Todays Mail Box-- Policing

Today's mailbox will contain the Police Report. I am quite proud of my efforts to fix a badly broken police department. We are now CALEA certified and while the process ultimately took 3 years and cost around $30,000, the results have become apparent over the years and they are reflected in the declining crime rate statistics that the state police uses to track crime. I am proud to saying comparing the 2001 numbers when I took office to todays, we have a 55% drop in crime in the village.

I won't go into all the details here becuse I have blogged about them before. So here is an index:

• Why the police department was broken (Here)
• Crime Statistics (Here)
• CALEA (Here)

Here is some press on the CALEA Certification

Round Lake, Illinois – On March 21, 2009, the Round Lake Police Department received law enforcement accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc. (CALEA), a prestigious recognition of law enforcement professional excellence. The Round Lake Police Department is one of only 46 municipal law enforcement agencies in the State of Illinois to be accredited.

The CALEA accreditation process is a proven modern management model; once implemented, it presents the Chief of Police, on a continuing basis, with a blueprint that promotes the efficient use of resources and improves service delivery – regardless of the size, geographic location, or functional responsibilities of the agency.

To receive law enforcement accreditation, the Round Lake Police Department had to comply with 381 internationally accepted standards for the operation of police organizations. In December 2008, a team of assessors from CALEA examined all aspects of the Department’s policies and procedures, management, operations, and support services to verify the agency met CALEA’s state-of-the-art standards.

In his report to the Commission, the assessment team leader, Chief Paul Verrecchia, commented, “…during the onsite process, it became obvious that under the leadership of Chief Cliff Metaxa, Deputy Chief Francis Foy and Director Michael Recupito, the department has made a positive transformation over the last three and one-half years. The Round Lake Police Department is an agency truly dedicated to serving the Village of Round Lake community. The assessment team found an agency comprised of men and women who are proud of their agency and the level of service offered to the community.”

According to Mayor Bill Gentes, “Four years ago our police department was fundamentally broken; today we are among the finest departments in the United States. All of Round Lake can be proud of the effort and commitment that we put into CALEA accreditation, and the results are already plain to see.”

The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc. was created in 1979 as a credentialing authority through the joint efforts of law enforcement’s major executive associations: International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE), National Sheriff’s Association (NSA), and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). CALEA’s purpose was to establish a body of professional standards and to develop an accreditation process to administer its credentialing program.

Chief Cliff Metaxa states, “I am very proud of the men and women of the Round Lake Police Department. Achieving CALEA law enforcement accreditation means that the Round Lake Police Department has met the requirements of a highly regarded and broadly recognized body of law enforcement standards. We meet the same standards as such renowned law enforcement agencies as the Broward Sheriff’s Office, United States Capital Police, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Nashville Police Department, and Illinois State Police.

Our community can be proud of their police department and the fact that we are now an internationally accredited law enforcement agency.”

CALEA Certification Achieved

Over the weekend at the CALEA (Commission on Law Enforcement Accreditation) annual conference our Police Department went through the final phase of our certification process. The good news is that we are now fully certified, one of less then 1,000 departments nationwide.

Four years ago when I made sweeping changes in the police department I promised improvement in this blog post on the day we swore our new Chief Cliff Metaxa in.

I am proud to say we delivered, the efforts of the Round Lake Police Department management team and rank and file in the process leading up to this certification has been superb. I am and every resident in this village should be incredibly proud of all the hard work they did for us.

Here is what certification mean to us:

• Policies and procedures that are state of the art and proven to stand up in court which will allow our conviction rate to be even higher then it is now.
• Our insurance rates will drop, since we can prove out our procedures are the safest and most acceptable out there.
• Our officers will always be trained in the safest and most efficient ways to handle all situations you will be safer because of it and so will our officers.

I invite you to congratulate each and every officer of our police department when you see them, because without the buy in they had on professionalism we could never have done this.

Some Nice Press for a Good Program

We got some nice press from the Waukegan News Sun a few days ago about a nice program we are doing

ROUND LAKE -- It can happen so fast that no one can prepare for it.

Excessive speed kills, and that is message the Round Lake Police Department is trying to get out after joining Families Against Chronic Excessive Speed 4 (FACES4). There are 164 police departments in Illinois that are part of the group.

Police hope to prevent deaths and injuries due to the speeding. Police distribute small cards that say "Slow Down and Arrive Alive" that bears a picture of an accident and a picture of the children who died in the crash. The back has facts on speeding.

FACES4 was started by Bob and Dee Brant of Naperville and Mike and Natalie Donovan of Glen Ellyn. Both families are trying to raise awareness of the tragic impact of speeding on families. Both families lost one or more children to accidents cause by excessive speeding.

"This is a very serious issue that is often trivialized by motion pictures and television shows. Chronic, excessive speed kills," said Round Lake Police Chief Cliffton Metaxa. "It is my sincere hope that by joining forces with FACES4 the Round Lake Police Department can help make a difference and possibly save lives."

Lake County recently had an excessive-speed crash on Rollins Road that killed a Round Lake High School student.

In another incident, a young driver died from a crash after "hill topping" near Long Grove. The practice involves accelerating over small hills for a thrill.

"We are telling kids that it is not only drunk driving that can get you killed, but excessive speeding can get you killed," Metaxa said.

He said police are approaching high school officials to arrange for a speaker to talk to students on that subject.

Lets talk Policing!

For those of you who don't recall I made aggressive police staff changes in 2005, the nonsense I am writing about here, is not and will never be repeated in this village.

One of the things that I am most proud of is the way we have pushed for dramatic changes in the police department. One of the first things that struck me when I became Mayor was the startlingly high crime numbers for a community of 5,842, we were averaging 3,543 incidents per 100,000 in 2002*, which was quite high. I pressured then Police Chief Charlie Foy to make sure we had enough officers on the street rather then sitting in the police station. We had 6 senior managers (Chief, Lieutenants and Sergeants who all worked day shifts consistently), night shifts were managed by the most senior patrol officers, who at some times were 1-2 years out of the academy. To me this was unacceptable, however considering the levels of incompetence in senior management I was going to uncover later (I will blog about this later), we were better off with the junior officers who had not developed bad habits.

So lets take a tour of the crime stats, the major dates to reference are as follows, I took office in 2001, and these statistics are one year behind, so the first year I was responsible for as Mayor was 2002, and crime was up for the second year and it had climbed for the second year in a row by 6.7%. Needless to say I had long discussions with Chief Foy and directed him to focus on patrol and reducing crime. He countered that he needed more patrolmen, so we got a plan to hire more officers and we did.

Crime dropped the next two years by 32% in 2003 and by 34% in 2004, which to my eye was great news. But lets look a little deeper into the numbers, does it really make sense that while the village grows the number of total incidents drops? That made no sense to me. The suspicion that something was wrong was confirmed when I had a neighboring mayor complain to me that my officers were changing crime classifications on reportable offenses to non-reportable offenses. If something was stolen from your garage, it was classified as lost or misplaced, not stolen and therefore not a reportable number.

In 2005 I decided not to re appoint Charlie Foy, and the crime numbers took a leap upwards by 25.8%, the first year current Police Chief Cliff Metaxa was in charge. What he started doing was reporting crime correctly. Now many of the more senior officers resented that I had removed Chief Foy and forced them out of their cushy jobs, and retaliated by doing some cute little tricks, for example reporting stolen golf clubs as not one crime, but 15 different ones, one for the bag and one for each of the 14 clubs, (I kid you not) thereby inflating statistics and making the new Chief look bad.

As you can see we have been able to reduce crime legitimately, incidents are correctly classified, and now we can accurately understand what we are doing right and wrong. So here are the numbers since 1996, and a short description of improvement steps that were taken.

Round Lake Crime Index vs Crime Rate
	Population	Crime Rate	Pct Change
1996	4,334	3,734	xxx
1997	4,334	4,407	18.0%
1998	4,334	4,314	-2.1%
1999	4,334	4,222	-2.1%
2000	5,842	3,081	-27.0%
2001	5,842	3,320	7.8%
2002	5,842	3,543	6.7%
2003	10,160	2,391	-32.5%
2004	10,160	1,554	-35.0%
2005	12,166	1,956	25.8%
2006	16,572	1,532	-21.7%
2007	16,572	1,520	-1.0%

Summary of Crime in Round Lake
The Round Lake Police Department has striven over the past three years to accurately report the crime that occurs in the Village of Round Lake. History has proven to be a challenge as in the past the classification of incidents were changed to reflect a low crime rate. Taking this into consideration, measures were put into place to ensure that offenses are classified properly and that there is no manipulation involved in the reporting of crimes. Specifically, an administrative review step was developed for all incident reports wherein the Deputy Chief of Police reviews the incident and the classification of the offense to ensure accuracy. The statistics contained in the Crime in Illinois 2007 report are accurate for the second year in a row. The crime index offense rate for the Village of Round Lake in 2007 was 1,520.60 per 100,000 inhabitants, which is a 0.8% decrease from 2006.

This is the lowest crime rate recorded by the Illinois State Police for the Village of Round Lake since they started recording statistics in 1996. This low crime rate is even lower than the years when the reporting of crime statistics to the Illinois State Police was being manipulated. The Village of Round Lake has the lowest crime index offense rate in the Round Lake area.

*Local law enforcement agencies are mandated by Chapter 20 of the Illinois Compiled Statutes 2630/8 to report crime index offenses, crime index offense arrests, and drug arrests. Crime index offenses are the most serious and are used nationally as the standard base for comparisons. The I-UCR crime index offenses and crime index offense arrests include the categories of murder, criminal sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault/battery (including attempted murder and ritual mutilation), burglary, theft (including burglary from a motor vehicle), motor vehicle theft and arson. This data is submitted directly to the Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting (I-UCR) Program. Each September, the Illinois State Police publishes the results of this data collection from the prior year. On November 3, 2008, the Round Lake Police Department received the Crime Index/Crime Rate Comparison 2006/2007 for the Village of Round Lake. This information was embargoed until November 19, 2008 pending Governor Blagojevich’s press release. This summary is based on the detailed statistics and analyses that are contained in the complete Crime in Illinois 2007, Annual Uniform Crime Report, which is available via the internet through the Illinois State Police website at http://www.isp.state.il.us.

Police Department Accreditation Nears Completion

Since I made changes in the police department a few years ago and demanded a better more professional department the department has taken giant steps forward. One of these major steps is an on-site assessment as part of a program to achieve accreditation by verifying it meets professional standards.

Administered by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc. (CALEA®), the accreditation program requires agencies to comply with state-of-the-art standards in four areas: policy and procedures, administration, operations, and support services.

As part of the on-site assessment, Department employees and members of the community are invited to offer comment at a public information session on Monday, December 15, 2008 at 4:00 p.m. The session will be conducted in the Round Lake Police Department Community Room located at 741 West Town Line Road, Round Lake, Illinois 60073.

Department members and the public are also invited to offer comments by calling (847) 201-2169 on December 15, 2008 between the hours of 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. Comments will be taken by the Assessment Team. Telephone comments as well as appearances at the public information session are limited to 10 minutes and must address the Department’s ability to comply with CALEA’s standards. To review the standards, please contact Director Michael S. Recupito at (847) 546-8112.

Anyone wishing to submit written comments about the Round Lake Police Department’s ability to comply with the standards for accreditation may send them to the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc. (CALEA®), 10302 Eaton Place, Suite 100, Fairfax, Virginia, 22030-2215, or www.calea.org

Liquor Issues-- 100% Compliance

On Friday, March 28, 2008, the Round Lake Police Department conducted an Alcohol Countermeasure Enforcement operation. Fifteen of the seventeen liquor establishments in the Village of Round Lake were checked. I am happy to announce that NO ONE sold alcohol to the minor. This is the first time that the Village of Round Lake has had 100% compliance.

This ACE operation was conducted as part of a larger county-wide initiative and a cooperative press release is being drafted by the Waukegan Police Department. Thank you for your support of our continued efforts to eliminate the sale of alcohol to minors and the responsible sale of alcohol to adults. Of course, we will continue to conduct ACE operations and are planning one for prom time.

