job description

My job title is Administrative Commander for the Tinley Park Police Department I manage and supervise the records and dispatch divisions of the police department. Basically it's monitoring, documenting and evaluating work performances; counseling and coaching personnel; resolving conflicts; administering disciplinary measures as needed; assigning work assignments and responsibilities.

You need communication skills and leadership skills, and you have to be a good listener and a good decision maker. Experience in the areas that you're leading is important, in order to direct people on how you want something done. You have to have a job knowledge base in order to direct people.

At this level, I strive to stay up to date on all the contemporary thinking in the police professions. I want to stay current with the laws, technology and the rulings that have been passed down by the courts not only in the criminal nature, but also in dealing with the human resource side of employment.

There are several forums on the Internet dealing with law enforcement. It's important to keep looking on the Internet see what's coming up, as well as attending seminars and conferences. That's where you see the leaders from across the country and the world coming together to discuss the challenges facing law enforcement. I attend training seminars on a monthly basis that cover a wide variety of issues, and I probably go to one or two out-of-state conferences a year.

We are all business-like and professional, but we're also a close-knit group. For the most part, everyone gets along. They all work together, and there's good communication. You're not intimidated by disagreements, and you can easily discuss your opinion on an issue.

Sure. A police officer, by law, has been given the authority to take away someone's liberty by placing him under arrest. By the Constitution, they have also been given the legal right to take someone's life. Obviously, there are certain guidelines that need to be met, but in order to protect one person's life, a police officer may have to take the life of another. There is no one else who has been given that authority. Ninety-nine percent of police officers never need to do that, but they still have to train for it.

Every time a police officer handles a traffic stop or a domestic disturbance. Those are the two most serious situations, where there's the possibility that the interaction could be life-threatening if not handled properly. They do that everyday. In Tinley Park, we don't have the violent crime like they do in the larger cities. We mostly handle thefts and criminal damage to property.

education & career path

I started off as a patrol officer when I was 22 years old, here in Tinley Park. I had been a military policeman, and I had been out of the military for about a year when I came to Tinley Park. As a patrolman for about five years, I handled several duties. Then I was an investigator for almost eight years. From there, I was promoted to sergeant after about twelve years on the job. I was a patrol sergeant for about five years, and then I became an administrative sergeant. Finally, I was promoted to Commander.

The responsibility changes as you start to go up the ladder. When you're patrol level, you need to know the technical side on how to perform your job. You have to know how to write a report, how to handle accidents and arrests, fingerprinting, etc. As you start to get promoted, you start to handle less of the hands-on side of the job, and you start to do more of the directing. For example, you handle scheduling and more human resources issues versus the police function of the job. The more you go up, the less hands-on your job becomes.

When I started, all you needed was a high school diploma or a GED. Now, you need either a two-year degree in criminal justice or a four-year degree in any major.

No, it didn't help me get the job in Tinley Park, but it helped me realize what I wanted to do. I got a taste of what police work was about as a military police officer. At that point, I knew that's what I wanted to do. Coming on, it didn't help me get the job. I still had to test like everybody else, and based on the results of the test is where I was placed on the eligibility list. However, I did receive additional military points that they give to military personnel that moved me up on the list. I guess in that aspect, it did help.

I'm right at the age where I'm eligible to retire and receive full pension. There's no more advancement within this police department. The only step up would be Chief of Police, and the current chief plans on sticking around for a while. I'll probably end up retiring from the police department. Because of my involvement throughout the Village of Tinley Park with the computer system, I would like to stay around and assist the other village departments in any projects they may have.

Creating database reports through the computer programs that the village has. For example, let's say the fire department would like to know what percentage of fires is caused by a certain accelerant, or we need to determine the average amount of sick time our employees are taking. All that information is in a database, and I have the capability of creating the report in order to provide them that information. I've received specialized computer training, and I know how to use the system pretty well.

my day

About 6:30 a.m. My day would normally start at 8:00, but I get in between 6:30 and 7:00. I have found out I can get more work done within that first hour and half before other people start to come in. A lot of work now as a commander is handling personnel issues, so a lot of people are coming in and out of my office looking for guidance or bringing issues to my attention.

Turn my computer on and check my e-mail. Now, obviously people communicate by e-mail. My Chief of Police will e-mail me things that he needs done, or the people I supervise will e-mail me with issues they had over night. We don't have supervisors in the records section or in dispatch over the evening hours, so they'll leave me e-mails about things that have occurred overnight. So, the first thing I do is check my e-mail to see if there's something pressing that needs to be done.

If someone called in sick, they need to be replaced right away. You need to have the personnel to do the job. The police department can't close down. In larger departments, you have more resources where if someone calls in sick, you still have enough people to do the job. In smaller departments, if someone is sick, someone has to fill in for them. You can hold someone over or call someone in on his day off. Or the chief could call me and say he needs a report on something that day. Creating reports is one of my responsibilities as administrative commander.

At my level, it really changes every day, other than checking my e-mail and voicemail every day to see what needs to be done. I'll prioritize and decide what needs to be done first. So I guess prioritizing on a daily basis, that's something you do every day. Also, once you reach a certain level there's a lot of delegation involved. Overall, I'd say there's a pretty good amount of variety on a day-to-day basis.

I can't say anything has become mundane. At this level, it's not doing the same thing over and over again. Really, in all police work, you just never have the same day twice.

salary & lifestyle

For the Village of Tinley Park, a commander will probably start off right around $80,000 per year and go as high as $105,000 a year. It all depends on how long you've been on the job before you make commander. Also, a commander is going to be coming from the sergeant level. What they try to do is give you ten percent over what you were making as a sergeant. So if you've been a sergeant for quite a while, you're starting salary as commander is going to be a little higher.

