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Mount Prospect chief drops controversial immigrant hiring proposal

An obviously disappointed Mount Prospect Police Chief Timothy Janowick has withdrawn a request that the department be allowed to expand its pool of potential recruits to include permanent residents as well as citizens.

Janowick said that given the level of controversy the proposal attracted, he feels the near future is better spent in education than in continuing to debate a change before the next hiring eligibility list is developed this fall. A list is good for two years, and the Board of Fire and Police Commissioners can extend its life one year.

Janowick said he and the police board are seeking to increase the diversity of language and culture in the police department to better reflect that of a community in which 32 percent of people are foreign-born and more than 42 percent speak a primary language other than English in the home.

Leading immigrant groups in the community are Hispanic, followed closely by Polish and Indian, he said.

The proposal sparked heated debate at a village board meeting June 16 and was scheduled to come up again July 7.

In one exchange, resident Angela Volpe said she objected to noncitizens taking away American jobs and asked, “How can a noncitizen arrest a citizen?”

Mayor Arlene Juracek replied: “The same way a noncitizen can fight for our freedoms overseas. They're in the armed forces.”

After the meeting, the controversy intensified, becoming the topic of a talk radio show and of emails circulating in the village, copies of which were forwarded to Janowick.

Some believed the department wanted to hire undocumented residents, which Janowick said never was the case.

Under state law, permanent residents are eligible to be police officers.

They are eligible for employment at many local departments, including in Elk Grove Village, Palatine and Schaumburg, Janowick said.

The Mount Prospect police board established a citizens-only hiring policy in 1991, a policy the chief and board wanted to abandon because of a big shift in Mount Prospect's demographics and a big decline in the number of applicants for jobs.

“We've been watching the applicant pool diminish over the years,” Janowick said, noting it dropped from a high of 785 to 167 when the last hiring list was developed.

He said only about 20 percent of applicants meet all the standards and make it through the background check and the oral, written, psychological and polygraph testing.

Of those, only about one in four get jobs, he said.

The department wasn't proposing changing its standards, which include at least 60 hours of college or its equivalent.

Applicants who fluently speak a foreign language and military veterans receive credit toward the education requirement.

In the next three years, 10 percent of the 83 sworn officers will have 30 years on the job and likely will retire, Janowick said. Officers who have 20 years in can find it financially beneficial to take another job, he said.

“We're missing a generational opportunity,” he said, explaining that it can take a decade or more for permanent residents to become citizens, or for their U.S.-born children to grow old enough to join the police.

Permanent residents are legally processed immigrants who have undergone extensive background checks, with authorization to reside and work permanently in the United States on a “green card.”

They are eligible to apply for citizenship after five years — three years if married to a U.S. citizen.

The department will continue to monitor recruitment and the changing composition of the community to determine future action regarding hiring, Janowick said.

The department also will seek to create a better public understanding of what it wanted and why through forums such as a town-hall meeting on the topic, he said.

Information on the testing process for the next police list will be posted at www.joinmppd.org and on the department's social media outlets in the near future.

Timothy Janowick
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