Each year, Roswell Police Department, employees have the opportunity to nominate "Employee of the Year" award winners across a few different categories. Recently, Crime Scene Investigator Zack Kowalske was named the 2020 Officer of the Year.
[You may recognize Kowalske's name as he has contributed to Forensic in the past. He wrote an article on shooting reconstruction—after a case in which he was the lead CSI detective—and another regarding crime scene investigations during the pandemic. In fact, the COVID-19 article was the second-most popular article of 2020 on the Forensic site, and is still going strong as we fly through 2021.]
Kowalske is a subject matter expert in his field, and during 2020 was requested by the Sandy Springs Police Department, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office and the Holly Springs Police Department[to assist in investigations.
In addition to these cases, Kowalske was the lead CSI Detective on a Roswell murder case, in which he was able to provide a reconstruction of the shooting death from the ballistic and bloodstain evidence which led to the understanding of the events that transpired.
Because of this expertise, he has garnered international recognition in that he was awarded the Legal Desire International Forensic Expert Award in the Physics Division for his work in bloodstain pattern analysis in May 2020, was requested to serve as an adjunct professor by the Raksha University School of Forensic Science in India beginning in August, and was qualified as an expert witness in crime scene reconstruction, Crime Scene Investigations, and Blood Stain Pattern Analysis in a state case.
Kowalske transferred back to the Crime Scene Investigations Unit during the beginning part of 2020, however prior to his official transfer and while assigned to the Traffic Unit, Kowalske was crucial in the coordination of the new CSI Forensic Laboratory. This is a project which he diligently worked on from his initial designs of the project years ago, to the planning of a projected budget, and then finally working closely on a regular basis with Sgt. Hood during the construction phase which was completed in March 2020. During this same period of time when CSI was short, Kowalske volunteered to be on-call for the unit to help CSI coverage on top of his TEU responsibilities.
Kowalske is always looking at a bigger vision of how to improve forensic operations and help teach new officers so that the most evidence can be collected on any scene. This year, he proposed and implemented a new program of obtaining a fingerprint kit for every officer so that fingerprint evidence could be collected from any scene, which would lead to better leads in cases that CSI was not called to. As part of this, Kowalske even put together a training video to help refresh officer’s skills during the beginning of the pandemic when fact to face training was unavailable. In that same token, he volunteered the unit to compose a video on PPE protocol at the beginning of the pandemic so that officers would have a better understanding of safety and decontamination procedures.
Kowalske cares about education and this year volunteered to teach at GPSTC, the mini-academy, and Roswell and Alpharetta Citizens Police Academies. His drive for furthering education was evidence as he was accepted in October into a Forensic Science Ph.D. program and has since been awarded the Dan Rahn Research Grant by the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts. His willingness to assist others and his commitment to educating RPD officers is unequaled.
Republished courtesy of the Roswell PD. Photo credit: RPD.