Whats up with all the Black Helicopter's

Many of you have asked me what's up with my personal fleet of black helicopters landing at the Police and Public Works station last week.

What really happened is the Law Enforcement Aviation Coalition (LEAC) conducted a training/educational session at our facility. LEAC was started by the Winthrop Harbor Police Department to provide air support for law enforcement in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.

In 2005 they incorporated as a not for profit charitable organization. They own three Bell OH58 helicopters and have access to a privately owned Bell 430. The helicopters are based out of the Rockford, IL area and Kenosha, WI. The helicopters are equipped with Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR), Night Vision, flood/spotlights, and radios to communicate with ground units.

Two helicopters landed and were displayed. I have attached several pictures and more information can be obtained at their website, www.airsupport.com

All of their personnel are volunteers. Having these helicopters available are a great resource to the Village. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you.

Dramatic Rescue from Pond in Madrona

Yesterday , at 1:21PM, our police department received a call for a vehicle that had driven into the water at Concord and Wildspring in Madronna Village.

I would like you all to know that two of our officers were the first to arrive on scene and immediately swam out to rescue the occupant of the vehicle. Police Chief Cliffton Metaxa and Officer Kraig Kapusinski along with a Sheriffs Deputy in the area, swan out to the vehicle and pulled a lady out of the vehicle to safety.

Several other officers arrived along with the fire department and assisted the officers out of the water. The vehicle was eventually located and pulled from the water where it was determined no other occupants were in the vehicle. The occupant was transported to the hospital and it is believed she had a medical condition that may have contributed to the accident.

From Daily Herald--- A woman had to be rescued from her car after driving it into a retention pond in Round Lake Wednesday afternoon.

Police said the unidentified 28-year-old Round Lake Park woman was driving east on Concord Drive and drove directly into the pond where Concord dead-ends with Wildspring Road.

Police officials said witnesses reported the woman didn't appear to try and turn the Chevrolet Cavalier she was driving at the intersection. She was transported to Condell Medical Center in Libertyville. Hospital officials would not release her condition.

Round Lake Police Lt. Pete Molidor said the crash occurred around 1:20 p.m. The car was floating in the pond when emergency workers arrived at the scene, but sank after rescuers popped a window in order to rescue the unresponsive woman.

The car was eventually extracted from the pond. The investigation is ongoing, Molidor said. Police have not interviewed the woman and no citations have been issued.

From the News Sun-- Woman rescued from sinking car-- Drove into pond in Round Lake

ROUND LAKE -- Quick teamwork by rescuers helped save the life of a woman who drove her car into a pond Wednesday afternoon.

First responders were able to reach the woman and pull her out of her car before it fully submerged, after it went crashing into the Madrona Village retention pond near Route 120 and Wildspring Road, in Round Lake.

The unidentified woman was westbound on Concord Drive around 1 p.m. when she failed to yield at Wildspring, and drove her gold Chevy Cavalier into the large retention pond.

Round Lake Police Chief Cliff Metaxa was one of the first on the scene Wednesday. When he arrived he said he saw the car nose first in the water, about 70 feet off shore. Before divers arrived he jumped into the chilly water and swam to the car where the woman, who he described in her 30s, was in neck-deep water.

Metaxa was joined by Round Lake Police Officer Kraig Kapusinski, Round Lake Firefighter Jay Vandeberg and off-duty Sheriff's Deputy Stephen Hennelly. The four were able to break a window in the car and pull the woman to shore where she was taken away by an ambulance.

"I credit the officers that were in the water with me," Metaxa said. "Along with the firefighters, we were able to save a life today."

Metaxa said the woman was conscious but disoriented. She was taken to Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, where her condition was unknown.

The accident was still under investigation Wednesday afternoon. Round Lake officers did not know how the woman wound up in the pond, or if citations would be issued. No tracks were visible leading from the road into the pond. Tire marks were visible on the curb and it appears the vehicle was airborne when it entered the pond.

Divers worked with a tow truck to pull the car from the bottom of the pond, which is deeper than 8 feet at its center.

When the car was pulled out of the pond, it was caked with mud and grass. Water filled it up to its windows and the windshield wipers were working. Firefighters poked holes in the door and smashed windows to allow it to drain.

The accident drew large crowds to the quiet subdivision. Resident Jim Kerwin was among those gathered around the pond. He was working in his backyard about a block from the pond when the accident occurred. He said he heard what sounded like a crash and then a bunch of geese squawking as they flew away.

"I didn't really think anything of it," Kerwin said.

Truck Weight Enforcement

Last week the Police Department did one of there regular truck weight enforcement programs. We purchased some scales a few years ago and with the proper training of the officers we have written quite a few tickets on overweights.

The numbers are startling:
72 tickets
$25,002 in fines levied.

The most recent enforcement project on August 2nd netted 4 tickets and a potential of $3,370 in fines. We have a couple of officers who are trained in truck overweights who have done an excellent job with this program in the last year or so. In the picture you can see the truck parked on the scales if you look closely.

Speed Trailer Installed on My Street

I was outside early last week, mowing the lawn watching the kids play in the street, when one particular neighbor kid was roaring around on his bike outside the cul-de-sac.

Which is all fine and dandy except he is maybe 5 and 27lbs and on training wheels, (his parents also appear to pay zero attention to the play habits of this child, although I may be a wee bit over protective, since I would still have my 17 year old daughter in a car seat if I could).

Needless to say cars also roar down the street, to my un-expert eye well over 25 mph, so I thought to myself...hey I am the Mayor, I have some pull....let me call the PD up and have that trailer moved to my street on its next movement (its outside about 320 days a year in random locations) So needless to say a few days later it appeared.

It was here for about two days (the picture is of my neighbor Rudy, who wanted to measure his fastball against it, which I discouraged). Anyway the data is in....and 354 cars passed by, and not one went over 25mph! The average speed was 13.5mph!


I was amazed! Not a single one! Shocking....I wonder what we should do next? Hummmm maybe that can be a second part of this post for a later date!

The trailer has been moved to the Bright Meadows development I think for its next stop!

Bank Robbery Solved-- Kudos to our Police Department!

The Round Lake Police Department, announced the arrest of Jeremy C. Wood age 27, of 6705 Maple Lane, Westmont, Illinois 60559 for the July 9, 2007 armed robbery of the NorStates Bank Round Lake branch. WOOD, an active parolee, was arrested without incident on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at approximately 10:30 AM while he left his residence.

An initial investigation by the Round Lake Police Department led to the identification of Wood, which later culminated in a joint investigation conducted by the Round Lake Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Illinois Department of Corrections and other local law enforcement agencies.

After his arrest, Wood confessed to the NorStates Bank robbery and three other bank robberies throughout Illinois. Wood is currently in Federal custody awaiting charges.

The public is reminded that an arrest is not evidence of guilt and that the defendant in this criminal case is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Local Bank Robbed

Attached is a flyer sent out to area law enforcement agencies regarding an armed robbery that occurred Monday at NorStates Bank at 301 Goodnow Blvd at 3:06pm. The offender fled with approx. $1,200. The FBI was contacted and is involved with the investigation. Please contact the Round Lake Police at 847-546-8112 if you have information on this ongoing investigation.

Motorcycle Awareness

With the recent series of motorcycle fatalities in the area I thought it appropriate to go over some basic motorcycle safety tips. Over two-thirds of car-motorcycle crashes are caused by drivers, not by motorcyclists. The driver either does not see the oncoming motorcyclist at all or does not see the motorcyclist in time to avoid a crash. Special thanks to Sean Gillette for sending me most of this material!

Why Didn't I See That Motorcycle?

• Drivers tend to look for other cars, not motorcycles.
• Because of its smaller profile, a motorcycle is harder to see and you may find it more difficult to estimate the motorcycle's speed.
• The motorcyclist's riding pattern is different from your driving pattern. Different actions may be needed for the same driving or highway situation. For example, you may ignore a piece of road debris as a driver; however, that same piece of road debris may be deadly for a motorcyclist.
• Traffic, weather, and road conditions require a motorcyclist to react differently than a driver, thus it is more difficult for you to judge and to predict cues that may require the motorcyclist to take an evasive action.
  

What Are Some Situations When Crashes Are Most Likely to Occur?

• Car making a left turn: You are attempting a left turn in front of a motorcycle operator.
• Riding in your blind spot: A motorcyclist is riding in your blind spot and you may not see the motorcycle. Additionally, you may fail to adequately check blind spots before changing lanes or making turn.
• Hazardous road conditions: Potholes, wet leaves, railroad tracks and other road obstructions may dictate that a motorcyclist take an action that you may or may not.
• Obstructed line of sight: Large vehicles, such as sport utility vehicles, delivery vans, and large trucks may block a motorcycle from your view and the motorcyclist may seem to suddenly appear.
  

How Can I Become More Aware of Motorcyclists?

• Respect the motorcyclist: Remember the motorcycle is a vehicle with all of the privileges of any vehicle on the roadway. Give the motorcyclist a full lane of travel.
• Look out: Look for the motorcyclist at intersections, when a motorcyclist may be making a left turn, and on the highway, when a motorcyclist may be changing lanes. Clearly signal your intentions.
• Anticipate a motorcyclist's maneuver: Obstructions that you do not notice may be deadly for a motorcyclist. Predict evasive actions.
• Allow plenty of space: Don't follow a motorcycle too closely. Allow enough room for the motorcyclist to take evasive actions.
  

Where Can I Go For More Information?

American Motorcyclist Association
13515 Yarmouth Drive
Pickerington, OH 43147
Phone: 641/856-1900
1-800-AMA-JOIN
Fax: 614-856-1920
http://www.amadirectlink.com

Motorcycle Riders Foundation
Phone: 202/546-0983

Motorcycle Safety Foundation
Phone: 949/727-3227

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Phone: 202/366-1739

National Association of State Motorcycle Safety Administrators
Phone: 612/785-9242

---

Over two-thirds of car-motorcycle crashes are caused by drivers, not by motorcyclists. The driver either does not see the oncoming motorcyclist at all or does not see the motorcyclist in time to avoid a crash.

Why Didn't That Driver See Me?

• Don't assume that you are visible to a driver. As a motorcyclist, it is your responsibility to make your presence known to the driver. Select and wear an appropriate helmet with retroreflective materials. Wear bright, contrasting protective clothing. If you choose darker clothing, wear a fluorescent vest.
• 23 states require that the headlight be on while the motorcycle is on the highway. Use high beams rather than low beams and consider using a modulating headlight if your state allows it.
• Proper lane position is important to being seen and for protecting your riding space. If you can see the driver in the side-view mirror, the driver can see you. Don't "hide" in the driver's blind spot!
• Clearly, communicate your intentions by signaling appropriately. Let the driver know what you intend to do.
  

What are Some Situations When Crashes are Most Likely to Occur?

• Car making a left turn: A driver is attempting a left turn in front of you.
• Riding in a driver's blind spot: You are riding in the driver's blind spot and the driver may not see the motorcycle. Additionally, the driver may fail to adequately check blind spots before changing lanes or making turn.
• Hazardous road conditions: Potholes, wet leaves, railroad tracks and other road obstructions may dictate that you take an action that a driver may not or does not anticipate.
• Obstructed line of sight: Large vehicles, such as sport utility vehicles, delivery vans, and large trucks may block a motorcycle from a driver's view and you may seem to suddenly appear.
  

How Can I Increase the Driver's Awareness of My Presence?

• Make yourself visible: Choose protective gear that will increase your visibility in addition to providing protection in the event of a crash. A motorcycle helmet is your most valuable piece of protective gear and should be most visible to the driver.
• Ride where you can be seen: Remember that there is no one safe place to ride. Use lane positioning to your advantage to be seen and to provide extra space for emergency braking situations or avoidance maneuvers. Avoid the driver's blind spots. Make your lane moves gradually, and always use appropriate signaling.
• Never share a lane with a car: A driver may not expect you to be there and may not be aware of your presence. Remember most drivers are looking for other, bigger vehicles.
• Clearly signal your intentions to the driver: Signal before changing lanes and never weave between lanes.

