Talk to Crystal Lake’s top cop about the future of his department and you begin to hear a theme emerge: Some things are changing rapidly, but much more remains the same than people might think.
Police Chief Ron Sheley said high-tech innovations and a growing population will change the jobs of the beat cop and the administrator over the next decade. But he also said that one of the department’s newer operations–community policing–is really as much about the department’s heritage as its future.
The Crystal Lake Police Department is authorized to have 64 sworn police officers. The department answered 23,545 calls for service in 1999, up from 14,566 calls for service in 1989. The Police Department budget has increased accordingly, from $2.5 million in fiscal year 1990 to $5.6 million in 2000.
The patrol division is structured into five zones, a central core area and four surrounding quadrants in a roughly even four-boxes-in-a-square pattern.
Like thousands of police departments around the country, the Crystal Lake force has been moving toward the community policing philosophy since the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Sheley, who chairs the Illinois Association of Police Chiefs’ committee on community policing, said the system can be broken into two parts: community-based decision-making and police problem-solving.
“In the 1960s and 1970s, we took officers off the beat and into squads to maximize efficiency. And you also had militarized police departments, where police said we’re the professionals and we will decide how to solve the problems that face the community,” Sheley said.
That began to change in the 1980s in response to social and crime problems that seemed not to be addressed effectively by the “professional” philosophy.
Community policing basically asks two groups of people to help solve problems: residents and the police officer on the beat.
“When I started 31 years ago, we simply went to a call and either arrested someone or wrote a report. And that was often that. Now we require our officers to actually facilitate the solution. We can’t become social workers or psychiatrists or doctors, but we do know how to get people to those resources,” Sheley said.
Crystal Lake uses the zoned system on the theory that officers develop an ongoing relationship within the smaller area, and have both greater impetus and ability to solve the problems with people to whom they are closer. The department maintains a logbook in which officers keep a record of each problem they encountered and the solutions they have used. Officers from each zone meet regularly to discuss those problems and possible solutions.
“We’ve tried many things. Some work and some don’t. And we are not afraid to use one of the main tools in our toolbox: the criminal justice system. But I think one of the best things about community policing is that it’s become OK to fail and that gives us the freedom to try things,” Sheley said.
One of the new components of community policing is the Crystal Lake Citizens’ Police Academy. The fourth class of residents began Aug. 31. Sgt. Dennis Harris set up a presentation to show the group of 16 the complete workings of the department.
“This is one of my very favorite programs,” the night-shift supervisor said. “We spend so much of our time contacting with the citizens in confrontational situations. This really helps people understand why we do things and it’s just a pleasant atmosphere.”
The 12-week class teaches a variety of law-enforcement matters, including arrest procedures, chain of command and physical requirements. One new student, 20-year-old Lynette Johns, said she just wanted to learn how the department works. Johns, a clerk at Home Depot, said many teenagers and young adults are mistrustful of police.
“I think it’s good they are doing it. They are opening the lines of communication,” Johns said.
Sheley said that for all the new awareness of community policing, it is really much like the work police officers did in the 1940s and 1950s when they walked a beat and knew the names of every kid on the block.
He added that Crystal Lake never lost some of that feel because more rural departments were slower to change with each fad.
Harris said that as the community grows into a midsize city over the next few decades, more programs like the police academy will be needed to maintain small-town connectedness.
“I don’t think it will change as much as we will need to work hard to maintain that kind of feel,” Harris said.
The Crystal Lake Police Department will try to have it both ways, however, embracing new technology to improve public safety.
Sheley said the department is creating a secure intranet system between School District 47, McHenry County Court Services and the Police Department that will allow the sharing of documents, e-mails and video images among the three organizations.
Down the road, the department is proposing a system that would connect all McHenry County police agencies and the court system and perhaps school districts.
For instance, an image of a missing teen could be beamed from a Crystal Lake school to a McHenry County squad car patrolling the back roads of the county.
“We spend a fair amount of time moving documents, or just driving back and forth with information. This is a very good innovation and if it works out, I think we would be the first in the state of Illinois,” Sheley said.
While Sheley is confident about continued progress for the department, he said at least two public safety issues will remain major threats in the next decade: domestic violence and traffic issues.
Sheley said that when he was a rookie, the most common call for a patrol officer was a public disturbance. Now it’s domestic violence. “I don’t think it’s a question of there being more now as much as [it is that] the shame factor has decreased a great deal. It just wasn’t admitted,” he said.
As for traffic, U.S. Highway 14 is a major concern, and Sheley said traffic problems are as important as almost any criminal problem. Sheley said, nationwide, cutting-edge technology is video surveillance at problematic traffic signs and stop lights. But he said he doubts that technology will be coming to Crystal Lake in the near future.
“I think the community would be against it. It’s only where there are serious, serious problems at intersections–people repeatedly just ignoring red lights–that the intrusion level is worth it,” he said.
