Champaign police honor 24-year-old as top officer

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CHAMPAIGN — Last year, Champaign police Officer Maxwell Villanti conducted more than 270 traffic stops, made 12 DUI arrests and recovered 19 illegally possessed firearms.

Those standout field results are only partly why Chief Timothy Tyler awarded Villanti the Champaign Police Department’s annual Officer of the Year award during a Wednesday ceremony celebrating National Police Week.

“Officer Vallanti has proven to be a reliable, positive, a community-driven officer who excels in his performance, initiative and commitment to professionalism and public safety,” Tyler said to the crowded room of uniformed officers, department staff and family members.

“His efforts to support all citizens through unconditional respect are commendable in his proactive policing activities.”

At 24, Villanti received the honor despite only being in his second year as a patrol officer. He attributed his early success to being able to work in a department that has both experienced leadership and a cohort of other recent hires with whom he can rapidly build trust.

“It means a lot; I definitely wasn’t expecting it,” Villanti said of the award. “I had great field-training officers when I started out, and I’ve been pretty lucky to work on shifts that are full of people that I’m constantly learning from on a daily basis.”

Growing up in Chicago, Villanti said he had family members and a high school football coach he looked up to who joined the police force. Hearing them talk about the job, how you’re often outside and meeting people, sounded like a much better career option than one spent working inside.

Since he had family ties to Champaign, Villanti applied and eventually joined the department in 2021.

From one of his training officers — Daniel Ward, a 20-year veteran and member of the department’s Crisis Negotiation Unit — Villanti said he learned a lot about how to interact with people.

For example, while patrol officers respond to countless calls, it’s not every day that someone calls for the police and so they remember their interactions. Villanti said he’s learned to think about how to respond to situations in the way someone wants an officer to.

There’s no set-in-stone way to know what to say or when to say it to people, but the important thing is knowing how to respond to every person’s unique problem accordingly.

“I run into people now and they recognize me, I recognize them and it’s good to know that your prior interactions with them were positive,” Villanti said. “It’s obviously something that we always strive for because you build that relationship over time and when it comes the time that they need somebody, or they call the police, and they see that you arrive, it kind of helps.”

While commending Villanti, Tyler remarked on an incident in which the officer conducted a traffic stop and noticed a firearm in the vehicle’s center console. Villanti was able to keep the scene safely under control until other officers arrived and helped apprehend the individual, who unlawfully possessed the gun.

Besides Villanti, the department handed out commendations to 64 other officers for outstanding performance in the field — including Ward, recipient of a Distinguished Leadership Award.

Villanti was also honored alongside four other officers with a Life Saving Award for a March 2023 incident in which he performed CPR compressions to help a man in cardiac arrest.

“I’m looking forward to what the next year and all the years after that hold,” Villanti said. “But like I said, it’s definitely the people that I work with, being able to learn from them is a huge contributor as far as the results go.”