Where Can I Go For More Information?

American Motorcyclist Association
Phone: 641/891-2425

Motorcycle Riders Foundation
Phone: 202/546-0983

Motorcycle Safety Foundation
Phone: 949/727-3227

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Phone: 202/366-1739

National Association of State Motorcycle Safety Administrators
Phone: 612/785-9242

Community Cleanup in the Avilon/Capri Area

The Round Lake Police Department organized a community cleanup in the Avilon/Capri area on Saturday, May 26, 2007. Members of the police department, owners of the apartments, tenants of the apartments and local home owners all participated in the cleanup. There were around one hundred people who pitched in to help. The goal of the cleanup was to improve the quality of life in the area. Now that the area has been cleaned up, the tenants understand the expectations and have committed to keeping the area clean. This was a great community policing event and I want to specifically recognize the hard work of CSO Juan Curiel and Detective Ted Hendricks for their hard work in organizing the cleanup.

Round Lake-- Illinois Police Accreditation Coalition (I-PAC).

Wednesday our Police Department hosted the regular monthly meeting of the Illinois Police Accreditation Coalition (I-PAC). The mission of I-PAC is to promote professionalism among Police Departments in Illinois, and surrounding Midwestern states. I-PAC's primary function is to conduct mock on-sites (inspections) for agencies, provide training, and assist in the revision of the CALEA® standards manual. I-PAC is currently one of the largest CALEA® PAC's.

Following the meeting, there was a brief demonstration by the Illinois-Wisconsin Search & Rescue Dogs (ILL-WIS), which will included an information presentation and a canine demonstration.

The following departments attended the meeting representing : Arlington Heights PD, Barrington-Inverness PD, Champaign PD, DuPage Forest Preserve PD, Evanston PD, Grayslake PD, Hanover Park PD, Joliet PD, Lake Zurich PD, Lemont PD, McHenry PD, Naperville PD, Northfield PD, Oak Brook PD, Palatine PD, Park Ridge PD, Rolling Meadows PD, Round Lake PD, Round Lake Beach, PD Schaumburg PD, St. Charles PD, Westmont PD, Wheeling PD, Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office, Winnetka PD, and last but not least the Zion PD

Why you should wear your seatbelt!

On the Making Light blog, novelist Jim Macdonald -- who is also a paramedic -- lays out the stark, grisly case for wearing your seatbelt. New Jersey's Governor Jon S Corzine was recently badly injured in a car collision. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt. The two other passengers in the vehicle were wearing their seat belts -- they sustained bumps and bruises. Macdonald's description of what he sees when responding to "unrestrained passenger" accidents aren't for the faint of heart.

In a collision, you have three or four sub-collisions all taking place in sequence. First, the vehicle hits some object. The vehicle abruptly slows, but unrestrained objects inside it continue at the same speed, in the same direction. Then the unrestrained body hits the interior of the vehicle, and starts to slow. That’s the second collision. That body’s internal organs are still moving at speed until they hit the inside of the chest (or get cheese-sliced by their supporting ligaments—and that’s where you get things like bisected livers or aortas). The fourth collision is when the bowling ball you left on the rear deck hits you in the back of the head, because that continued at the same speed in the same direction. Newtonian physics: Learn it, live it, love it.

Just so you know at some point during the spring and summer we will be doing spot enforcement checks of seat belts along with seat belt awareness campaigns.

Police Officer of the Year Named

Last week the village board got a visit from the Officer Adam Arnold the Round Lake Police Department Employee of the Year for 2006. He left with an award and another bonus, a promotion he was next up on the Sergeants list for promotion to one of our vacancies!

What follows is Police Chief Cliff Metaxa's presentation of the award and Officer Arnold to the village board. (The picture from left to right is Chief Metaxa, Sergeant Arnold and Deputy Chief Francis Foy.)

Upon unanimous selection by the supervisors of the Round Lake Police Department, it gives me great pleasure to recognize Officer Adam Arnold as the Police Department’s Employee of the Year for the year of 2006.

Officer Arnold has distinguished himself with his performance on patrol where he made double the number of arrests than the second highest officer and with the DARE program where he has made such a positive impact on the community.

I am very proud to recognize you as the Round Lake Police Department’s Employee of the Year. We are here this evening, in part, to recognize the efforts of Officer Adam Arnold and by that recognition, promote him to a higher level of responsibility and authority. Part of this responsibility includes the ability to listen carefully, plan, delegate work assignments, correct mistakes, solve problems, make sound management decisions, coach, counsel and administer discipline.

Being a modern police manager in today’s environment is far from a simple task. Today’s law enforcement managers are constantly challenged to understand and effectively deal with many complex factors and trends.

Officer Arnold began his career with the Round Lake Police Department in April of 2004 as a police officer. Adam has a Bachelors Degree from the University of Illinois and served four years in the United States Marine Corp. Adam became a state certified police officer in June of 2004. He is also a state certified Advanced Evidence Technician, a Narcotics Investigator, and completed NIPAS’ Critical Incident Response course.

Most people in the community know Adam as our DARE officer. Adam has done a fantastic job with the DARE program and has affected the lives of hundreds of children in our community. Adam lives in Lake Villa, Illinois with his wife Angie and their newborn twins Ryan and Emily.

Adam, in your newly appointed position, you will be challenged to:

• Make things happen.
• Set high standards for yourself and your subordinates.
• Protect and promote the mission of the police department.
• Set an example of quality leadership.

Accomplishing these goals should prove to be meaningful and rewarding, both personally and professionally. Adam, you have my full support and confidence.

COMMENTARY-- Gangs Part 2

The Round Lake Area had traditionally benefited from many multi-jurisdictional efforts such as the Lakes Management Commission, Chamber of Commerce, the Round Lake Area Park District, parades and events. It is a little know fact among many area residents that the Round Lake Area police departments have worked closely for a number of years. Recently, the Round Lake Area Chiefs of Police meet and agreed to increase the level of multi-jurisdictional law enforcement efforts.

The Chiefs recognized that their departments are routinely dealing with the same offenders throughout the Round Lake area. For example, a delinquent juvenile who attends the Round Lake High School might live in Round Lake Park and probably hangs out in Round Lake Beach (this is only an example and not meant to indicate that delinquent juveniles live in Round Lake Park). That delinquent juvenile could possibly come into contact with three different police departments. Why should three separate police departments build three separate cases against the same delinquent juvenile? Why not join forces and maximize resources? That is exactly what the Round Lake Area police departments are doing.

Starting this spring, the Round Lake Area police departments will be increasing their cooperative enforcement efforts in the areas of gangs, general investigations, DUI enforcement, commercial vehicle enforcement, boat patrol and areas of CALEA accreditation that the departments share such as dispatch. I applaud these efforts and hope that they will have a positive impact on the limited crime that we have in the Round Lake Area.

CALEA-- Timeline starts now!

On the 26th of February the village board started the clock ticking on the Police Departments CALEA accreditation process. Its a 36 month process that ultimately leads to being a certified agency.

As many of you know we have had to forcefully yank our police department out of the past and into the future in the last two and half years. The process has been painful and costly. If some had spent as much energy resisting change as they had in getting with the program we would be much better off. But I can't change the past, only take us towards a better future.

CALEA is the way law enforcement agencies voluntarily demonstrate their commitment to excellence in law enforcement. The standards upon which the Law Enforcement Accreditation Program is based reflect the current thinking and experience of law enforcement practitioners and researchers. Major law enforcement associations, leading educational and training institutions, governmental agencies, as well as law enforcement executives internationally, acknowledge CALEA’s Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies and its Accreditation Program as benchmarks for today’s law enforcement agency.

• CALEA Accreditation requires an agency to develop a comprehensive, well thought out, uniform set of written directives. This is one of the most successful methods for reaching administrative and operational goals, while also providing direction to personnel. (Click HERE for a list of standards.)
• Accreditation standards provide the necessary reports and analyses a CEO needs to make fact-based, informed management decisions. (Click HERE for a list of standards.)
• CALEA Accreditation requires a preparedness program be put in place – so an agency is ready to address natural or man-made unusual occurrences. (Click HERE for a list of standards.)
• Accreditation is a means for developing or improving upon an agency’s relationship with the community. (Click HERE for a list of standards.)
• CALEA Accreditation strengthens an agency’s accountability, both within the agency and the community, through a continuum of standards that clearly define authority, performance, and responsibilities. (Click HERE for a list of standards.)
• Being CALEA Accredited can limit an agency’s liability and risk exposure because it demonstrates that internationally recognized standards for law enforcement have been met, as verified by a team of independent outside CALEA-trained assessors. (Click HERE for a list of standards.)
• CALEA Accreditation facilitates an agency’s pursuit of professional excellence.

COMMENTARY-- Gangs Part 1

This is the first of a multiple part discussion of gangs. There will be another part that discuss some of the steps that our police are taking in conjunction with the other police departments in the area to combat gangs in the area. Much of the information gathered here is from the following two sources (here and here) in addition Police Chief Cliff Metaxa helped quite a bit.

The existence of gangs in the Round Lake Area is not a new or recent phenomenon. The following is a brief discussion of the history of gangs and specifically Chicago based street gangs.

Gangs in the United States have been traced back to the post Revolutionary War days and originally formed as a means of self-protection and as social clubs. In the early nineteenth century, Irish immigrants formed the first street gangs in New York City. By the 1920's, the city of Chicago is reported to have had over 1300 gangs in the city

In the 1960's a "youth group" called the Black P-Stone Rangers developed into a criminal organization. The group's leader, Jeff Fort, united the leaders of some 50 area street gangs into a single organization, the “Black P-Stone Nation”. The group was controlled by a 21-man commission, self-titled the "Main 21". The leaders projected the group as a socially conscious, self-help organization that would help uplift themselves and their community. As a result of this premise, the group sought and obtained $1.4 million in federal anti-poverty funds. These funds were then used to support the group's illegal activities. A federal grand jury uncovered the funds mismanagement and Jeff Fort was sent to federal prison.

The perceived success of Fort's Black P-Stone Nation resulted in the formation of many other street gangs, which claimed to be politically and socially motivated. Of the groups that surfaced, many dropped to a level of disorganization, while others developed into sophisticated, highly organized groups involved in prostitution, robbery, burglary, extortion, and drug sales.

Two very influential gangs, the Black Disciples, led by David Barksdale, and the Gangster Disciples, led by Larry Hoover, followed Fort's example and unified their gangs to form the Black Gangster Disciple Nation. Throughout the 1970's, the Black P-Stone Nation and Black Gangster Disciple Nation controlled the Chicago drug trade and became bitter rivals expressing their anger by creating the bloodiest gang war in Chicago's history.

During the 1980's, within the prison walls, gangs began separating into alliances. The two alliance names that emerged were the “People Nation” and “Folk Nation”. All gangs that were originally aligned with the Black P-Stone Nation aligned with People Nation. Those that were originally aligned with the Black Gangster Disciple Nation aligned with the Folk Nation.
Many gangs or "sets", as they are called, are aligned with one of the two Chicago alliances. The more prevalent groups are shown below by alliance.

People Nation Sets

• Black P-Stone
• Latin Kings
• Vicelords
• Spanish Lords
• El Rukns
• Bishops
• Gaylords
• Latin Counts
• Kents

Folk Nation Sets

• Black Gangster Disciples
• Black Disciples
• Gangster Disciples
• La Raza
• Cobras
• Eagles
• Latin Disciples
• Maniac Latin Disciples
• Simon City Royals
• Spanish Gangsters
• Two Sixers

It is very common for Chicago-based gangs to maintain charters, constitutions, recruiting documents, and other written materials. These documents are almost always in cryptic code or subliminally hidden in artwork. Rules and codes of conduct must be strictly followed. Those members who choose not to participate in a gang activity are subject to disciplinary action or "violations".

