By Jackson Bell, Los Angeles Times
NORTHEAST GLENDALE, Calif. - Although Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz will be recognized individually for his days heading the department’s drug detail, he considers the 2004 Narcotics Officer of the Year award more of a group effort.
“The narcotics officer works with crooks who know no boundaries,” said Lorenz, 40. “Not any one person in narcotics enforcement can go it alone. It’s the result of teamwork. I will accept this award on behalf of all those who try to take drugs off the street.”
Lorenz, now the department’s public information officer and adjunct to the police chief, will be honored at the California Narcotic Officers Assn.'s annual installation banquet Sunday in San Diego.
Nominated by his colleagues, the 20-year department veteran was selected from a pool of about 20 other narcotics officers for this year’s award, said Bob Hussey, the association’s executive director. The group has 7,500 members on the federal, state and local level, and about 2,000 are expected to attend Sunday’s banquet, Hussey said.
Lorenz, he said, was chosen for the award for his outstanding work on and off duty, ranging from doubling the number of arrests by the Vice/Narcotics Detail to collaborating with parent-teacher organizations to run drug-awareness programs at local schools.
“I’ve known Tom for 10 or 12 years,” Hussey said. “He’s a very dedicated individual. Whether in his family life, community service or law-enforcement investigations, anything he assumes, he finishes.”
Early in his tenure with the department, Lorenz was assigned to the vice detail and worked as an investigator for eight years. In 2001, he returned to supervise the detail, and ran it until becoming the public information officer in April 2004.
Lorenz has also worked in patrol, DUI enforcement, the SWAT team, assault unit and Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving unit. In addition, he has been the department’s representative on several state and federal policy task forces.