Tucked away to the left of the bulletproof reception window that greets visitors to the Schaumburg Police Department is a small office. A stuffed bear, dressed as a police officer, perches on a bookcase inside. In this neat cubicle is practiced a professional specialty that has unique roots in the Chicago suburbs.
“I’m kind of a linkage agent,” says Cindy Hitchcock-Faustrum, one of the occupants of the office.
Hitchcock-Faustrum and her colleague Paul Kutylo are police social workers. Their profession, bridging a gap between force and feelings, originated 28 years ago in the Chicago suburbs. Police social work has now spread as far away as Germany, but the 60 programs participating in the Chicago-area’s Association of Police Social Workers, including several in the northwest suburbs, still probably form the tightest cluster of such professionals anywhere in the world, according to Maria Rodriguez-Hallissey, president of the association.
Police social workers are an unusual breed, with one foot loyally planted in the stern world of law enforcement and the other in the empathetic realm of counseling and social service referrals. Schaumburg’s two police social workers may accompany a crime victim to court, help put a battered wife on a bus to escape abuse, refer distraught parents to a support group or attempt to reason with a paranoiac who called police saying mustard gas is being pumped secretly into his or her home.
Although police social work began a generation ago, when University of Illinois at Chicago professor Harvey Treger set up the first program in 1970 in Wheaton, its evolution and use today speak volumes about the 1990s, where increased awareness of social problems couples with strains on traditional family structures.
A main force behind this new wave has been the raising of consciousness about domestic violence issues. In 1986, for the first time, the Illinois Domestic Violence Act gave police the option of arresting spouse abusers even if a frightened victim refused to press charges. Previously, “they would go out (and) see the same thing happening over and over again, and their hands were tied,” says Kutylo, who was on the job when the 1986 law was passed.
Last year, Kutylo and Hitchcock-Faustrum handled 701 domestic violence cases. Some of these cases might never have been touched by social services counselors if a call had not come to police, who brought in police social workers.
“We reach people who would normally not be reached by social services,” says Mary Cortez, the Elk Grove Village police social worker who is past president of the Association of Police Social Workers. “We’ll do counseling at a bench in the courthouse.”
The prevailing aim is crisis intervention, not long-term therapy. “Our interactions with clients are very brief,” Hitchcock-Faustrum says. “We see them on average a couple of times. We talk with these people, and then we get them hooked up with other services.”
Hands-on work tends to be basic. Recently, when a household was disrupted by rebellious kids, Hitchcock-Faustrum had all the family members sit down together and write out the rules of the household. They learned what each expected of the other and also a little real-world training in negotiating skills.
The bedlam of frequent crises is one thing that makes police social workers a breed apart. They have to be able to concentrate in tense situations and make quick decisions, while enjoying the variety that a constantly changing caseload can bring.
“The kinds of problems and situations that police are being presented with require a very skilled person, not just an ordinary social worker,” Treger says, adding that the same person must also be at ease in the authoritarian environment of a police department.
Elk Grove Village Deputy Police Chief Larry Hammar recalls how his department became a pioneer in the police social work movement in 1973. “There were a lot of issues and a lot of problems that the police weren’t able to spend their time to deal with,” Hammar says. “As a result, we were getting a lot of repeat calls.”
Over the years, Elk Grove Village has trained a series of interns in the field who became police social workers in other suburbs. Costing $50,000 a year out of a total annual police budget of $7 million, the Elk Grove Village social work program is a net resource saver, according to Hammar, because of its effect in reducing repeat police calls, especially in domestic violence and juvenile problems. “We don’t see some of these kids again for the second and third times” because a police social worker has followed up, Hammar says.
Treger, the tireless professor who invented police social work, focused his efforts on setting up pilot programs in communities with populations of 50,000 or fewer where extensive social service networks might not be accessible. Although he retired from UIC in 1983, Treger is still something of a legend. Presently living in Evanston, he remembers that his idea of placing a civilian crisis specialist within the ranks of the police was not readily accepted.
There had been the killing of four Kent State students by members of the Ohio National Guard in 1970, and the clash between demonstrators and police at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968; none of this strengthened trust between armed authority and the feelings-based world of social work.
“The attitude of social service agencies was such that they didn’t want anybody being referred under coercion by the police,” Treger recalls. “A mutual distrust had developed between the groups.”
Police, for their part, feared that a social worker in their stationhouse might be “an enemy behind the lines” who might interfere with arrests or resent necessary toughness, according to Treger. “Tell me, Professor, why did you really come here?” Treger recalls one police chief saying as Treger made his rounds to suburban departments, tailoring new programs to local needs. “Did you come here to change us?”
By the 1990s, Treger says, change has come and police social workers, like community policing, have become more accepted. Now, according to Treger, police officials state proudly, “These are our social workers. They’re not just ordinary social workers.”
Certainly this seems to be the feeling in Elk Grove Village. “Most of our folks who work here have grown up with it,” Hammar says about police social work. “We’re kind of spoiled in that sense.”
The tradition of interprofessional cooperation in the suburbs has helped pave the way for some groundbreaking programs, such as Rolling Meadows’ Police Neighborhood Resource Center, started in 1991 and run by police social worker Campo Vaca. The center, located in an apartment complex that had been troubled by gang activity and other problems, offers English lessons, a clinic, job training and a job bank.
A main source of professional satisfaction for Hitchcock-Faustrum is breaking down a crisis into manageable parts. “I’m strong on the problem-solving end,” she says. “Just the other day, one of our detectives brought a woman in. Some family members got hyped up and (confrontational) out in the lobby about a decision she had made. She was shaking. I brought her into my office (but) kept the family members out. . . . Within a half-hour she wasn’t shaking.”
Calming the woman down and discussing her options with her, Hitchcock-Faustrum got an immediate sense of accomplishment, in a way not always available to long-term counselors. “I felt very satisfied in that the she could leave here knowing that she had my support,” she says. “She had regained her own strength.”
Sometimes police social workers are moved almost to mystical statements when they talk about watching people master extreme stress. “When you see them at their worst, you’re also seeing them at their best in some respects (because they are) finding their own resources,” Hitchcock-Faustrum says. “People are much stronger than they really think they are. And they have many more resources than they are aware of.”
The social workers say that when confronting a crisis, they are always thinking of the local agencies to which clients can be referred. In the Schaumburg area, there are two domestic violence agencies, three hospitals with mental health facilities, and a multitude of counseling and other services. Knowing what help is available and being able to make the proper referral quickly are some of the hallmarks of a good police social worker, according to Treger.
The newest police social work program in the northwest suburbs is in Des Plaines, which began last year. Two years earlier in Schaumburg, the police social worker caseload had become so heavy that the only employee added to Schaumburg’s tightly restricted village payroll in 1995 was an additional police social worker, Hitchcock-Faustrum says. That was when she came aboard to supplement the labors of veteran Kutylo. At the time, the two of them were handling an average of 82 cases a month. Today the average is 97.
“Over the past several years,” says James Rollin, a UIC professor of social work who hopes to extend the pioneering work of Treger, “it seems that police officers have been required to take on more social work responsibilities, but they haven’t received a lot of increased training in that area.” He is hoping to bring the police social worker concept to the Chicago Police Department, to which he has already made overtures.
Noting that schools, like the police, are increasingly called upon to settle what used to be family problems, Hitchcock-Faustrum says: “I think these institutions have had to take over part of those responsibilities that were parents’ responsibilities. I don’t know if that’s best for society.”
