In what will be the fourth top person in the department in less than a year, Mokena has tapped Brian Benton, former chief in Joliet, to lead the village’s police force on an interim basis.
Benton’s hiring, approved Monday by the Village Board, is effective Aug. 30. He will take over the department from John Keating, who is leaving for personal reasons after a little more than three months on the job.
The village has not yet begun a search for a permanent replacement in the chief’s position, according to Mayor Frank Fleischer, who said that Benton will serve “for as long as it takes.”
Benton was with the Joliet department for more than 28 years, with his last five years as chief, according to Mokena. He left the city in 2018.
“We feel we are very blessed to have somebody of that caliber,” Fleischer said.
Mokena Police Cmdr. Randy Stumpf was interim chief for a brief period after Steve Vaccaro was placed on paid administrative leave at the end of last October.
Vaccaro, who had been Mokena’s chief since March 2014, was placed on leave after the village’s police officers and sergeants sent a letter to village officials stating they had no confidence in the chief.
Vaccaro retired in December. The village had brought on Tim McCarthy, Orland Park’s longtime police chief, to serve in the job as temporary chief.
Fleischer said that “we did not want to have a hole in the department” in picking Benton, and that Stumpf would have been the natural choice but is saddled with other duties, including overseeing plans for a new public safety building.
As far as Keating, the mayor said he seemed to be on the job around the clock.
“I don’t know if he ever slept,” Fleischer said. “He was riding along with all of the shifts.”
Formerly a police commander in Orland Park, Keating started as Mokena chief May 10.
Keating was with the Orland Police Department for 29 years and named a police commander in 2010, overseeing the investigations division before retiring in November 2016. Before coming to Mokena, Keating was an investigator with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.
mnolan@tribpub.com
