{"id":354779,"date":"2026-09-23T17:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T17:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/354779\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T17:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T17:02:10","slug":"rochester-police-officer-nicole-amatore-named-new-yorks-2026-officer-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/354779\/","title":{"rendered":"Rochester Police Officer Nicole Amatore Named New York&#8217;s 2026 Officer of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;It takes tremendous courage and integrity for police officers to suit up each day and put themselves in harm\u2019s way to protect others,&#8221; Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement. &#8220;It takes even more to remain calm and act quickly and decisively in the face of a deadly threat. Officer Amatore did just that while under fire from a gunman who had already wounded three of her colleagues.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Amatore was presented the award Tuesday during New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services&#8217; (DCJS) annual Public Safety Symposium, the state\u2019s largest professional gathering of public safety leaders and partners.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOfficer Amatore\u2019s actions exemplified exceptional heroism, bravery and selfless dedication to duty,&#8221; Chief David M. Smith said in a statement. &#8220;Faced with an immediate and lethal threat, she continued the mission without hesitation, knowingly placing herself in danger after three fellow officers had been shot and gravely injured, to stop a violent offender and protect her colleagues and the public.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Amatore has been with the department since 2019. She is the department&#8217;s second officer to be named New York State Police Officer of the Year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It means a lot to me,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/13wham.com\/news\/local\/rochester-officer-who-stopped-gunman-named-new-yorks-police-officer-of-the-year-nicole-amatore-19th-ward-chili-avenue\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Amatore told WHAM-TV<\/a>. &#8220;I want to thank the Rochester Police Department and Chief David Smith for nominating me for this award and all of the support they&#8217;ve shown.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Also during the symposium, Lifesaving Awards were presented to New York State Trooper Thomas Stiehler and Suffolk County Police Sgt. Robert Griffith.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On July 4, 2025, Stiehler broke down a door in a burning building in Albany and carried an older woman down several flights of stairs to save her. Later that month, Griffith stopped an advancing knife-wielding attacker while he and another officer were treating an injured victim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;It takes tremendous courage and integrity for police officers to suit up each day and put themselves in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-354779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}