A chief debriefed: Tinley Park’s next top cop talks about new gig

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Elmhurst Police Chief Steve Neubauer sits in his office at the Elmhurst police station Tuesday. | Steve Metsch~For Sun-Times Media

Updated: December 26, 2011 8:19AM

After 37 years in law enforcement, Steve Neubauer is not ready to give it up.

But that’s just one reason the Elmhurst police chief is leaving his job to take the same position in Tinley Park.

“I’m certainly eligible for retirement, but I have no hobbies and I have a lot of energy,” said Neubauer, 58. “I like being a police chief.

“It’s time for a new challenge. I’ve seen too many friends who (retire and) sit at home, not being constructive or productive.”

Neubauer will become Tinley Park’s police chief on Jan. 2., replacing Phil Valois, who has been the interim chief since Mike O’Connell’s death in May.

When he learned of the job opening in Tinley Park, Neubauer did his homework.

“I couldn’t find anyone to say anything bad about Tinley Park,” he said during an interview Tuesday. “It’s a great opportunity. It’s time for us to look for that dream house we always wanted and to have some new challenges.”

He and his wife of 34 years, Kathy, have three adult sons. One is a civil engineer, one is a police officer, one is in medical school.

Neubauer may feel like he’s in school, too, learning all he can about a new town.

“You do reach a certain comfort level. It’s a little scary to leave all the relationships I’ve built in Elmhurst, but I look forward to building new relationships in Tinley Park. That’s what this job is all about,” Neubauer said.

He was selected from 100 applicants and will be paid a $121,000 salary, Tinley Park village manager Scott Niehaus said. Neubauer is to be sworn in at the Dec. 20 village board meeting and will have one year to fulfill the village’s residency requirement, Niehaus said.

Valois will stay on for two weeks to help with the transition, Niehaus said.

Neubauer, grew up in Berkeley, which is adjacent to Elmhurst, and graduated from Proviso West High School. He was 21, fresh out of Lewis University with a degree in criminal justice, when he started as an Elmhurst police officer. He worked his way up the ranks and was named chief in December 2002.

Career highlights from recent years include enforcing a “neighborhood order ordinance” in which property owners are given warnings for renters’ unsavory activities such as underage drinking parties or storing junk cars, he said. Of 200 owners who received warnings, only two left problems unresolved, and they faced fines of $750 to $1,000 per day, he said.

Susie Sands, president of the United Community Concerns Association in Elmhurst, said Neubauer often volunteered to help the charitable group. She called him “a good community person.”

Neubauer said Elmhurst police pay heed to complaints from residents about speeders or stop-sign scofflaws, two oft-heard problems in Tinley Park.

A peer jury for first-time juvenile offenders has been successful, he said.

In 2009, Elmhurst detectives broke up a “heroin highway” that found about a dozen high school students buying the drug in Maywood and on Chicago’s West Side, he said. The problem still exists, but York High School has “a heightened awareness,” he said.

Neubauer also believes gangs can be battled with police presence in high schools, something already implemented in Tinley Park.

Neubauer’s experience and confidence were keys to his being hired, said Tinley Park Trustee Brian Maher, who chairs the village board’s public safety committee.

“He’s been chief in a fairly good-sized suburb for nine years,” Maher said. “I was impressed with the way he carried himself when compared to the other candidates. He’s had such an extensive career. We felt there was not anything he’ll see as chief of Tinley Park that he’s not comfortable with.”

All that experience has been a learning tool for Neubauer.

“You make mistakes all the time, and you learn from your mistakes,” he said. “I look at everything and say, ‘How can I do it better next time?’ This job is not an exact science. It’s something different every day.”

Neither Elmhurst city manager James Grabowski nor former city manager Tom Borchert, who retired in May, returned phone calls for this story.