DPD Detective Receives Statewide Honor
Friday, August 12th, 2022
Detective Matthew Kumnick was recognized as the Regional Gang Investigator of the Year by the Georgia Gang Investigators Association this week at their annual conference in Savannah, Georgia. Detective Kumnick is one of two Dalton detectives assigned to the FBI’s Safe Streets Task Force to investigate and combat gang crime.
“It’s a great honor. It is very humbling,” Detective Kumnick said. “I truly feel that it’s not an individual award, it’s a team award. Everyone that’s helped me, especially (my partner) Aaron (Simpson), I can’t do anything by myself without the solid work of everyone else around me.”
Caption: Detective Kumnick (center) shakes hands after being presented with the award at the GGIA conference in Savannah, Georgia
“Matthew is driven and that’s the big thing. He has all the qualities you want of a quality investigator and you add on top of that that he’s really driven to see things through and get things done and that’s really the recognition,” said Chris Crossen, Dalton’s assistant police chief. “It’s a team award, they all work together on that task force, but the fact that he takes it up and he works it and he is dogged with it, that’s all him.”
Detective Aaron Simpson, Kumnick’s DPD partner on the task force, noted that in the past year alone that Kumnick was instrumental in ten different gang investigations that led to the arrests of 21 gang members who were charged with violation of Georgia’s criminal street gang act. The Safe Streets Task Force investigates crime throughout the northwest Georgia area and not just in Dalton. Task force members can also assist with investigations throughout the state.
“That’s the really cool thing, these cases are about the bigger picture and really have a tremendous community impact when we put all of our resources together,” Detective Kumnick said. “The limited ones that we do have in our region of the state, when we all work together for a common goal it’s really cool to see that impact that it has.”
Detective Kumnick was also recently recognized as the Dalton Police Department’s officer of the month for July in recognition of an initiative he started to improve communication and sharing of criminal intelligence between the agency’s detectives and patrol officers.
