well as another burglar minutes after he tried to break into a neighbor’s home.

On May 19, O’Reilly’s police superiors and members of the 7th Police District Advisory Council honored him as the district’s Officer of the Year.

The cell phone-related arrest exemplifies the kind of quick thinking and savvy for which O’Reilly has become known among his peers. Someone had broken into a home on the 400 block of Kismet Road and fled before police got there, but the burglar left a cell phone behind.

O’Reilly and his partner found the phone and used it to identify the owner, whose criminal record included prior arrests for burglary and drug offenses. O’Reilly went in search of the suspect. The officer’s first stop was the burglar’s home address. O’Reilly soon saw the suspect walking on the 9900 block of Verree Road, stopped him and asked him if the phone belonged to him. It seems that the crook didn’t realize or didn’t remember that he had lost the phone at a crime scene. So he identified the phone as his.

O’Reilly arrested the man and searched his backpack, which contained a laptop, jewelry and other items that had been reported stolen from a different house on the 600 block of Kismet Road. The suspect was charged with committing both break-ins.

In May 2015, O’Reilly and a partner made another felony arrest when they captured a man who had allegedly robbed medications from the Rite Aid at 9733 Roosevelt Blvd. after he threatened to stab an employee with an AIDS-contaminated syringe. O’Reilly and his partner found the suspect hiding under a deck attached to a house on the 2100 block of Gregg St. In the suspect’s backpack, police allegedly found a black BB gun, a ski mask, wire cutters and a screwdriver, along with the stolen pills.

Finally, last November, O’Reilly and a partner arrested a man who allegedly attempted to burglarize his neighbor’s house on the 1100 block of Chesworth Road. The homeowner’s son was home at the time and saw the suspect trying to break open the window. He was not successful. The victims helped O’Reilly identify the suspect, who was arrested at his own home.

O’Reilly has been assigned to the 7th district since June 2014 following his transfer from the 4th district. He is a member of the captain’s tactical squad, also known as the “5 squad.” He also serves on the district’s bicycle patrol and works major events elsewhere in the city in that capacity.

The other Officer of the Year nominees included Felix Rivera from 1 squad, Shawn Oechsle from 2 squad and Thomas Farrell from 3 squad. Rivera used his fingerprint investigation training to identify a man who was charged with breaking into at least seven parked cars. Oechsle responded to more than 840 radio calls for service during 2015. Farrell and his partner arrested two people for breaking into the T-Mobile store at 8546 Bustleton Ave. Also, Farrell won two Officer of the Month awards during the year.

During the same 7th PDAC meeting, Frederick Clough and Timothy Taylor were named Officers of the Month for April. On April 29, they went to an apartment on the 8200 block of Roosevelt Blvd. to question a suspect in a theft of equipment from a construction site. When they knocked at the apartment door, the suspect answered and asked the officers if they were there to arrest him for what he did at a Lukoil station. The officers detained the suspect while another officer went to the Lukoil at 9499 Roosevelt Blvd. and learned that the same man had tried to rob the business. That crime was captured on surveillance video.

The suspect was charged with the gas station robbery and the construction site robbery. He was also arrested on a warrant from Bucks County for failing to appear in court there. ••

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