Graffiti is used by gangs to communicate with fellow members and rivals. Disrespect to a rival gang or their members is accomplished by displaying rival symbols in a disrespectful manner. The disrespect of symbols communicates hatred toward the rival group. This type of graffiti encourages retaliation. The most effective method of preventing this activity is to quickly remove the graffiti in order to reduce the amount of recognition gained by the act. Notify local authorities and request the removal of graffiti.

In the Round Lake Area, you can contact CenCom at the non-emergency telephone number (847-270-9111) to report graffiti. In the Village of Round Lake, the village code 9.16.080 states:

It shall be the duty of the owner of the structure or wall upon which any inscription or representation prohibited in subsection A of this section is made, to block or remove such inscription or representation or to otherwise repair or restore the structure or wall to its prior condition within twenty-four (24) hours from receipt of notice of such occurrence.

If you have any questions about gangs you can contact your local police department. If you live in the Village of Round Lake you can contact the Round Lake Police Department at (847) 546-8112.

Disaster Management

A number of Lake County emergency response and relief personnel were in Round Lake two weeks ago for a federal class on disaster management developed since Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina.
The proper name of the course is the unwieldy "Command & General Staff Functions in the Incident Command System" and it was held in the new Round Lake police and public works facility. It was taught by staff with the University of Illinois Fire Service Institute. The course is is designed for those officers who would function in a Command or General Staff position during a large, complex incident. Or those officers who are or would likely be part of a local or regional Incident Management Team during a major incident, whether single agency, multi-agency, or Unified Command. We had three people in the class.

Round Lake Police and Public Works Facility to Win National Award?

That's a good question! Sente Rubel Bosman and Lee, the architect of the Police and Public Works facility has entered the building in the American Public Works Association annual contest for best designed building.

The building of course combines the Police department, the community rooms, and the Public Works department. It's an excellent use of resources and the building is designed for expansion and growth so in my humble opinion its a winner!

Entry is here as a 2MB PDF AwardSubmissionPDF.pdf

Gang Awareness Program-- Joint Meeting with the Other Round Lakes

There was a superb program coordinated with out local Police departments for our hispanic population talking about gang awareness and how the area police departments deal with gang issues in the area. There was a very extensive program with quite a bit of audience participation covering a wide range of ideas and concepts. I would guess that nearly 200 people attended. I commend the area police department and district 116 for grabbing the bull by the horn.

The highlight was the talk by a Round Lake Beach Police Sergeant who was excellent in both English and Spanish! I learned tons of things!

We are a Series of Beats!

The Police Department has scheduled three "“Beat Meetings"” for the month of December. Each meeting will be specific to one police beat (section of the Village). The goal of the beat meetings is to offer a clear line of communication between the police department and the citizens they serve. The beat meetings will be held in the Community Room at 6:30 p.m. on the following dates: December 1st (Beat 1), December 8th (Beat 2) and December 15th (Beat 3). There will be some information on the next water bill and detailed information will be on the police section of the village website in the next few days.

For those of you wondering what beat you are in, as I was, here is a description. For those of you who want a visual representation of where the beat boundaries are I will send you a PDF map if you email me.

Beat 1
From Park Road on the north to Route 120 on the south. From our neighbor, Round Lake Park on the east to Fairfield Road on the west.

Beat 2
From Route 134 on the north to the southernmost section of Valley Lakes subdivision. From Fairfield Road on the east to our village limits on the west.

Beat 3
Everyone south of Route 120.

I will write a little bit more about these as we get closer to the actual dates.

DARE Open House at Village School Tonight

The police department will be hosting a DARE Parent Education Open House for Village School parents on Wednesday, October 25, 2006 at the police department starting at 7:00 pm. This is a new program that DARE Officer Adam Arnold has put together. The concept is to include the parents in the DARE program with the hopes that the DARE lessons will be reinforced at home.

3 New Officers Sworn in at Last Monday's Board Meeting

These three gentlemen will be graduating 1, 2 and 3 at the Police Training Institute they have assured me and here is why! After an extensive search process by our Police Commission (President Dale Multerer, Don Luby and Dave Pugh) we established a list of 10 names ranked in order. Candidates had to pass a physical fitness test, then take a standardized test, be interviewed by the board and finally pass a background check before the final list is ranked. The three new officers will be attending the University of Illinois-Police Training Institute in Champaign, Illinois starting Sunday, October 22, 2006.

Kraig Kapusinski lives in Algonquin, Illinois with his wife Alisa. Kraig has worked for the Motorola Corporation since 1997 most recently as a financial analyst. Kraig has a bachelors degree from the University of Illinois and a master of business administration from Roosevelt University in Chicago. Kraig's brother is a Libertyville police officer.

David Cheney lives in Kenosha, Wisconsin with his wife Karrie and their daughter Camren. David comes to us from the Lake County Sheriff's Office where he was a Correctional Officer since 2001. David was a member of the Sheriff's elite Correctional Response Team. David has an associates degree in criminal justice from the College of Lake County.

Brandon Zeman lives in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois. Brandon comes to us from the City of Elmhurst where he worked in the public works department. Brandon has a bachelors degree in education from Monmouth College and is a certified history teacher.

Last Monday we had a nice ceremony at the village board meeting where we swore them in and gave them their badges. Each officer had their family attend as well.

Riding with the Police

I rode around with Chief Metaxa last night and we had a more eventful night then the last time I went out with him last spring. The highlights (or lowlights) were:

• A rollover accident on Route 120, (see picture in the center you can see the roof of the rolled over car).
• Amorous couple caught flagrante delicto in a parking lot.
• High speed trip from Lakewood to near the High School with lights and sirens on. Every 8 year olds dream!
• Got to see the new squad cars electronic equipment in action, video camera, radar detector, and lightbar array.

Overall it was quite interesting and educational, its excellent to see the tools we are now giving our officers being used effectively and efficiently.

Round Lake Bike Patrol Debuts

This fiscal year we have a new addition to the police fleet, bikes! The story of how we got them, reflects the changing environment of the police department. Officer Vanessa Whitten (smiling in the picture) and Officer Jon Zacharias mentioned to the command staff how they thought that a bike patrol would be highly effective in Round Lake.

They researched the idea and submited a formal proposal (including the cost of the program) before the budget process started. These officers did a fine job and their proposal was approved by the police administration and ultimately by the Village Board.

An important component of the officer’s proposal included the reasons why the police department should have a bike patrol. The officers stressed making positive connections with the residents by getting out of the squad cars and seeming more approachable to the residents. The officers also stressed how easy it would be to patrol a festival or downtown area without drawing a lot of attention to themselves and in a stealthly manner.

You might have seen Officer Whitten at the National Night Out event on one of the new bikes. Some of the officers ride recreationally and are looking forward to attending upcoming training to be a bike patrol officer. Keep your eye out as this is a program that the police department will be expanding in the future.

Drug Bust by Round Lake Cops and MEG

What follows is a press release that was sent to the media over the weekend. I am very proud of the Police Department.

On July 7, 2006 at 6:55 p.m., during a joint operation of the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group (LCMEG) and the Round Lake Police Department, Astrit A. Roboci of Chicago, IL was arrested for delivering more than fifteen pounds of cannabis to undercover police officers.

The suspect was arrested on Kristina Lane in Round Lake for Unlawful Possession with Intent to Deliver 7,114 grams of Cannabis, which is a Class X felony punishable by 6-30 years in prison and up to $200,000 in fines. The estimated street value of the drugs is $71,000. Roboci was remanded to the custody of the Lake County Jail on a $150,000 cash bond pending a court date of July 14, 2006.

“The Round Lake Police Department is proud to work with Lake County MEG and the fruits of this new relationship are already evident. This arrest involved a considerable amount of cannabis that no doubt would have been re-sold to people in the Round Lake Area. The Round Lake Police Department and Lake County MEG will continue to take a zero tolerance stance on drugs and gangs.” said Police Chief Cliff Metaxa.

Police Outreach and Training

The Round Lake Police Department recently hosted the Waukegan Fire Department Bomb Squad for two training sessions. Each member of the patrol and investigations sections of the police department attended the training which included a demonstration of the bomb robot (that would be the picture) and a lengthy discussion about the protocol for the deployment of the bomb squad. The members of the police department enjoyed the training and were very impressed with the technology and the capabilities of the robot. The next time there is a suspicious package in the Village of Round Lake, you can be sure that the bomb squad will be called out to handle the situation.

The Police Department also hosted two training sessions with the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group (MEG) this week. The purpose of the training sessions was to familiarize the officers, detectives and command staff with the operations of MEG and to introduce our MEG liaison. There were three MEG agents who conducted the presentation, which was approximately an hour and a half long. Our staff now knows exactly who to contact and how to contact them when they develop a street contact that could lead to drug arrests, etc.

What does a Dedication, Queens, Soccer and a Mayor have in Common?

Why I was at all of them this weekend! We had the dedication of the Police and Public Works facility on Saturday which went very nicely. We had way to many people for me to mention here, however I would guess nearly 400 people flowed through the center. The jail cells and the public works trucks were the highlights it seemed. I told most of the kids we were having a drawing to stay overnight in the cells, which they all thought was cool. One set of parents offered me cash to make sure there kid was chosen! In reality my daughters boyfriend was always going to be the guest.

Later that afternoon I was off to my annual trip to the Round Lake Area Queens pageant where I escorted two queens onto the stage. After intermission I got the annual picture of the outgoing queens. Which for those of you have been in my office at the village hall know that these pictures hang in my office.

I did leave slightly early however to go home and see Mexico play Argentina in the second round of the World Cup. Maxi Rodriguez of Argentina broke my heart with a wonder goal in overtime to eliminate Mexico 2-1. I won't even go into how I feel about the US performance in the World Cup by the way!

By the way bonus points to the person who send me a picture of the dedication that I can use here, becuase I got nothing!

Dedication is Today!

Today from 9 to noon is the dedication of the new Police and Public Works facility at 741 Townline Road in Round Lake.

An open house with tours of the facility will be from 9am until noon. A ribbon cutting ceremony will take place at 10am. Refreshments will be served. I look forward to seeing you there!

Fireworks 101

Its that time of year again and judging by the noise I heard last night this post might be late. Here is what is prohibited and permitted by the State of Illinois for consumer use!

• Specifically permitted-- Sparklers, snake/glow worm pellets, smoke devices, trick noisemakers, and plastic or paper caps.
• Specifically prohibited-- Firecrackers, torpedoes, skyrockets, roman candles, and bombs.

I went to the National Council on Fireworks Safety website and found quite a few things but something that I thought made some sense to place here is the following.

Tips on Choosing Safe Fireworks

It is extremely important to know the difference between a legal consumer firework and a dangerous explosive device. Items such as M-80s, M-100s and blockbusters are not fireworks, they are federally banned explosives. They can cause serious injury or even death. Stay away from anything that isn't clearly labeled with the name of the item, the manufacturer's name and instructions for proper use. Here are some more tips to help ensure a safe Fourth of July:

Fireworks are not toys. Fireworks complying with strict regulations enacted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1976 function primarily by burning to produce motion and visible or audible effects. They are burning at approximately the same temperature as a household match and can cause burn injuries and ignite clothing if used improperly.

NEVER give fireworks to young children. Close, adult supervision of all fireworks activities is mandatory. Even sparklers can be unsafe if used improperly.

Select and use only legal devices. If you choose to celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks, check with your local police department to determine what fireworks can be legally discharged in your area.

Stay away from illegal explosives. Illegal explosive devices continue to cause serious injuries around the Fourth of July holiday. These devices are commonly known as M-80s, M-100s, blockbusters or quarterpounders. Federally banned since 1966, these items will not contain the manufacturer's name and are usually totally unlabeled. Don't purchase or use unlabeled fireworks. If you are aware of anyone selling such devices, contact your local police department.

Homemade fireworks are deadly. Never attempt to make your own devices and do not purchase or use any kits that are advertised for making fireworks. Mixing and loading chemical powders is very dangerous and can kill or seriously injure you. Leave the making of fireworks to the experts.

