Venäläinen chosen Police Officer of the Year

Detective Senior Sergeant Ismo Venäläinen, a criminal investigator from Eastern Finland Police Department, has been chosen as Police Officer of the Year 2023, said the National Police Board in a press release on Wednesday.

In the ever-changing field of crime and the increasing demands, Venäläinen has not rested on his laurels but has continuously developed his professional skills.

“Venäläinen is a very good example of how criminal investigation is both interesting and challenging as well as important from the civic perspective. He has built up an extensive professional repertoire and has also progressed in his career,” the jury stated.

The Police Officer of the Year 2023 was announced in Wednesday in Helsinki.

Crime prevention was chosen as the theme for this year’s Police Officer of the Year. Crime prevention easily takes a back seat in the public eye, but it is one of the most important tasks of the police in the fight against crime through investigation, intelligence and preventive action.

Venäläinen works as a detective senior sergeant and team leader at Eastern Finland Police Department, in a long-term criminal investigation team at Mikkeli police station.

He has gained particularly diverse experience during his 27 years of criminal investigation. Since 1996, he has been an investigator, head of investigations in practically all aspects of criminal investigation starting from the pre-trial investigation of basic offences to investigation of the most serious and complex crimes.

”Investigation has changed a lot. Back in the day, time was spent investigating “real crimes”, such as beer and cigarette thefts, car thefts, assaults and homicides. These days crime has increasingly moved online and the number of crime reports is considerably higher than earlier,” Venäläinen said.

Venäläinen has noticed that the increasing workload means there is not the same willingness to investigate as earlier. Despite this, Venäläinen still finds the work meaningful.

“Personally, I’ve enjoyed investigating volume crimes, because you never know what tomorrow will bring. The work involves a broad spectrum of almost all types of crime.He sees the challenge as being the large piles of cases that need to be reduced to a tolerable level,” he said.

“The work calls for doers and hands. Criminal investigation should be developed so that the mountains of cases are reduced to a tolerable level, otherwise there’s a risk of investigators suffering from burnout. We team leaders are also in a pole position when it comes to how cases are allocated to investigators,” he added.

Ismo Venäläinen is the 48th Police officer of the Year.