New Carol Stream top cop wants to give back

After spending several months doing the job on an interim basis, it was becoming clear to Kevin Orr that he was going to be named Carol Stream's next police chief.

In fact, village leaders never even bothered to do a formal search or interview other candidates for the position last held by Rick Willing, who retired in October.

Still Orr, who had been deputy chief since June 2007, says that receiving the promotion was more exciting than he anticipated.

"I am still trying to get used to people calling me chief," said 44-year-old Elburn resident, who has been with the Carol Stream Police Department since 1988.

The promotion to the roughly $124,000-a-year job is another accomplishment in a 20-year career filled with highlights. Orr was named village Employee of the Year twice - in 1992 and again in 1993. He also won several valor awards in 1993 after he and another officer were forced to shoot and kill a suspect who pointed a semi-automatic handgun at them during a standoff.

He has a master's degree in public safety administration from Lewis University and attended the School of Police Staff and Command at Northwestern University.

Orr recently spoke to the Daily Herald about his new role as Carol Stream's police chief. Here is an edited version of that conversation:

Q. Why did you want the police chief job?

A. I think it's just been a natural progression for my career, and I feel like I can make a difference. I have been here my whole career. This village has given a lot to me. I guess this is my own little way of giving something back.

Q. What will you bring to the job?

A. I will bring a new perspective, obviously, because I am different from Rick (Willing).

Q. What types of crime do you have to deal with in Carol Stream?

A. We have mostly property crime - criminal damage to property, vandalism. Every once in a while, we'll get an armed robbery, or we deal with a lot of car burglaries. I guess it's your typical run-of-the-mill suburban crimes.

Q. After doing the chief job on an interim basis, was there anything that came as a surprise to you about the position?

A. The time demands are certainly a lot different from being deputy chief. There's more meetings to go to. More people want your time. It's really been busy because there's no deputy chief right now. So I am kind of trying to do both jobs. But nothing really surprised me because Rick and I worked pretty close together.

Q. What are your goals for the immediate future?

A. In the immediate future, I would like to bring the department closer together as a whole. It's not that there's factions. I just want to bring us together and make us a tighter-knit group.

Q. Any long-term goals?

A. One of my long-term goals is to come up with a successor management program for administration positions. As the chief, I would spend time training the deputy chief on how to do my job. Then if he would move in here, he would have a good handle on things from day one. It (training for managers) does happen now to a certain extent, but not as much as it should. I had to teach myself a lot of things. The transitions should be more seamless.

Q. When Rick Willing retired, he mentioned all the work that Carol Stream has done with community policing. How do you see the community policing efforts evolving in Carol Stream?

A. I want to revisit the community policing philosophy. I think it's good now but can get better. We have officers assigned to different zones in town. Some of those areas have neighborhood watch groups. I think it's beneficial for the patrol officers to get involved with that stuff more than they are now. They need to interact more with the apartment complex managers to find out what their problems are and what we can do to help them.

Q. Any issues with gang activity in town?

A. We have gang members who live in town. Fortunately for us, we haven't had any big gang crimes like other towns have experienced. One thing I would like to do in the future is a better job on gang intelligence. God forbid, if we ever do have something - a big gang crime - happen in town, then we will kind of have an idea who we are looking for or what we are looking for.

Q. There's been a lot of emphasis on traffic enforcement, especially along North Avenue. Do you feel that has to continue?

A. Yes. If we're out there and people know we're out there, they are going to change their driving behavior and it's going to reduce accidents. I like the red-light camera that we have up now at North and Kuhn (Road). We can't have a patrol car out there 24 hours a day just watching that intersection. But if we have a camera out there, and people know it's there - you are going to get the word out that a camera is there, and that's going to deter behavior. I come from the west every day to work and people are hauling. It's funny. Once they hit County Farm Road, you can see people slow down. Still, there's one guy every morning that I see who is flying by weaving in and out of traffic. So long as there's people out there still doing that, we're going to be out there. If it gets to a point where we really see a decrease in traffic violations out there, we will refocus our efforts somewhere else.

Q. You mentioned the red-light camera. Would like to see more installed?

A. Yes. We actually have plans for more at North and Gary (Avenue) - both east and west. Hopefully in the spring, they will start putting those in.

Q. Why do you think the cameras are a good alternative?

A. It's a deterrent. People are going to know they are out there. You are going to get some people who will consciously try to stop. And you will get other people who will try to beat the light whether there's a camera or not. And if they do, the camera will go off and they will get tickets. It's just how it goes. We've heard the (complaints) that it's just a revenue generator. What we have decided to do is after a period of time, if we see North and Kuhn intersection violations drop to an acceptable level, we'll talk about moving the camera somewhere else.

Q. How will the economic climate affect what you are trying to do?

A. For one thing, we've been trying for a couple years to work on implementing a sixth patrol zone, which involves hiring more officers. Obviously, that is not going to happen with the way the economy is right now. There are some different programs that we have been looking at that we would like to try, but they cost money to implement. If the economy turns and village budgets get better and healthier, there's a lot of things that we would like to try to do.

Getting to know: Kevin Orr

Family: Wife, Leslie

Hobbies: Spending time with his wife, working out and reading, especially history and sports books

Favorite beverage: Diet Coke

Favorite sports teams: St. Louis Cardinals, Oakland Raiders, Chicago Blackhawks, Notre Dame football

Favorite cop TV show: "I don't watch cop shows. There are so many people in this line of work who love watching those kinds of shows. But when I am off, I just want to get away from it as much as I can."

Fun fact: Self-proclaimed "Batman freak." "He was the thing when I was growing up, so that's why I started getting into it," he said, adding that one of his favorite movies is "The Dark Knight."

Favorite band/musician: Nickelback. "I kind of like everything outside of rap. I don't like rap."

Leader you look up to: Abraham Lincoln