Village School Student Leaders Visit Us!

A few weeks ago the Student Council from Village School came for a village visit. They spent an hour with me where I conducted a mock meeting with them, I had enough kids to have all the trustee spots, media, and staff spots filled. I even had one kid as the audience who did public comment! I had a great time as always and I think the kids did as well.

After they visited me they went down to the new Police and Public Works building and got tours there as well. The second picture is of all of them in one of our new jail cells as a matter of fact!

Click it or Ticket-- Round Lake Enforcement

On June 2, 2006, the Round Lake Police Department conducted a "Click It or Ticket" - Safety Belt Enforcement Zone at the intersection of Town Line Road and Bacon Road. The four hour operation was extremely successful in not only educating motorists, but also in the enforcement of violations. The police officers wrote a total of 32 citations. The breakdown of citations was 27 seatbelt citations, 3 child safety seat violations, 1 no drivers license violation and 1 no insurance violation. The Round Lake Police Department receives reimbursement from the State of Illinois through a grant for manpower for the operation. The Police Department has other enforcement zone activities planned for this summer so make sure you are clicked in!

Parking over the Sidewalk

I have gotton tons on questions about parking and blocking the sidewalk and in fact it was a topic at the village board meeting a few weeks ago. Its pretty simple you can not block the sidewalk when you park on your driveway (1b). This is NOT village code but rather Illinois State Law. I am taking the relevant passage from state statute and pasting it here.

I would also note that you may not park you car on train tracks (1h), or you face a fine and community service, as well as losing your car when the train hits it. I do not get many complaints about this however for some reason!

(625 ILCS 5/11‑1303) (from Ch. 95 1/2, par. 11‑1303)
Sec. 11‑1303. Stopping, standing or parking prohibited in specified places. directions of a police officer or official traffic‑control device, no person shall:

• 1. Stop, stand or park a vehicle:
• a. On the roadway side of any vehicle stopped or parked at the edge or curb of a street;
  
• b. On a sidewalk;
• c. Within an intersection;
• d. On a crosswalk;
• e. Between a safety zone and the adjacent curb or within 30 feet of points on the curb immediately opposite the ends of a safety zone, unless a different length is indicated by signs or markings;
• f. Alongside or opposite any street excavation or obstruction when stopping, standing or parking would obstruct traffic;
• g. Upon any bridge or other elevated structure upon a highway or within a highway tunnel;
  
• h. On any railroad tracks. A violation of any part of this subparagraph h. shall result in a mandatory fine of $500 or 50 hours of community service.
• i. At any place where official signs prohibit stopping;
• j. On any controlled‑access highway;
• k. In the area between roadways of a divided highway, including crossovers;
• l. In a public parking area if the vehicle does not display a current annual registration sticker or current temporary permit pending registration.
• 2. Stand or park a vehicle, whether occupied or not, except momentarily to pick up or discharge passengers:
• a. In front of a public or private driveway;
• b. Within 15 feet of a fire hydrant;
• c. Within 20 feet of a crosswalk at an intersection;
• d. Within 30 feet upon the approach to any flashing signal, stop sign, yield sign, or traffic control signal located at the side of a roadway;
• e. Within 20 feet of the driveway entrance to any fire station and on the side of a street opposite the entrance to any fire station within 75 feet of such entrance (when properly sign‑posted);
• f. At any place where official signs prohibit standing.
• 3. Park a vehicle, whether occupied or not, except temporarily for the purpose of and while actually engaged in loading or unloading property or passengers:
• a. Within 50 feet of the nearest rail of a railroad crossing;
• b. At any place where official signs prohibit parking.
• c No person shall move a vehicle not lawfully under his control into any such prohibited area or away from a curb such distance as is unlawful.

(Source: P.A. 89‑245, eff. 1‑1‑96; 89‑658, eff. 1‑1‑97.)

Police Nail Sexual Predator

The Round Lake Police Department has arrested an Army recruiter from Harvard, Illinois for internet solicitation of a child. Police investigators have charged Scott E. Cook, 23 years of age in Harvard, Illinois with one count of Indecent Solicitation of a Child, a class 1 felony.

The investigation began approximately two weeks ago when a police department undercover investigator, posing as a 16 year old girl, met Cook on the internet. On-line conversations with Cook turned to the subject of sex. Though many discussions with Cook took place over the last two weeks, arrangements to meet with Cook were made within the last 24 hours. The investigator, posing as the young girl, agreed to meet with Cook today in the downtown area of Round Lake. At approximately 12 noon yesterday, Cook arrived at the arranged location intending to meet a 16 year old girl for the purposes of engaging in sex. Cook was identified and taken into custody by police investigators.

Following Cook'’s arrest, police investigators executed a consented search of his home in Harvard, Illinois. A computer and related equipment were recovered and are currently being held for further forensic investigation. Cook is an Army recruiter stationed at the State of Illinois Military Affairs Department, in Woodstock, IL.

MY COMMENTS: I am very proud of our Police department they have come a very long way in the last year under the leadership of Chief Metaxa. What we are seeing is an emerging professional proactive organization. This arrest highlights the changes the department has undergone in the last year.

BREAKING-- Missing Child Alert -- UPDATED

The Round Lake Police Department is investigating the disappearance of a 15-year old resident, Corina Sveica. Corina was last seen at her home on Friday, May 5, 2006. Corina lives in the Valley Lakes Subdivision of Round Lake and attends Big Hollow School in Fox Lake, Illinois. No foul play is suspected. The Round Lake Police Department is seeking individuals who know the whereabouts of Corina or information leading to her return. Persons with information should call Detective Gerard Hendricks at (847) 270-9111.
Corina Sveica
Female
15 years old
5’-0” tall, 130 lbs
Brown eyes / Brown Hair
Light brown complexion
tomorrowow there will be a canvas of the area passing out flyers. We are looking for volunteers interested in helping pass out fliers. Anyone interested should meet at the Round Lake Police Department (741 W. Town Line Road) around 10:00 am.

UPDATE on SUNDAY -- On Saturday we had about 40 people attend and canvass the neighborhoods surrounding where she lives along with passing out flyers at stores and shops along Rollins and along Route 12. There was quite a bit of media coverage which is a good thing, another way of getting the word out is crucial.

Many many thanks to all the volunteers who got up early and walked the streets in the rain yesterday passing out flyers! I know the police appreciate it and the family does as well.

Overnight Parking

I get tons of questions about overnight parking in the village. The answer is pretty simple, there is none. However there are a few ways you can park your car on the street overnight if you have guests, or other needs. I go into the reasons later in this post.

One of the reasons we are strict about this ordinance is because it allows snow plows, garbage pick-up, emergency vehicles, easy access for providing service and keeps streets neater and cleaner. In the newer parts of the village we worked very hard on insisting on larger garages, so you can park your cars inside as well as providing driveways for parking as well.

The Local Ordinance that governs overnight parking is as follows:

10.16.090 All night parking. When signs are erected in each block or entrance to a subdivision giving notice thereof, no person shall park a vehicle on any public street or alley, including the right-of-way thereof, between the hours of two a.m. and six a.m. of any day. (Prior code § 41.14)

So how can I park overnight? Here how is works…
Residents must call CenCom E9-1-1 Communications Center at (847) 270-9111 for permission to park a vehicle overnight. Residents must provide the dispatcher with their name, telephone number, address of parking request, vehicle description and the vehicle registration number. Residents are allowed three (3) overnight parking incidents per calendar month.

The dispatcher forwards each request to the on-duty police shift supervisor. The police shift supervisor reviews each request and grants or denies the request. However, exceptions are made on a case-by-case basis for extraordinary circumstances. Thanks to the Police Department's Director of Police Administration Michael Recupito for gathering the information for me. By the way, the sign I used as the photo is a joke, this will not actually happen to you, you will get a ticket.

Report from the Lake County After School Coalition

I received the following letter today from Chief Raymond Rose of the Mundelein Police Department and State Representative Kathy Ryg who are Co-Presidents Lake County After School Coalition. If you recall I talked about Liz Nelson a Madrona Resident a few posts ago and her involvement with this organization. The village sent Police Administrative Director Mike Recupito to attend the program by the way.

Thank you to those of you who attended or supported the Town Hall Meeting on Underage Drinking Prevention on April 11. We received significant feedback from members of the community; including children, parents, school officials and community leaders.

The next step is crucial:
We need your help to prioritize these needs and develop an action plan. Our Action Planning on Underage Drinking Prevention meeting will take place on Tuesday, April 25th, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Carmel Catholic High School (One Carmel Pkwy, Mundelein). Refreshments will be served at 6:00 p.m.

Please join us to help decide what the root problems are and the solutions we can implement to prevent underage drinking. It is not enough for one or even a few members of a community to take a stand against underage drinking, we need everyone. We sincerely hope that you will attend this Action Planning meeting and encourage others to as well. Please feel free to forward the attached brochure to other interested parties. For more information visit www.lakecountyafterschoolcoalition.org or contact Theresa Loerch at (847) 680-5909 or e-mail kathy@kathyryg.org.

Please do attend if you can, I have the complete flyer as a PDF available here if you want more details on the program.

A Guided Tour of Tonight's Agenda

Every month on the first and third Mondays of the month at 7:00pm in the Village Hall the board of trustees meets. The agenda for the meetings are always posted at the village hall in public view, in addition we post them on the website as well. So lets take a tour of tonight's agenda. The meeting is divided into 12 parts, some take a few seconds some can take longer.

Once I call the meeting to order, I ask our Village Clerk Jeanne Kristan to call the roll Item 1.0 is basically taking attendance! Its important to note that we need 4 board members to conduct business, the mayor counts for the 4 by the way. If 4 or more are present we have a quorum and conduct business. I then generally ask Senior Trustee Don Newby to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Item 2.0 is concerned with two things approval of the last meetings minutes, the minutes are a general record of the actual meeting in paper form, in addition we record all the meetings for the exact wording of discussions which can also be referred to see what the board actually discussed. The second part of 2.0 is the approval of the agenda, sometimes an item is not complete and we remove it, or we are adding something at the last minute for information only. However no action items are added since they were not posted in advance of the meeting.

Item 3.0 is entitled Notes Commendations and Public Comment-- this is where the meat of the meeting starts. I usually have any people we are honoring recognized here. I put them here as a courtesy on the agenda since they may not want to sit through an unpredictable time-wise agenda. Public comment can be loud and boisterous or it can be non-existent. I always err of the side of hearing everyone out. When there is a contentious issue I will have a sign-in sheet and work through the names in order otherwise its as simple as raising you hand and stating you name and address and telling us what you think.

• Tonight we have no Notes and Commendation, but we usually have public comment.
  

Item 4.0 is the area where the village clerk places thing that are "clerkly" liquor licenses, business licensees, raffle permits, and parade permits are some of the few listed here.

• Tonight we have nothing on the agenda

Item 5.0 is the Finance section, we pay bills, and evaluate the treasurer report and the transfers of cash in our various accounts. Even though $1.3 million in bills seems like a lot its a pretty typical amount.

• We are approving $1.3 million dollars worth of bills ranging from the village payroll to prisoner meals!
  

Item 6.0 is the Police report, this can range from reports on enforcement activities to the purchase of new equipment and all point in between.

• Tonight item 6.1 is a request to purchase six handguns so we can standardize the weapons we use on the force. All officers hired after January 2000 carry the same weapon, this purchase is to make sure that all the more senior officers carry the same weapon. The rationale is to make ammo purchases and weapon familiarity for the department more effective.

Item 7.0 is Public Works where all things "public work's" are enacted. Sometimes decisions like buying a one ton versus a five ton truck can make a big impact on things like how fast we can salt roads, so these decisions need consideration.

• Our Director of Public Works was at a training session last week so nothing is on the agenda this week.

Item 8.0 is called Community Development which is really the engineering portion of the meeting with approval of engineering bills, creation of stop signs, and passage of ordinances relating to engineering issues.

