2024 Officer of the Year Award

In 2024 Deputy Trajan Prochnow of the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office worked a total of 163 days.  During that time, he fielded 1,263 calls for service.  That is an average of 7.75 calls per day.  In that same period of time, Deputy Prochnow conducted several OWI investigations and arrested 80 people for impaired driving.  That is an average of one person arrested for OWI every other shift he worked.  Within those 80 OWI arrests several of them resulted in 7th and 8th offense OWI arrests.

 

On top of all those OWI investigations and his calls for service, Deputy Prochnow located drugs on almost every single day he worked in 2024, with 159 controlled substance investigations.  This was done over the course of 734 traffic stops or an average of 4.5 traffic stops per shift.

 

On top of these impressive numbers, Deputy Prochnow was also involved in a pursuit in December of 2024.  The pursuit was ultimately terminated due to safety reasons, but the driver was eventually identified.  The investigation that followed the pursuit resulted in identifying a drug trafficker that transported large quantities of drugs throughout Wisconsin.  Subsequent the pursuit investigation, Dane County SWAT executed a search warrant on a residence and the drug trafficker was later arrested by probation and parole.

 

In 2024, Deputy Prochnow demonstrated an advanced level of performance in his OWI investigations and subsequent arrests.  Deputy Prochnow’s dedication, commitment, and work ethic reflects greatly upon himself and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, and is therefore awarded the 2024 Wisconsin Traffic Safety Officer’s Association Officer of the Year Award.

 

Congratulations Deputy Prochnow.