Petaluma, California - The Petaluma Police Department is proud to announce that Veteran Police Officer and Detective Patrick Gerke has been named the Police Officer of the Year for 2018.
Detective Gerke was sworn into public office on July 14, 1997 as a Petaluma Police Officer. In 2002, his public service took him back to his roots in the Sierra foothills, where he served one year as a deputy sheriff for the Placer County Sheriff’s Office before returning to serve in Petaluma. He has served with distinction in a variety of assignments during his tenure including patrol officer, deputy sheriff, bicycle patrol officer, resource officer, field training officer, corporal, and acting sergeant. His most recent assignment began in July of 2016 when he was assigned to the investigations team as a detective. It is his work in his detective assignment that has earned him this honor.
Nominated by Detective Sergeant Paul Gilman, our honoree was the senior detective on the team when he took command in January of 2017. As promotions and transfers occurred, Sergeant Gilman found himself with one senior detective and three new detectives who had to be fully trained. Training for new detectives is not as simple as sending someone to a one or two-week school. It takes many weeks of training and more than a year for all of the necessary schools to be completed. This specialized training prepares and certifies detectives to investigate sexual and physical child abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence, elder abuse, missing persons, felony assaults, homicide, officer involved shootings and fatal or major injury officer involved events.
Due to this training challenge, our honoree was called upon to not only be the lead detective on all major cases and officer involved shootings, but he somehow found the time to mentor and develop his fellow detectives while balancing a tremendous and sensitive case load. A case load so great, that it would only be shadowed by the Polly Klaas investigation from1993.
With his leadership, and the support of his sergeant, he and his fellow detectives, he managed a case load of more than 30 active cases. As we completed 2018, these detectives continue to manage a case load of more than 20 cases each, none of which even involve property crimes, all of which deal with the worst cases of people doing horrific things to men, women, children, and seniors. Detectives are forced to investigate situations most people could never even imagine.
Detective Sergeant Paul Gilman wrote the following in the nomination: “Detective Gerke has distinguished himself as a truly dedicated investigator with a reputation for thorough investigations and for not leaving any stone unturned. Watching him as a lead investigator on protocol cases has impressed me and he has demonstrated an exhaustive energetic drive, especially at the onset of these investigations.”
Although the lion’s share of his workload was initiated in 2017 as our detectives were called to investigate officer involved shootings and in-custody deaths for our allied law enforcement partners under a county-wide protocol, he carried this work from 2017 into 2018.
It is the volume of work he was already carrying and the new cases he was assigned this past year that is so remarkable. During 2018, he was assigned 26 new cases, along with multiple new protocol investigations. In 2018 he was assigned and investigated cases involving human trafficking, attempt homicides, sexual assaults of children and adults alike, child pornography, domestic violence, elder abuse, and major property crimes including forgery and burglaries. He has been commended by members from the Redwood Children’s Center for his compassion and excellence in taking care of the most vulnerable victims we deal with in law enforcement.
In addition to the above listed cases, he was assigned as the primary detective in a total of 63 cases during the year. The cases ranged from robbery, sexual assaults, human trafficking, and domestic violence cases.
Despite a stressful case load managed by a team of four detectives that should be twice as large, this detective has never missed an opportunity to stop and help less senior officers who aspire to be better investigators and hopefully one day able to call themselves a detective. He has always realized that leadership means you positively influence those around you to be better and inspire them to learn and develop the skills necessary to step in and take over for him when he moves on to his next assignment. A true steward of his position, he also realizes it is his responsibility to our profession and our mission to leave the investigations team better than it was when it was given to him.
He exemplifies our mission of working with our community to provide professional police services. Through his actions and his words he has demonstrated the highest level of compassion for victims as well as suspects, always giving everyone voice, being neutral, treating everyone with dignity and respect, and always being trustworthy and having the goodwill of others in mind before himself.
He has been a constant example of our performance principles of leadership, professionalism, teamwork, community, organizational excellence, and a winning attitude.
Please join me in thanking Detective Patrick Gerke for his service and congratulating him as the Petaluma Police Department Police Officer of the Year for 2018.
