Almost all of the south suburban towns’ police departments are at the helm of a Black chief, most of them are former Chicago police officers.
Almost all of the south suburban towns’ police departments are at the helm of a Black chief, most of them are former Chicago police officers.
Calumet City, Dixmoor, Calumet Park, Riverdale, Country Club Hills, Harvey, Robbins, Phoenix, Dolton, and Markham all have a predominately Black population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and they all have a Black police chief.
Edward Gilmore spent 10 years as a Chicago police officer before going to work for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as a deputy chief inspector. He retired in 2008 to become the first Black police chief for Calumet City.
“Coming back to the Chicago area as a police chief was a very attractive opportunity for me,” Gilmore told the Defender. “But make no mistake about it, being a suburban police chief is no cake walk. Suburban cops deal with the same crimes as Chicago cops, such as drugs, murder and white-collar crimes.”
Calumet City has a population of 41,614, of which 20,673 are Black, the town’s records indicate. The city sits on the Illinois/Indiana border and is home to the River Oaks shopping mall.
The town’s police force includes 95 full-time officers and one parttime officer. Gilmore is paid $122,842 a year as police chief.
In Markham, there are 9,952 Black residents that make up the city’s population of 12,620, records show.
Wade Ingram, police chief for Markham, said a lot of Black Chicago police officers join suburban police departments after retirement because better opportunities are often available.
“You’re talking about a smaller police department where your skills and experience is more noticeable,” he said. “The CPD has over 10,000 officers and with that many police officers it can be hard to get noticed.”
Ingram spent 24 years with the CPD before retiring and becoming police chief in January at an annual salary of $85,000. He is responsible for 44 full-time officers and 15 parttime officers.
Nearby Calumet Park is an even smaller south suburb with a population of 8,516, made up largely from the 7,058 Blacks who live there.
Police Chief Mark Davis retired as a Chicago police officer after 32 years and has been in his post since 2002. Davis is also author of “Race Traitors,” a book of fiction that portrayed the thrilling and compelling exploits of two Black police detectives assigned to Chicago’s Gang Intelligence Unit.
Davis said the book is “a graphic examination of the two police officer’s experiences during the 1970s combating street gang violence and murder in the Woodlawn community (on the South Side).”
He commands a police force of 35 full-time officers and 21 part-time officers at an annual salary of $87,000.
The residents of Riverdale elected a new mayor this year and in May hired Hollis Dorrough as its new police chief.
He is also a former Chicago cop. He retired in 2002 from the CPD after 34 years on the job, which included assignments working as part of a security detail for Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Since working as a suburban cop Dorrough said he has had to do more than what he did when he was a Chicago cop.
“As a suburban police chief you have to do a little more because the departments are much smaller,” he said. “So you find yourself doing a lot more than just arresting and questioning suspects.”
He oversees 37 officers for a suburb that has 13,004 Black residents out of a total population of 15,055.
Prior to Dorrough becoming police chief in Riverdale, where he earns $85,000 to $90,000 a year, he served as the deputy police chief in nearby South Holland for seven years.
September’s unexpected death of Christopher Kelly, former chief fundraiser for ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich, put Country Club Hills police Chief Regina Evans in the spotlight as she headed up his death investigation.
Evans, who is vice president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, retired from the Chicago Police Department after 21 years. She has been police chief for Country Club Hills since May.
Country Club Hills is made up of 13,243 Blacks in a town of 16,169.
Most suburbs favor Chicago cops as police chiefs because “they bring an outside view of things,” explained Dorrough. “Everything is not all Black and white to us. Coming from the inner city we have been exposed to far more things than the average suburban cop so we can quickly relate to suburban situations.”
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