Check out Urbandale's Top Cops for 2011

Zac McDowell is one of the Urbandale police officers trained to go into a house with the Suburban Emergency Response Team, the equivalent of a SWAT team. 

It's a high-risk duty, said Urbandale Police Chief Ross McCarty, but it's not the main reason McDowell was chosen as Urbandale's police officer of the year.

McCarty said McDowell, a patrol officer, manages to make a good number of arrests and still garner plenty of compliments from the public. 

"I think that is the thing that distinguishes Officer McDowell," said McCarty. "He seems to have mastered both of those areas."

McDowell is one of three people who will be honored next month at the police department's annual banquet as outstanding officers or employees. 

McCarty said the awards are "something we started doing again. I think it's important for the morale of the organization to see good work rewarded. You can't always do it with pay and benefits. Your best workers, sometimes they just want to be recognized." 

McDowell has been an Urbandale officer since 2008. Before that he worked with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Mid-Iowa Narcotics Enforcement Task Force as a criminal analyst.

He was in the Iowa Army National Guard for 12 years and was deployed twice. He is married and has two children.

Nick Brockman

Nick Brockman's full-time job is as a dispatcher with the Polk County Sheriff's Office. But last year, he spent 175 hours working for the for $1.

Brockman is one of 10 reserve officers — essentially people trained as police officers who volunteer their time with the department. For their pay — $1 a year — the department's insurance covers them.

Reserve officers ride as a second officer with Urbandale patrol officers at least eight hours a month. Many, like Brockman, put in more time than that.

"We have a very dedicated reserve officer force. They all put in pretty close to that amount of time, but this year he was a leader in all those categories," said McCarty.

"We depend on them quite heavily to run our Fourth of July celebration," he said.

Brockman has been a reserve officer with Urbandale since 2003. He also is a member of the Urbandale Police Reserve Benevolent Association and the Iowa State Reserve Law Officer's Association.

Shanda Hughes

Urbandale taxpayers are indebted to Shanda Hughes, the police department's chief administrative assistant and the department's 2011 civilian employee of the year.

Hughes is administrative assistant to the chief and his command staff, but her most valuable asset, said McCarty, is her expertise in the city's budgeting software and electronic management of records.

"I credit Shanda's recommendations to the command staff in streamlining this budget over the last three years," McCarty said of his operating budget, which has shown an average decrease of 2 to 2.5 percent a year.

McCarty said that when he became chief, he felt the department could reduce costs and "it was important to me to have someone who understood the accounting software."

He found that person in Hughes, who worked for the city's from 2002 to 2009.

Hughes has an associate degree in business administration from AIB, the American Institute of Business.  

Correction: An early version of this article misspelled Nick Brockman's name.