Ansonia police honored more than 20 of their own at an annual awards ceremony Tuesday.
Detective Sgt. Patrick Lynch received the top award of the night, the Brian F. Phipps Memorial Award. It’s the department’s annual Officer of the Year honor, presented in memory of the former police commissioner.
Phipps’ brother, Dennis Phipps, presented the award to Lynch.
Police Chief Kevin J. Hale said Lynch embodied all of Phipps’ best qualities, including honor, decency, leadership, courage — and the ability to coordinate investigations.
Last year, he was one of five officers to receive a distinguished service award for their investigation of drug activity in town that led to the seizure of $1 million in marijuana plants from homes in Ansonia and Oxford.
While the award is kept secret, Lynch’s family was there anyway, to see Lynch receive his 20-year award.
Lynch’s mother, Sheila Lynch, and mother-in-law, Julia DaSilva, beamed with pride as they snapped photos of Lynch with Hale and other officers.
“We just feel so blessed that people are recognizing all he’s doing,” DaSilva said. “He’s a good cop, a good husband, a good father, and all that makes him a very good man.”
Besides Lynch, police recognized three officers, a firefighter and a local citizen for saving an elderly woman from an Oct. 2 blaze that nearly killed her in her North Street home.
Officers Philip Landona, Edward Magera and Bernard Oksenberg, as well as Ansonia volunteer firefighter Judd Blaze and local resident Christopher Esteves, worked together to get wheelchair-bound Laura McMichael, 86, out of the fiery home. McMichael’s husband, 84-year-old Rufus “Fred” McMichael, died in the fire.
Laura McMichael was unable to thank the five Tuesday night – she died of other medical problems on Nov. 30 – but Hale said the fivesome’s teamwork was heroic.
Animal Control Officer Steven Martins received a Distinguished Service Award for his quick thinking in a June 21, 2009 incident on Olson Drive.
Martins noticed a crowd gathering in a stairwell at the complex and responded to find that a woman had been stabbed. Martins administered First Aid to the woman, whose stab wounds would eventually prove fatal.
The four officers who responded to the complex — Randy Giusto, Patrick Tirella, Paul Smith and Oksenberg, who took home a total of four awards Tuesday – were also honored with Distinguished Service awards for their quick detective work in apprehending a suspect.
Life Saving awards were presented to Officers Oksenberg and Jonathan Troesser for preventing a suicide while responding to a route house call in December 2009 — and to Officers Anthony Capezzali and Richard Esposito for giving an unresponsive 86-year-old woman CPR until paramedics arrived in September 2009.
Dispatcher David Blackwell received a Life Saving award for his work in keeping a prisoner from committing suicide in his cell in June 2009.
Officers Brian Harte and William Dicicco were honored with Departmental Citations for responding quickly when they saw the owner of Fuel First chasing a cash-register-bearing along Main Street after a robbery had been reported at the store on Dec. 23, 2009.
Oksenberg and citizen Zgjim Gjonbalaj were honored – Oksenberg with a Departmental Citation, Gjonbalaj with a Police Citizen award – for their cooperation in a March 8 armed robbery.
Gjonbalaj was the tipster who led police to their suspect, who fled to a nearby gas station. Oksenberg was the first one on scene, and arrested the suspect, Hale said.