• This agenda has six items, not more then likely terribly controversial, although I am curious to hear the 2005 Water Master Report in item 8.6.

Item 9.0 is entitled Mayors comments which actually includes Trustees comments as well.

• Some of the highlights are my appointment of Michael Blum to fill the vacancy on the planning commission, my appointment of Trustee Jerry Shaw to JAWA's board with me as the alternate.

Item 10.0 is the committee of the Whole meeting where we have the six committees report to the rest of the board on their recommendations. We also discuss items informally so we can all get feedback.

• The discussion on the use of the old police department building is one of the items here that should be interesting. Trustee Bob Del Prato has some excellent thoughts on making use of the building.

Item 11.0 is the Executive Session where we can only discuss, employment, compensation of one or more classes of employees, potential litigation or the sale or purchase of property, and the approval, but not release of, the minutes of Executive Sessions.

• There is a specific way we do this, all people in the room identify themselves because the session is recorded, and we can only discuss the things listed above and nothing more. We have gone months without having an executive session and then sometimes we do one every meeting, it just depends.

Item 12.0 is Adjournment, we have done a few meetings that end after 3 hours, the longest I have ever done was 3 hours and 45 minutes the shortest was 21 minutes!

A few notes, I always read the motion out loud for the trustee's and the audience, in case they did not pick up an agenda when they walked into the board room. I also sometimes allow the public to comment on an agenda item while we are discussing it although that depends on the mood and how controversial it is, by and large public comment is when I accept public comment, and the agenda is time for the trustees to make there comment and discuss the issues.

Gang and Graffiti Update

NOTE: A few days ago I wrote about the sudden upswing in graffiti in the Round Lake Area, I wrote a very vague post deliberately since the area Mayors were very proactive in getting there police departments to aggressively take action. What I am writing below reflects what happened in a very sophisticated multi-jurisdictional effort to combat this problem.

Police Chief Cliff Metaxa is preparing a presentation for the next village board meeting concerning recent gang activity and subsequent enforcement efforts. However, I want you to know this information sooner than next Monday night.
In summary, we have experienced an increase in gang activity in the community and also in the high school. We have taken several proactive steps in addressing the problems including the activities outlined in a previous e-mail (K-9 search of the Round Lake High School, Having at least two gang officers at the High School dismissals, Surveillance of the graffiti sites, More officers in and around the High School, etc.).
The most prominent enforcement activity was a multi-jurisdictional enforcement operation which targeted gang members suspected of committing an array of crimes in the Round Lake Area. This operation occurred Saturday night, February 25, 2006. The operation involved 27 officers from the following agencies: The Lake County Gang Crimes Task Force, The Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group, Round Lake Police Department, Round Lake Park/Hainesville Police Department, Round Lake Beach Police Department, Round Lake Heights Police Department, Waukegan Police Department, Vernon Hills Police Department, Park City Police Department, Mundelein Police Department, Grayslake Police Department, Deerfield Police Department and the Lindenhurst Police Department.
This operation was very successful on a number of levels:

• 8 Non-traffic arrests.
• 2 Warrant arrests.
• 3 Traffic arrests.
• Removal of drugs, drug paraphernalia and a stun gun from the streets of Round Lake. Numerous gang contacts.
• Development of intelligence that brought charges and closure to seven of the thirteen cases of criminal defacement.
• Business checks and liquor compliance checks of all of the bars in Round Lake and Round Lake Park.

The most important part of all of these activities is that the Round Lake Area police departments are working closer than ever to keep the community safe. This is something that we are extremely proud of and will continue to foster. We plan to host more multi-jurisdictional enforcement operations in the future. We still have some gang activity and some open cases of criminal defacement, but we are confident that we will bring closure to those cases soon.

The Sun Comes up on the New Police and Public Works Complex!

Davis Clark our Public Works Director took this picture a few days ago and sent it to me in addition to putting it on our website as well. As for today's blog post I have nothing to say. Go read the comments from the last two posts on consolidation, some are clever and others are comments!

Moving Day!

Its official we are moving into the new facility on the South East corner of Bacon and Townline road. We will be talking more about the facility in the near future! I have talked about the complex here, here here and here. However tomorrow is the big day, phones are on, and we are taking over the facility! We have taken a huge step in getting this done, and in a month or so when the weather gets better we will have a dedication and a open house for the community. This picture was taken in August of last year, I used all the other ones of I have of the facility in the other posts so this was all I have!

School Bus Safety

After reading about the horrific accident in Florida where seven kids lost their lives because someone was not paying attention to a stopped school bus, I started paying attention to buses driving today and I noticed quite a few cars being "cavalier" with the bus being stopped.
I asked Police Chief Metaxa to step up enforcement of this issue. As all of you know the village is home to 9 school districts and has Round Lake High School, Village School, the Early Education Center, Saint Joe's and the Round Lake Area Park District as well.
In addition kids ride buses in all our neighborhoods all the time to schools outside of Round Lake. We need to make sure they are at least as safe as they can be in our village. I have also asked Chief Metaxa to report to the board on the status of this enforcement issue. For those of us who need a refresher on the rules, here are some I found on the internet.

• Stop for stopped school busses. Period. If you see a stopped school bus you are required to stop. The only exception is if you are on a roadway with a concrete or raised earth median between your car and the bus'— and even then you should slow down and look out for children.
• Do not proceed until the school bus stop sign is pulled in. Even if it appears all the children have boarded the bus or moved away from it, do not move forward until the bus driver indicates it is safe to do so by pulling in the school bus stop sign.
• Watch for children as you approach or pull away from a school bus. Kids don't always think about safety, and may dart around the bus,unexpectedlyy, into the street. Be on the lookout and ready to react.

While our thoughts and prayers are with the family of the kids in Florida. This can all serve as a reminder to be vigilant of our kids and our neighbors kids!

Riding with the Police

Last night I rode with the night shift of our Police Department. My intention was, as liquor commisioner, to visit the 6 bars in Round Lake and say hi to the owners and bartenders and see what was going on. It was quite interesting not so much for the bar visits but for the zipping around and watching how the officers on the night shift support each other at the various calls they were on. I also got to wear a bullet proof vest as well. I can assure you the novelty of that wore off after exactly 21 seconds. It's heavy, awkward and cumbersome!

It was a slow night in Round Lake, the highlight of the evening was a drunk sleeping on the grass behind an apartment. Some frozen meat and picante sauce were tucked into his pants. The low resolution picture is of him being led away to the lock-up. He then got feisty at the lock-up, which I missed.

When I got home my teenage daughter was up! She immediately started busting me for staying out late and not calling. Which was funny.

The Village Wants You!

The village has a long history of volunteers helping out in the office and at the police department. I am looking for someone who is interested in doing the following.

• Spending 10-15 hours a week at the village hall, the hours are very flexible.
• Professional background.
• Able to use the internet and email with ease!
  
• Organized and detailed.
• Good communication skills.
• Can put up with a goofy elected official (i.e. me)
  

If anyone is interested in volunteering to assist at the village hall please contact me via email at bgentes@eroundlake.com. No need to send me a detailed resume, but a couple of paragraphs about what you done in the past would be appreciated. I am only looking for one person however!

The Year that was-- 2005

2005 was the year of the Rooster, and here in Round Lake we have plenty to crow over. We have two new Trustee's Brian Brubaker and Bob Del Prato a new Police Chief in Cliff Metaxa and a new Director of Public Works Davis Clark. Some of the other highlights are:

• We finally adopted a new human resources plan that encompasses employee reviews, job descriptions a fair an equitable pay plan.
• Restructuring of the Police Department is well under way, with a modern efficient and more effective police department starting to emerge.
  
• We are moving full speed ahead on the Downtown Development Project and hope to have it done by 2008 (our 100th anniversary)
  
• We have familiar faces in new places with Terre Eyzk moving up into the Chair of the Planning Commission (my old seat), Hans Zigmund moving up into the Chair of the Architectural Review Committee (ARC) and Steve Skinner moving from the ARC to the Planning and Zoning Commission, former trustee Dale Multerer is now the president of the Police Board.
• Sean Gillette led a wonderful group of people who planned and organized the second annual Streets of Summer festival this summer. Lonnie Brooks headlined and 1,000's attended!
• New commercial development is coming online at the Centerville Commons on Route 60 and Cedar Lake Road, Curran Commons at 120 and Curran, and more development at the corner of 134 and Fairfield to go along with the CVS Pharmacy. More will be happening in 2006 as well.
  
• The construction of a new $7 million 35,000 square foot Police and Public Works Station on the corner of Bacon and Townline road. This facility is big enough for our current population and for our future needs. It was designed and built so it can and could expand if needed in the future.
• Many of the housing projects that we have been hearing about for sometime are finally complete or nearly so, with Valley Lakes, Madrona, Lakewood Homes, Bradford Place, and Silver Leaf Glen reaching that point.
  

On a personal note I am thankful for the opportunity you gave me in April 2005 to lead the village for another four years. Serving as Mayor is the single most rewarding thing I have ever done in my professional life, and I thank you for your support. I aim to make Round Lake the best possible place it can be.

No Skating on the Ponds

There are many ponds in Round Lake and especially some of the detention ponds in the newer areas that are frozen over. These ponds do not freeze completely and are quite dangerous. There have been some issues about kids skating on the ponds. To be candid this is just plain stupid and foolish. I have heard about kids being warned off the pond by the police and then returning when the police leave. There is no time that this is acceptable. Please if you want to skate the Park district has a large skating area at Hart's Hill, with a warming shed, and a wonderful sledding hill as well. Please be safe this winter!

What do Snow, Shovels, Sidewalks and the Village Code have in Common?

I have gotten a ton of emails and comments on neighbors not cleaning the sidewalks off after a snow storm. So I decided to go to the village code and find exactly what it says. I have already blogged on this a few days ago but I believe its important to be clear about homeowner responsibilities to them and there neighbors.

Village Code 12.04.070 Snow on Sidewalks.
The person occupying the ground floor of any building, the user of any lot without a structure thereon, and the owner of any vacant building or other premises shall remove the snow and ice accumulating on the abutting sidewalks within twenty-four (24) hours after any snowfall has ceased. If snow or ice cannot be removed the surface shall be sanded or otherwise treated to lessen the hazard for pedestrians until the climate permits removal.

If you see an address in which the owner is not removing the snow, please contact the Round Lake Police Dept. at 847-546-8112 and file a complaint. Our first priority however will always be the roads during a snow event.

New Squad Car Design to Hit Streets

The contest for the new squad car design is complete and the new designed approved by the village board (oddly in a 5-1 vote). The first car is appearing on the street, the old design was great for over 10 years, but the new design reflects the new improved police department image!

Report on The CALEA Conference

As many of you know we have been making forceful changes in the Round Lake Police department. My goal is to that the Police Department become an accredited law enforcement agency as quickly as possible. Chief Metaxa shares these goals along with myself and the village board of trustees. To this end along with numerous others changes taking place at the Round Lake PD we sent Chief Metaxa and Officer Mike Recupito to a conference in Nashville sponsored by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA).
CALEA was formed in 1979 by four major law enforcement organizations: the International Association of Chiefs of Police, National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, National Sheriff'’s Association and the Police Executive Research Forum.

CALEA major purposes were to:

• Establish standards of professional excellence for public safety agencies
• Develop and administer a process for recognizing professional excellence

Goals of the Commission:

1. Strengthen crime prevention and control capabilities
2. Formalize essential management procedures
3. Establish fair and nondiscriminatory personnel practices
4. Improve service delivery
5. Solidify interagency cooperation and coordination
6. Boost citizen and staff confidence in agency

There are 446 law enforcement standards that are designed for all agencies regardless of size There is a 36-month self-assessment period which culminates in 5-7 day on-site assessment after self-assessment. After accreditation, there is a continuing compliance maintenance program.

