West Dundee interim chief to become chief

A familiar face in West Dundee has ascended to the town's highest police position.

Lt. Andrew Wieteska, interim chief for the past 13 months, has been tapped to lead the department of 21 sworn officers.

Wieteska, 43, will be sworn in as chief on Monday. He takes over for Dave Sawyer, who retired last year.

The village looked exclusively at less than a half dozen internal candidates for the job, believing there were enough qualified candidates in town, Village President Larry Keller said.

The board was impressed with the work Wieteska has done thus far.

“I think that he's an excellent candidate for the job because he's been around the department, he knows the people, he knows the community and he's demonstrated a good job over the months he's been acting chief,” Keller said.

A graduate of Northern Illinois University, Wieteska was hired as a patrol officer in 1998 and promoted to sergeant in 2005. In 2010, he was promoted to lieutenant and interim chief during the same ceremony.

He started his police career in West Dundee after having worked as an insurance manager before entering law enforcement.

Wieteska will continue to make $94,000 a year, a salary the village set once it named him interim chief, said Village Manager Joe Cavallaro.

Wieteska was interim chief because the village was considering contracting police services for East Dundee and Sleepy Hollow and didn't know how the new leadership configuration would shake out.

But since those plans have pretty much fallen through, officials decided the time was right to remove the “interim” from Wieteska's title.

“For all intents and purposes, he's been operating as the chief for the last 13 months,” Cavallaro said.