Lt. Chris Owens of the Tift County Sheriff’s Office was named the 2007 Public Safety Officer of the Year by the Tifton Elk’s Lodge #1114 Tuesday night at the annual banquet held at the lodge. Officers and employees of other public safety agencies in the city and county were also recognized with awards in the midst of family, friends and co-workers who attended the event and enjoyed a low country boil meal.

Tift County Superior Court Judge Gary C. McCorvey said it was difficult to place a proper title on awards given to public safety officers who work in the city and county.

“A better name might be the ‘Hometown Heroes Banquet,’” McCorvey said. “Even if you think those sitting at 911 are safe, you’re wrong.”

In a time when students take guns to school and into courtrooms, “everyone here tonight is in harm’s way every day,” McCorvey said.

Each year, the Tifton Elk’s Lodge has honored a representative of each public safety-related office in the City of Tifton and Tift County with the awards. The overall winner of “Officer of the Year” is submitted to the Georgia Elks Association’s Public Safety Officer of the Year competition. Major Jack Woolard of the Tift County Sheriff’s Office won local and state Officer of the Year honors from the association for 2006-2007.

According to incoming B.P.O.E. #1114 Exalted Ruler Dan Lockhart, each of the agencies’ department heads are asked to submit their nominations for officer of the year. A committee of Elk’s members then choose the honoree from those nominations. Each nominee from every agency received recognition and a handsome plaque during Tuesday’s banquet.

Those honored this year included Owen; Tifton Police Department Officer Danny Hayes; Tifton-Tift County Firefighters Earnest Dove, DeWayne Drawdy and Adrian Hicks; Tift County EMS Paramedic Riley Rutherford; Tifton-Tift County E-911 Communications Officer Ed Olalde; Georgia State Patrol (Post 13 Tifton) Trooper First Class Melvin Simmons; The Department of Public Safety-Motor Carrier Compliance Division’s Sergeant First Class Rickey Gibbs; ABAC Police Department Officer Debbie Pyles; Tifton-Tift County Animal Shelter, Animal Control Officer Rebecca Bruner; Tift County Jail Deputy Thomas Catanzarita; and Tift County Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Barber.

Tift County Sheriff Gary Vowell said that Owen was “instrumental in capturing three murder suspects” and was featured in a story that ran on Court TV. He said Owen was responsible for arresting a rape suspect from Jones County and, when he was commander of a drug unit, was responsible for shutting down 30 meth labs. Owen is also a certified police instructor at the South Georgia Police Academy in Tifton.

Vowell said he was fortunate to have been able to “steal Owen from Crisp County.”

“This guy was a friend before he was a lieutenant,” Vowell said.

According to an article that ran in the Tifton Gazette in 2005, Owen, who was then an investigator with the Crisp County Sheriff’s Office, and other investigators there, were learning about an assault and kidnapping of an elderly woman in Florida years earlier. Owens and co-workers had discussed the case over lunch, but the rest of the day was uneventful and Owen went home. While headed home in an unmarked sheriff’s car, he saw the suspect’s car race by and run a traffic light. He turned around and followed the car and thought of ways to arrest Johnny Hoskins without causing harm to civilians caught up in afternoon traffic.

Units eventually swarmed the 15-year-old Pontiac coming out of Church’s Chicken near U.S. Highway 41 and arrested Hoskins. The story of Hoskins, also known as Jameel Ali Mohammed, and his arrest, was featured on Court TV’s cable channel series. Hoskins admitted killing his 80-year-old neighbor, Dorothy Berger, stealing her car and driving to Arabi where he buried the body in a shallow grave on his family’s land. Owens was 22 at the time and had been an investigator for six months. Hoskins is on death row.

McCorvey said that Owen is responsible for “running security for jurors in death penalty cases.”

“You can’t imagine what it takes to run a death penalty case,” McCorvey said.

John McClary of McGregor Pallets presented a 9 mm Glock pistol as a gift to Owens. Door prizes given away during the banquet were donated by Ralph Miller, owner of Miller Hardware.