The Long Term Benefits of CALEA Accreditation are:

• Greater accountability within the agency.
• Gives Chief of Police a proven management system of written directives, clearly defined lines of authority and routine reports that support decision making and resource allocation.
• Liability Reduction and Stronger Defense Against Civil Lawsuits.
• Eligible to receive discounts from liability insurance providers
• Support from Government Officials
• Government officials more confident in the ability of police
• Increased Community Advocacy
• Embodies community policing
• Creates forum for police-community relationship
• Recognition for Excellence
  
• CALEA symbolizes professionalism, excellence and competence

The New Deputy Chief Francis Foy Sworn in at the Last Board Meeting

At Monday's board meeting we formalized Officer Francis Foy's step up into the Deputy Chief Position by swearing him in. Chief Cliff Metaxa read a short statement talking about how Francis had grown as an officer and talked about most of his awards were actually won by "Sniper" his canine partner! Kidding aside Francis is the future of the Round Lake Police Department, he represents what is best about the young talented set of officers we are and have recruited over the last few years. Chief Metaxa's appointment of Francis send a clear message of a modern, professional police department in the village. The ceremony was attended by quite a few of Francis' family and friends as well as Round Lake officers and officers from other departments.

New Deputy Chief Named

This week the village board passed an ordinance reorganizing the Police Department. Basically what was done was rewriting an ordinance that had not been reviewed in 20 years. Chief Metaxa recognized the need for a flatter more effective organizational command structure and is slowly but surely implementing it.

After the passage of the ordinance, Chief Metaxa acted to appoint officer Francis Foy to be Deputy Chief of the Police Department. Francis has been with the department for a few years now and is probaly best known to residents as our canine officer with "Sniper" as his partner.

I am quite pleased that Francis has moved into this essential command position because his enthusiasm for the road will allow us to move forward with the modernization of our Police Force. So congratulations are in order when you see Deputy Chief Francis Foy!

Quick Reminder on ID Theft Forum today

Our local Congresswoman Melissa Bean will be joined by a group of experts on the issue of identity theft at a forum she is hosting Saturday, October 29 at the Round Lake Village Hall (see map) at 2:00pm.

Bean organized the forum, which will include a panel of experts with experience in different aspects of the issue, to offer constituents an opportunity to learn about how identity theft occurs and what measures they can take to protect themselves.

Here is a list of the panelists.

Detective Kurt Danielson - Lake Zurich Police Department Investigations Division. He began working for the Lake Zurich Police Department in 1986 and has been assigned to the Investigations Division for the past 4 years.Danielson will discuss identity theft from the perspective of law enforcement. He will discuss different precautions that people can take to protect themselves, and different cases that he has dealt with. Then he will touch upon how the Department does follow-up in cases of identity theft.

Terri Worman - AARP, Associate State Director/Community Organizer for Illinois: Worman has been with AARP for nearly ten years and currently works on a broad range of education and advocacy projects in the Chicago suburbs. She has been a featured speaker at law enforcement conferences, including presentations on identity theft, senior fraud and other consumer issues, and spearheaded the Midwest Region of AARP's national project to fight telemarketing fraud. Terri will address how identity theft specifically affects seniors.

Roch Tranel - President of Tranel Financial Group: A certified financial planner, Tranel's interest and expertise in the subject of identity theft stems from his responsibility to protect and grow the $180 million in client funds that he manages. To help his clients avoid the lost funds, costly legal fees, and hundreds of wasted hours that victims suffer, he began presenting Identity Theft Prevention seminars. While initially only for clients, his workshops have now been presented to various community organizations, Chambers of Commerce, senior groups and several Lake County businesses. Roch will discuss how he became involved with the issue of identity theft and how it pertains to, and directly effects, financial planning. He will explain how people can protect themselves and their money.

Congresswoman Melissa Bean: ill discuss the legislation you have introduced and how it would help curb the problems associated with identity theft.

Village takes step to adress Metra Parking Issues

The higher price of gas has pushed Metra ridership upwards in the last months by almost 5%. What does this mean to the village? Well for one thing our 360 parking spaces are full almost every other day. We usually are at 90% capacity everyday with small spikes upwards each Monday and Tuesday.

I directed the village engineers and public works department to plan a quick fix to some of the issues we are facing with this overload of Metra riders.

In the next few days the area (marked with the yellow line) in the picture will become 12-14 temporary parking spots for Permit Parkers only!

The village is also taking steps to better manage the traffic flow of the stations southwest lot by restriping and making traffic flow one way only. We feel this will get cars out on the road and off to home slightly faster then currently.

Lastly once we move into the Police and Public Works facility this winter, the old public works area will become available for almost 100-120 more spots, at some point in early 2006.

Seatbelt Enforcement Project over the Holiday Weekend

Sergeant Peter Marquardt was given the assignment of organizing and supervising this project and did an excellent job. The detail was from 2:00 pm to 5:35 pm on Saturday, September 3, 2005. The enforcement zone targeted southbound Cedar Lake Road traffic and eastbound Hart Road traffic. Five police officers worked the enforcement zone: Sergeant Peter Marquardt, Officer Jon Zacharias, Officer Eric Wang, Officer Michael Stevens and Officer Eric Landsverk. The results of the enforcement zone were very positive. Not only were the officers extremely visible in the center of the Village, but were well received by motorists. Many motorists waved and smiled at the officers. In terms of citations, please note the following:

38 Seatbelt Citations

3 Citations for no Valid Drivers Licence

3 Citations for no Insurance

1 for expired registration

1 for illegal use of alcohol

Yesterday-- Midwest Security and Police Expo Tradeshow

Yesterday I attended the Midwest Security and Police Conference and Expo with our Police Chief Cliff Metaxa. There were numerous interesting booths. Among them were Sente Rubel Bosman and Lee the Architects designing our Police and Public Works building.

Among the booths that we stopped at were the following where we saw some interesting demonstrations.

• Tetra Tech with the product called ARVIS.
• AMR Digital Corporation with it's product called Mobile Digital Video.
• Lexis Nexis had a fascinating investigatory product called Accurint that had to be seen to be believed.
• The Illinois Traffic Safety Challenge is a program run by the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police was a program that we are going to seriously look at for Round Lake.
  

We saw lots of local law enforcement people, Chief Doug Larson from RL Beach, Lake County Under sheriff Gary Stryker a variety of officers from surrounding departments to numerous to mention. Plus we saw the Illinois Attorney General Amy Madigan as well at the ribbon cutting before the show started.

Do you Speed?

One of my directives to our new Police Chief was to apply technology to policing. We have had a radar trailer called the Speed Sentry for some time. We have used the trailer sporadically in the past. The Speed Sentry has a computer download feature that we are using to pinpoint enforcement. Here is an example of what we found on Linden one of the two streets where the radar unit was parked in the last few days.

• The average speed on Linden on the 15th was 18.5 mph.
• 7.3% of the vehicles on that day on Linden were exceeding the speed limit.
• 16 of the 18 cars exceeding the speed limit were between 1pm and 6pm.
• No cars exceeded 35mph at any time.

So consequently patrol operations have been directed towards enforcement between 1pm and 6pm on Linden. This is an intelligent use of technology and manpower allocation to more effectively patrol the village.

Mark your Calendars-- National Night Out

The "22nd Annual National Night Out" (NNO), a unique crime/drug prevention event sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch (NATW), has been scheduled for Tuesday, August 2, 2005 at 6pm at the our memorial monument (corner of 134 and Cedar Lake).

Last year's National Night Out campaign involved citizens, law enforcement agencies, civic groups, businesses, neighborhood organizations and local officials from over 10,000 communities from all 50 states, U.S. territories, Canadian cities and military bases worldwide. In all, over 34 million people participated in NNO 2004.

NATIONAL NIGHT OUT is designed to:

• Heighten crime and drug prevention awareness;
• Generate support for, and participation in, local anticrime programs;
• Strengthen neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships; and
• Send a message to criminals letting them know that neighborhoods are organized and fighting back.

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Click here to find out more about the history of
NATW and National Night Out.

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Along with the traditional display of outdoor lights and front porch vigils, cities, towns and neighborhoods 'celebrate' NNO with a variety of events and activities such as:

• block parties,
• cookouts,
• visits from local police and sheriff departments
• parades, exhibits,
• flashlight walks,
• contests, and
• youth programs.

NNO has proven to be an effective, inexpensive and enjoyable program to promote neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships in our fight for a safer nation. Plus, the benefits your community will derive from NNO will most certainly extend well beyond the one night.

Tour of the new Public Works and Police Facility

Last night before the regular board meeting the village board met for a hard hat tour of the Police and Public Works facility on the Southeast corner of Bacon and Townline Road. We had a tour of the facility from Scott Rubel of our Architects Sente Rubel Bosman and Lee. The facility is moving along quite quickly now and should be complete in October, weather permitting.

Round Lake's New Police Chief Sworn In

On Monday night Lt Cliff Metaxa of the Lake County Sheriff's department was sworn in as Round Lake's new Police Chief by Village Clerk Jeanne Kristan. Chief Metaxa was confirmed in a 4-3 vote (Trustees Brubaker, Del Prato, Perkowitz and Mayor Gentes voting yes the no votes were cast by Trustees Blauvelt, Newby and Shaw). Trustee Newby made a statement before his vote that his vote reflected the "will of the people". He did not elaborate further.

I am excited that we are able to bring on a management professional to provide needed leadership to the department. Cliff has ambitious ideas, one of the best ideas is his goal to make the Round Lake Police Department certified via the Commission on Law Enforcement Accreditation (CALEA). The primary benefits of accreditation include controlled liability insurance costs, administrative improvements, greater accountability from supervisors, increased governmental and community support.

The Cedar Lake Road Extension

I was asked an excellent question by a Prairewalk Resident named Doug Pentek that I decided to respond to here since I am sure many people have the same questions.

The question was about the need for a stop light at Bacon and 120 and could we expect one?

The answer requires a full discussion of the Cedar Lake Road Extension and the plans Round Lake has made for the extension and the plans Lake County are making for it. So using the USGS mapping service and a service called Terraserver I was able to find a 2002 aerial picture of the area. Using my limited graphics experience I labeled 7 key areas in the plan.

First however an overview.

When I took office 4 years ago one of the primary commute methods to Route 60 from Round Lake was 120 to Bacon to 60. Anyone who has lived here longer then 3 years recalls that actually the South end of Bacon was actually more dangerous then the North end. When Lakewood homes was in a first draft stage of the their development we were able to insist that Lakewood homes build the extension of Cedar Lake Road to its present point (#3 of the photo above) from Route 60.

Lake County has on its books the extension of Cedar Lake Road north from 60 all the way to 120. (that's the heavy black line on the map) However money is tight, the project is expensive and referendums for more transportation funds keep failing. So the project is going to be done in stages.

Stage 1 which is the 60 to Bacon Road portion right now is done, only some connection work to the Stage 2 and the cul de sac of Bacon (#5 on the photo)

Stage 2 I am pleased to say will extend north to Townline Road (#2 on the photo) and bids will be going out in October of this year, construction will start in the spring of 2006 and finish in the Fall of 2006. The village is going to improve its portion of Townline Road to Bacon to handle the traffic flow westwards from the T intersection and in front of our new Police and Public Works Facility (#6 on the photo). In attain the village required Neumann Homes and Concord Homes to provide funding to improve and enhance Townline Road East of the intersection all the way to Curran.

Stage 3 is scheduled to be bid out in 2009 and finished in 2010. This is clearly a shame but is a direct consequence of the two failed traffic referendums in the county in the last two years. However when it gets done a traffic light will be built at Townline and Cedar Lake (#2 on the photo), and at 120 and Cedar Lake (#1 on the photo).

So once this all get accomplished Bacon Road will be a cul-de sac on the South End about where it merges with Cedar Lake now (#5 on the photo). There has also been some discussion on making it a dead end on the North End as well.

However to finally get to Mr Pentek's question the state has looked at putting a light at Bacon and 120 and is currently doing a tentative survey of it, but my guess is since within 5 years the need for it will have vanished I am thinking it will not get done. My only advice is don't drive that way, I avoid those intersections if I can.

