Two years ago, just after he had been assigned to the Autumn Grove apartment complex as a community policing officer, Downers Grove Police Officer Jim Christensen pulled his squad car up at a vacant field where neighborhood kids were playing.
“I just wanted to be a nice guy and meet the kids in the neighborhood,” he said.
But as soon as they spotted the police car, most of the children scattered-except for one who walked to him to protest, “What are you doing here? We ain’t doing anything wrong.”
Earlier this month, as Christensen worked at a new Community Resource Center that is the latest development in the neighborhood policing effort, a child walked up to him to ask, “You got time to test me on my spelling words, Officer Jim? Please?”
Downers Grove is one of several DuPage County communities that has chosen to actively embrace the community-oriented policing philosophy now popular among law enforcement agencies.
When the effort got serious in 1993, the 700-unit Autumn Grove complex on the south side of the village was one of two sites marked for attention.
Despite stereotypes that Downers Grove and DuPage County are crime-free, the neighborhood, with about 2,400 residents including some 600 kids, accounted for a disproportionately large number of the Police Department’s calls. Among the problems were public drinking and gangs.
Christensen was told, upon being named the area’s community policing officer, to get to know the residents of the area, especially the kids; understand their problems; and figure out what resources in the village could address those problems.
“There was a gang presence here and a growing graffiti problem,” says Christensen. “Management was doing everything they could, but they needed help from us.”
Both Christensen and Police Chief George Graves believe the effort, though it might smack of social work, has helped with law enforcement.
“By donating time up front with a designated officer, I believe in the long run we are saving time that we would be spending on responding to calls,” Graves said.
Last month Graves and Mayor Betty Cheever cut the ribbon on the Community Resource Center, an apartment donated by the complex’s management. It is similar to such centers in other apartment complexes around the suburbs.
Initially such centers were called police substations. But as community policing officers started drawing upon the talents of other government agencies, the title and the purpose of the local offices was broadened.
“The residents of the area are responding, the business community is responding, the social agencies like the YMCA and schools are responding, and this is how a partnership with the community is formed,” Graves said.
Other DuPage communities with such efforts include Bensenville, West Chicago, Woodridge, Lombard, Aurora and several unincorporated areas that are patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department.
The Autumn Grove center, in a first-floor apartment donated by Mid-America Manangement, hardly looks like a police station.
There is no booking room, no jail cells, no desk sergeant. Instead, there are tables covered with brochures on various anti-gang and anti-drug programs and sign-up sheets for kids programs, such as a trip to see the circus at Medinah Temple, climbing a wall at the Indian Boundary YMCA or participating in a fishing derby.
One afternoon, Amande Wasielewski, 10, came to the center and asked, “Can we come in and just do our homework, please, Officer Jim?”
Amande, her sister April, 11, and her friend Grace Reynoso, 12, spread their schoolbooks out on the floor in one of the rooms and set to work, as though they were in their own homes. “I like it here because it is nice and quiet,” said Grace.
Offering such a refuge is part of the center’s crime-prevention mission.
“At least 50 percent of the kids here are latchkey kids, and instead of being home alone, they have a place to come with supervision,” said Christensen.
Even if he’s out on a police call, the children can reach him, he said, because “everyone has my pager number.”
“I don’t want kids just to be dropped off, because I am not a baby-sitter and that doesn’t enforce the family unit,” he said.
“The kids can study here, goof around here, call their parents from here, just as long as they feel comfortable here.”
Currently, the office doesn’t open until after 3 p.m., when Christensen and the neighborhood’s other community policing officer, David Bormann, begin their shifts.
“But we are working with the community to set up volunteers to keep the office up longer,” Christensen said.
Sure enough, Mary Ann Caliendo dropped by the center to offer her time.
“Hey, this is a good cause and the kids can use help,” she said. “So if you can use me, let me know.”
She knew “Officer Jim” because he works the parking lots and hallways of the complex like a politician, greeting and waving to people as he makes his rounds.
“We are letting the residents know we are human and we can be approached,” he said. “For a long time there were a lot of bad stereotypes about officers in this neighborhood and how we dealt with crime. Now my job is to worry about the neighborhood.”
