Officer Greg Schaller is a nine year veteran of the Tustin Police Department. He holds a B.A. in Criminal Justice from California State University, Long Beach. He began his career in December 1998 after graduating from the Golden West College Police Academy. Officer Schaller worked as a Reserve Police Officer for four years before promoting to full-time status in 2002.

Officer Schaller was selected as the Department's K-9 Officer in 2005 and worked the assignment for four years. He is currently a Senior Officer II and is assigned to the South Area Command.

During the months of April and May of this year, numerous cities throughout Orange County had been experiencing diesel fuel thefts from constructions sites. Tustin was one of those cities, with three separate diesel thefts from the Metrolink construction site at 1211 Edinger Avenue.

As an officer assigned to the South Area of the City, Officer Schaller took ownership of this crime spree and spent a significant amount of his shift conducting both patrol checks and surveillance of this location in an attempt to apprehend the suspect(s) involved. On May 15th, around midnight, he noticed a blacked out dump truck parked in this construction site. Knowing no work should be going on at the site at this hour and knowing there had been a number of thefts from this location in the recent past, Officer Schaller immediately called for additional officers and set up a perimeter around site.

Within minutes, officers located a suspect trying to flee the scene from a fenced area away from the dump truck. When detained, the suspect was found wearing an orange reflective construction vest and he had two bags of methamphetamine in his pocket. Additionally, an empty 500 gallon auxiliary fuel tank and hose were found in the bed of the dump truck. The suspect was arrested and later interviewed by detectives. During these interviews, the suspect admitted to coming to the construction site to commit a theft and he admitted to possessing the methamphetamine. Since the suspect's arrest, there have not been any additional diesel thefts from this location.

This arrest is one of many outstanding arrests made by Officer Schaller over the past year; none of which were made by pure luck. Rather, this is just another excellent example of ownership to an assigned area, attention to crime trends and hard work.

It is with great pleasure to announce Officer Greg Schaller as the recipient of the Chamber of Commerce Officer of the Month Award for June. Congratulations Officer Schaller.