Deer Park defends new police contract

Deer Park officials Wednesday night tried to explain to a packed house of often skeptical residents that they severed the contract for police service from Kildeer last month due to serious breaches of the terms of the agreement by Kildeer.

Contrary to Deer Park's claims, Kildeer special counsel Robert O'Donnell spoke at the meeting to say that Deer Park's actions were based largely on its own financial concerns and based its findings of inadequate service from Kildeer on a faulty analysis.

Deer Park trustees later countered his claims as well.

But the purpose of the meeting was to clear up purported misinformation among residents about the reasons for changing Deer Park's police service provider to the Lake County sheriff's office, amid criticisms of a lack of transparency on the village board's part.

Most residents in attendance did not take lightly any suggestion that Kildeer police officers weren't dedicated to their jobs or were largely invisible in the community.

Resident Deborah Barry, secretary of the citizens group Deer Park Neighbors, said she didn't move to a community of 3,000 people to feel dismissive of the pain of the eight full-time Kildeer officers being laid off.

But Deer Park trustees insisted it was their Kildeer counterparts who failed to satisfy or correct the serious concerns they raised.

Police officer shift schedules from the past three-and-a-half years, obtained from Kildeer through the Freedom of Information Act, showed that Deer Park residential areas were not being patroled 10 percent of the time, Deer Park Trustee James Denny said.

Furthermore, during the earlier months of 2011 when Deer Park's concerns first arose, documents show that the village's Rand Road commercial corridor was being patroled only 6.4 percent of the time, Denny said.

“This contract is a contract for services in exchange for fees,” Denny said. “(Kildeer) received their seven-digit fee. What we didn't receive was the service.”

A team of Lake County sheriff's office representatives gave a presentation on their approach to service which won over many who said they'd come to the meeting skeptically, and received hearty applause afterward.