Statement on my Decision to not Re-appoint Charlie Foy as Chief

We had quite a lively meeting last night, with quite a few of the old time residents upset that I have decided to exert my right and responsibility as Village President to appoint a police chief of my choice. The decision was not made lightly, and in fact I have been mulling it over for close to 2 years. I attempted to fix what I saw as correctable management deficiencies in Lt. Foy over the last few years but I finally have decided its time to move the department in a positive direction.

Daily Herald Article on the subject from June 21, 2005.
News Sun Article on the subject from June 21, 2005.

What follows is my official statement on the matter, which I have released to the media and read into the public record at the meeting.

Mayor Gentes Statement on his Appointment of a Chief
As many of you have obviously heard, I have decided not to reappoint Chief Foy as Police Chief of the Village of Round Lake. I am now formally announcing that his term as Chief has expired and he is not reappointed as Chief of Police. I have been unsatisfied with his performance for close to two years, but I have delayed taking action waiting for the right time and hoping that the deficiencies I was noting would be improved. Chief Foy is a popular chief, all of us have felt the force of his personality and have been charmed by it.

However, being popular does not mean he is a good manager or a capable administrator. In fact the reverse is true; over the last four years I have found numerous areas where the Chief’s poor management and human resource skills have put the Village at considerable risk of exposure and liability. Let me be clear as to what this means: exposure and liability equal money; money spent defending the Village and or paying judgments means fewer services to residents and potentially higher taxes as a result of significant judgments.

On Monday the 6^th of June I had Chuck Smith, one of the Village Attorneys, speak to the Chief without me present and inform him that I was not reappointing him as Chief. I would have preferred to have been the person to tell him but both the Village Attorney and Chuck suggested I speak to the Chief immediately afterwards. I suggested my willingness to offer the Chief a generous severance package as an inducement for his resignation and retirement with grace. My desire not to reappoint him would never have come up; he could have voluntarily retired and moved on with no loss of esteem to himself or controversy for the Village.

At that meeting, he expressed appreciation for my willingness to allow him to avoid embarrassment; that he understood I could have just not reappointed him; and that he would prefer the option for an amicable departure.

Throughout the balance of the day, I notified the Trustees about my decision, Lt. Foy’s expressed willingness to amicably depart, and the importance to Lt. Foy and the trustee’s to keep this in confidence. It now appears that confidentiality was breached almost immediately.

While I know that public support is well intended, my decision is based on the best interest of the Village. While Lt. Foy is likeable, he is just not a capable administrator or a good manager.

On the 9^th of June, 3 days later, we were notified that Lt. Foy was claiming a medical disability that would render him unable to perform his duties as an officer for some unspecified time period. Upon receipt of this I acted by making Lt. Mike Kemmerer Acting Police Chief for the Village. In the past, Lt. Foy has suggested in public that he thought he could seek a permanent medical disability but he has never disclosed any basis for that. If he does have such a disability, I sincerely hope it can be treated.

Being Mayor involves making hard decisions and in many cases getting blamed for what goes wrong in the Village. I have one regret in this matter, which is that I did not act sooner. I also regret that I have to explain in public my action in not reappointing the Chief.

My problems with Lt. Foy’s performance as Chief exist in four broad areas. These areas are as follows: liability issues, human resources, management skills, and personal issues.

I am going to talk about a sampling of issues that I believe speak for themselves and have caused me to decide to take the police department in a different direction. The first is what I believe is the most important and the most serious, that of liability. There are dozens of issues to talk about; however, I will illustrate several that I believe are instructive.

Last year the Chief was requested to prepare a policy manual for the department covering the operating rules and regulations and general orders that the police department currently had in place. What he presented was just under 400 pages of disorganized memos and letters, all copied to a CD ROM Disk. This is the document that supposedly controls and guides day to day operations of the department. It certainly was not professional and it remains basically unintelligible and functionally unusable.

In the last two week pay period, the Police Department has had 185 hours of overtime. This is all too common and does not reflect good management. Overtime in the last 12 months exceeded $200,000 which is 14% of the total payroll to the police department. Or nearly 20% of the budgeted amount for the police department.

Early last year, Lt. Foy allowed a surveillance camera to be installed in the restrooms by one of his senior commanders because someone forgot to change the toilet paper. When I demanded its instant removal the then Chief acted like it was a joke. This type of action is not only illegal I found it to be outrageous. The liability could and would be potentially enormous.

Children of officers and staff have been allowed to roam the Police Station unsupervised for literally hours at a time. This is and was a common practice that was approved by Chief Foy.

We now have an Equal Employment Opportunity Claim filed against the Village by a police officer claiming discrimination. While I believe the claim to be ultimately defendable, appropriate management skills would have avoided this.

One of our officers was recently arrested for DUI by another village. I believe that a capable administrator could have recognized a growing problem and dealt with it effectively.

The human resource function is one area where Lt. Foy was incredibly poor, repeatedly over the last four years I have counseled and warned the Chief that he is to close to his command staff and his officers. Situations where he would be forced to be the “bad guy” would arise and he needed to make sure that he was able to make the tough choices and decisions. These issues could have been handled if the Chief was not (1) always trying to be one of the guys; and (2) capable of effectively disciplining his men. During one of my meetings about one of the earlier mentioned HR issues, over a year ago, the Chief offered to resign because of my extreme dissatisfaction with his performance. I regret not accepting it on the spot. I declined and told the Chief that he should and must pay greater attention to personnel issues.

On the human resources front there are no hard and fast methods of tracking employee performance. Employee reviews are conducted with none or vague goals or problem solving methods for the officers. Officers are not held accountable for their actions, and numerous officers have pulled me aside to complain about favoritism on the force. In addition the Village undertook a systematic review of our salary structure and we discovered that we were the market leaders in salary for new officers yet we are starting to lose rank and file officers at an alarming rate. Proper human resource skills are the hallmark of a professional manager none of the above problems has led me to believe that Lt. Foy has these skills.

Financially the Chief has made incredibly poor decisions that have cost the taxpayer quite a bit of money. The HIDTA cop program where we send an officer to patrol the streets of Chicago in exchange for a cut of any drug money confiscations. This is a program where the Village has lost $100,000 in the last year. The Chief was an advocate of the program and one year ago when I vowed to end the program after having a long discussion with the Chief about it, the Chief agreed with me in private that we should do away with the program. He then went and advocated successfully to a majority of trustees to reinstate the program, I then vetoed the program and had my veto overturned by Trustees Newby, Shaw, Blauvelt and Kohlmeyer.

Cost to the taxpayer was roughly $100,000. Again these are not the actions of a competent capable manager.

On a personal level the Mayor and the Police Chief need a relationship based on trust and honesty. The truth is not pretty and as Mayor I need to know the truth of certain issues with no sugar coating. If any department makes a mistake I need to know about it. When I would ask the Chief questions, he would give me evasive or half answers about issues, over time I would discover through other sources that the answers I had received were not wholly accurate and by and large were evasive, I came to think of them as “white lies”. Over time the overwhelming number of these “white lies” caused me to have a dramatic loss of confidence in anything the Chief told me. For the last year and a half I found it more intelligent and useful to just assume he was lying to me. That’s a sad state of affairs and an awful commentary on his performance. Clearly I no longer trust Lt. Foy nor do I find him particularly honest in his dealings with me.

As I drafted this statement I was saddened by many aspects of this affair, I deeply regret not acting sooner. I regret that Lt. Foy was incapable of being discrete. Most of all I regret making the Village look foolish by the actions of the very people it trusts to run the Village professionally and competently.

On this day, in this room, and from this moment forward to all of those in Village of Round Lake I am sending a clear message, Mayberry is dead! I will not tolerate the “good old boy” methods of running this Village at any time and at any moment in the future. The next four years under my leadership, the Village will demand accountability, transparency and professionalism. That will extend down from my office to my department heads and all the staff of the Village. This is my promise to the residents of the Village. I also promise that any issues that I uncover in the future relating to the Police Department from the last years and going forward will be dealt with professionally and or they will be forwarded to the relevant legal authorities for action.

I will be appointing a new Chief of Police early next month. I have a detailed list of issues that I want fixed by him. In addition, I am sure the new Chief will have needed improvements and suggestions of his own.

Board Committee Assignments and an Initial Work Plan

To kick off my second term I am revamping the way the village board does business. I have created six committees that encompass the range of services the village provides to its residents. Their are two areas that fall outside however Police and Village administration, by statute they are under the direct control of the Village President or Mayor. So I will be in charge of both of those areas as always.

Finance Patty Blauvelt and Sherry Perkowitz
Public Works—Brian Brubaker and Don Newby
Building and Zoning —Jerry Shaw and Bob Del Prato
Special Events— Don Newby and Brian Brubaker
Facilities and Capital Assets— Bob Del Prato and Jerry Shaw
Programs— Sherry Perkowitz and Patty Blauvelt

Please note: The Chair is listed first the Vice Chair is listed second.

These committees will have a rotation policy that ensures that over time all trustees will serve as Chair of each committee, each position will have a one year term. You may not serve on a committee for more then 2 consecutive years.

Once the committees start meeting they will work and report back to the board on issues the board or Mayor has referred to it. I have developed a starting list of my thoughts (by no means complete) and have asked the trustees to add to the list so each committee can have the pump primed and ready to go!

Finance Committee

• Set procedures and guidelines for developing the budget (timing for the steps) so we can implement a budget on time and efficiently.
• Monitor investment rates and make sure we maximize the interest we earn.
• Explore methods of bidding jobs and business out more efficiently.
• Get more payment online services for all village monies.

Public Works Committee

• Develop a workable tree replacement plan.
• Plan a schedule for repaving streets and or protecting our “newer” streets.
• Analyze needs for new equipment.
• Investigate automation for the department for complaints and problems

Building and Zoning Committee

• Make sure we use and adopt the most up to date codes.
• Ordinance enforcement
• Review of Ordinances
• Investigate greater automation
• Revamp Sign Ordinance

Special Events Committee

• Oversight of Fest Committee
• Christmas Tree lighting
• National Night Out
• Development of a 100^th Anniversary Committee
• Spring Clean up?
• Farmers market?

Facilities and Capital Assets Committee

• Directory of all land we own
• Inventory of all equipment we own
• Explore better more cost effective methods of managing our fleet
• Technology decisions

Programs Committee

• Explore for grants on state, and federal levels. (Pilot programs)
• Examine programs that benefit demographic segments (Seniors)
• Green programs and Tree related programs
• Internet improvements of www.eroundlake.com
• Trails (Link up with the Millennium Trail into our downtown?)

The Seamier Side of Being Mayor

When I was elected Mayor 4 years ago one of the things that was completely new to me were policing and public safety issues. I worked very hard to grasp the issues that confront us from a "public safety" point of view. Over time I became very familiar with resources that can help us evaluate public safety in Round Lake.

So with the horrific tragedy that took place in Zion last week I think it might be appropriate to remind you of one of the resources that the Lake County Sheriff's office has. Its the Registered Sex Offender list. You can search by municipality. I would caution you that the people listed here are registered and monitored and have paid their debt to society in terms of jail time.

I would also add that I know as Mayor, how vigilant our Police Department is when it comes to monitoring these people, I have always been impressed with the level of attention they place on this particular issue. While we are never 100% safe, our vigilance is very very high.

Police and Public Works facility moving along!

On the Southeast corner of Bacon and Townline Road the village purchased a 39 acre parcel a few years ago to house this 34,000 square foot structure that will be our new police and public works department buildings later this year. The project has had a few snags but its on track right now and I know both departments can't wait until they get into their new home. The village board made sure that this facility is expandable so it can meet future growth needs for the village.

The old police station will become the new village building department and the village engineers. The old public works facility will go away and become more parking for Metra. Our guess is we will add 80 spots depending on the configuration. This will bring us close to 400 spots around the station. That's an increase of 120 spots in 3 years, we aim to add more over time as well, with our transit oriented development program.