OCPD Honors Man Who Helped Catch Bank Robbery Suspect

Josh Najda was working as a security guard at Caterpillar when he saw a person acting suspiciously. He later connected him with a bank robbery earlier in the day.

The Oak Creek Police Department will honor a man whose alertness helped catch a bank robbery suspect. Josh Najda will be presented a Citizen Citation during the department's awards ceremony May 20. Last October, he spotted the suspect wanted in connection with a robbery at TCF Bank, 8995 S. Howell Ave. Najda said in an interview he heard a description of the suspect on the police scanner earlier in the day. When he saw a man acting suspicious at Caterpillar's South Milwaukee plant, where he works as a security guard, he checked surveillance photos posted on Oak Creek Patch, realized it was the same person and called police. The suspect, Joseph Janich, is due back in court later this month for a plea hearing.

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Editor's Notebook

Catching the TCF Bank Robbery Suspect

Josh Najda, who called police after seeing the person who police say robbed TCF Bank Saturday, talks about how he realized he was looking at a bank robbery suspect.

When Oak Creek police took a 25-year-old South Milwaukee man into custody in connection with a bank robbery Saturday, they did so in large part thanks to an alert security guard at Caterpillar who saw someone matching the suspect's description. Earlier this week I exchanged a few emails with that security guard, Josh Najda, and asked him how he spotted the man. Najda is a firefighter with the town of Vernon who was off duty at the time but listening to his police scanner about 11 a.m., when word came of a robbery of TCF Bank in Oak Creek. He heard the initial description of the suspect — a white man with thin build, wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and tan pants — and filed it away in his memory. Later that day, he was at his job at …

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Arrest Made in TCF Bank Robbery

A 25-year-old South Milwaukee man was taken into custody late Saturday after police received a tip from a Caterpillar security guard.

A 25-year-old South Milwaukee man has been arrested in connection with the robbery of TCF Bank Saturday morning. According to the Oak Creek Police Department logbook, a security guard at Caterpillar's South Milwaukee facility reported seeing a man matching the description of the suspect talking with a Caterpillar employee. The employee told police the suspect is his roommate. A detective then went to the suspect's South Milwaukee apartment and arrested him. Online court records show the man, who had not been charged as of noon Monday, has open cases in Milwaukee and Racine counties for misdemeanor retail theft. He remains in Milwaukee County Jail. According to the logbook: The man entered TCF Bank, 8995 S. Howell Ave., about 11 a.m. …

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