Suburban cops go from loud music complaint to armed manhunt

You'd think these suburban police officers would get the bends from changing attitudes so quickly.

"You are trained to respond professionally whether it's a barking dog complaint, loud music, a loud muffler or an armed felon with two weapons," says 30-year veteran Mount Prospect police officer Bill Roscop. "It's pretty amazing to go from the barking dog to this energized, well-organized game plan to keep people safe."

For the past two days, dozens of the suburban police officers we generally see writing speeding tickets or filling out the insurance documentation for a stolen GPS were waging a guns-drawn, life-and-death manhunt for Robert R. Maday. A convicted armed robber who has spent most of his adult life behind bars, the 39-year-old Maday was on his way to the courthouse in Rolling Meadows on Thursday to be sentenced to another 13 years in prison when he apparently overpowered a guard and took his gun. Police say Maday hijacked a couple of cars, managed to disappear into the suburbs for the night, and renewed his escape attempt Friday with a carjacking in Hoffman Estates.

Maday was captured about noon Friday in West Chicago when he crashed during a police chase after reportedly robbing a bank in Bloomingdale.

No one was killed. No shots were fired. It ended the way many suburban dramas do, with a fender-bender, and Maday taken to a hospital complaining of back pain. While the suspect and even luck made that nonlethal outcome possible, so did a coordinated, sophisticated effort from suburban police departments.

The sprawling suburbs are a diverse community larger than many American cities, with plenty of murders, rapes, gang shootings and sordid mayhem, so it's not as if a manhunt makes some buffoonish Barney Fife-type officer fumble to find a bullet for his gun. The suburbs are home to some of the best-trained and best-equipped officers anywhere.

We often forget that because the last time you actually saw a suburban police officer was when he or she was "reminding you to buckle up, directing traffic around a traffic accident or at a July Fourth event," Roscop says. "That's kind of what makes being a police officer in the Northwest suburbs that much more dangerous."

School shootings and terrorism threats have created an edge even in the most idyllic suburban hamlets.

"Our officers aren't walking around in sleep mode," says Naperville Police Cmdr. Mike Anders, using a traffic signal as a metaphor. "We don't go around in green. We're always in yellow. And when an emergency happens, we go to red."

Still, an officer in a high-crime area with daily gang activity, lots of violence and an open hostility toward law enforcement might approach each call differently than an officer in the suburbs, where taxpayers expect customer service.

"This it the tricky part for police," Roscop says. "We have to take care of the lost child and the barking dog, and then we are literally out on a manhunt. Here in the 'burbs, we have to force ourselves at times to think that way and not get complacent."

The routine can become deadly in an instant.

"You never know when you pull into a gas station to get a cup of coffee or a newspaper if someone is in there holding up the place," Anders says. "On a day-to-day basis, every police officer should be prepared for the worst to happen."

That's not to say officers are immune from the adrenaline rush that accompanied the Maday drama.

"I'm running around all over the place yesterday, and I'm like, 'Oh, I'm going to miss this,'" says Roscop, who is set to retire on Nov. 20. "There's disappointment in the eyes of the people who couldn't go."

The adrenaline is just "human nature," says Anders, who notes that the training overrides emotion.

"It all comes down to training," says Roscop, who credits some of the excitement to the chance "that we're going to use it."

Taxpayers have to like the way this Maday case ended.

"They pay for our training, and our training is to keep them safe," Roscop says, noting officers were aiming to end the drama without gunplay. "I mean, this is why you become a police officer."