Our patrol officers start off around $40,000, and the top patrol officer is probably going to be making around $60,000. That's not including overtime or anything like that. Because of our limited resources, there's always a lot of overtime.

There's a schooling incentive, based on how much education you have attained, which is in increments of fifteen college credit hours all the way up to a master's degree. There's also a shooting incentive. You have to qualify several times a year in a shooting test, and based on your score, you get a check once a year. For a police commander, you always have access to a car for which gas, maintenance and insurance is all covered. For patrol officers in Tinley Park, each officer has his own squad car and can drive it off-duty, but has to remain within a limited area. Each officer having his own squad is unique to Tinley Park.

I would probably say about fifty hours per week, which is pretty typical for someone in my position.

For one thing, I never got the impression that my family was ever afraid for my safety while I was at work. Obviously, early on, when you're at the bottom of the totem pole, you're the one who gets called in when they need people. So you work a lot of overtime, but when you're starting a family you want to work the overtime in order to provide for your family. When I became a detective, I would have to be on standby. We didn't have evidence technicians that would be working all the time, so if there was a burglary or a sexual assault, you would always be called out in the middle of the night. When you were off, you really weren't off. When I became sergeant, I didn't have to be on standby. Pretty much at that point, I worked ten-hour days, and that's all I would have to worry about. At any level, though, you have to be available all the time if anyone needs advice.

In any civil service position, it's very stable as long as you do your job. Especially here in Tinley Park, there are so many limited resources you do more with less. You never have to worry about layoffs, because you're at the minimum amount of people to do the job. Especially with civil service, your municipality needs you there to do it. It would be rare for a municipality to layoff police officers. The public just wouldn't stand for it, unless the department had too many officers that they should never have hired in the first place.

For a municipal police officer in Illinois, after thirty years of service you will continue to receive seventy-five percent of whatever you were making on your last day as a pension. At age 55, you get a three percent increase every year. For me, if I last another forty years, when I'm 93-years old, I'll be making $250,000 per year. One nice benefit for this police pension is that if I die, my wife will receive my pension.

pros, cons & trends

It changed as I went through the process. As a patrolman, the most satisfying part was helping people who need help, whether they've been hurt or victimized or just need assistance. As a sergeant, it's getting the people you're responsible for to produce as a team, and managing those individuals to make them better police officers. As a commander, it's assisting and helping the entire police department to develop and provide better assistance to the community.

Dealing with personnel issues and your employees. As a manager, you will spend about 80% of your time dealing with personnel issues. Whether it's handling training issues, discipline issues, setting responsibilities, it's just handling personnel issues. Obviously most frustrating is the discipline issues. You wish you didn't have to deal with those, but you do.

Time with the family.

Technology. The biggest change in police work is the technology. Because of the limited monetary resources that the municipality has, you're normally behind in technology versus even the general public. You have to do what you can to stay current. Because it's changing so fast, some of the people who have been around on the police department a long time never really catch on to the new technology, and are having a hard time keeping up with the new officers coming on who have grown up through all of it.

They have more information at their fingertips to do the job than in the past. When I was a detective, let's say we had a theft involving a red Ford. They way we tried to find this red Ford is we had these little punch cards from all the crimes that would happen. A punch card is about a three by eight inch card with different information about the crime, like the time of day it occurred, gender and race of the criminal, things like that. As a detective, I took a long, thin poker. If I was looking for all Fords, I would have to stick this thin poker through the hole dealing with Fords, and I would lift it up. Whatever was left hanging on this little rod would be all the Fords. From there I take those, and I say I want all the red Fords. So I would poke the rod through the hole dealing with red, lift it up, and I would have all the red Fords. On a computer, you just type a search into a database. All the police officers now have computers in their cars, and the information is there for them in seconds.

advice

I wish I would have known that I would have had the opportunity to get as high as I did in the police department. When I first started out, I never even though I would have become a sergeant, I just figured I was going to be a patrolman my whole life. Doing my job day in and day out, if I would have thought I had these opportunities, I probably would have received more education, and maybe have gone for my master's degree so I could compete for things like the chief's position. That would help not only in this department but also in other departments.

Someone needs to understand that they're not going to become rich being a police officer. The reason they are doing it is the understanding that they're going to be helping people. That has to be the satisfaction that they're going to be getting out of the profession. They have to have the mindset of wanting to constantly improve and learn from their job.

First of all, the two-year degree in criminal justice or four-year degree is mandatory. Some municipalities are now going back to just requiring a high school diploma, but obviously the more education you have, the better you will be able to perform your job. I'm not sure why they are going away from the mandatory degree, but a theory I have is that, as a police officer, someone with a four-year degree would feel like they could do more. They may get disenchanted with the job or find it mundane. That's something to consider for people who do have a four-year degree getting into law enforcement, is that really what they want.

If someone asked during an interview, "How much time off do I get?" that's a red flag right there. Or, "How much money am I going to be making?" Obviously, you have to look at integrity. We do background investigations. A lot of jobs don't do background checks, but as a police officer we have to. We check for previous arrests and drugs. Everyone makes mistakes, so you have to take everything into consideration. But those are the things we do examine.

Become to go-to person in your area. If you can do that, you'll move up faster in the organization. The more you can stay current in your area and be the person with all the answers, the faster you're going to move up through that organization. You also need to be well-rounded and know all the aspects of your profession, that way you will enjoy your profession. At least I have. I've enjoyed all the changes. Being stuck in the same job, my whole career would have been boring to me.