Comply, Then Complain: Darien Chief

DARIEN, IL — The best way for a citizen to respond to an unlawful arrest or use of force is to comply with police orders, then complain, Darien's police chief told the City Council this week. That requires an open system for complaints, Chief Greg Thomas said.

According to the chief's annual report, the Darien Police Department received one citizen complaint in 2019, which resulted in an investigation and the employee being "appropriately disciplined." That was out of 21,000 interactions with the public in 2019, including more than 350 arrests and more than 4,700 citations. According to the report, 13 situations resulted in a supervisor finding it necessary to write a formal complaint against an officer.

Thomas told the council the department received two citizen complaints in 2018 and none in 2017.

"It's a very good police department, one that works with honor and one that gets disgusted when things like this happen," Thomas said, referring to the death of George Floyd in an encounter with Minneapolis police.

In the case of Floyd, Thomas said, the officer did not need to kneel on his neck because he was on his stomach and handcuffed. An officer could have held Floyd's hips down to prevent him from leaving. The police were "way out of line," said Thomas, who announced publicly he was angered by Floyd's death.

Alderman Joseph Kenny asked whether it was tough to recruit officers, given the publicity about deaths in police custody.

Thomas said officers sometimes worry they will be subject to protests if they use force justifiably. But he said he didn't think a situation such as Floyd's should hamper police because they know what happened was wrong.

Thomas said recruitment of officers, particularly in the African American and Hispanic communities, has been tough. When a position was open in Darien in 2016, 180 applied. That number dropped by more than half recently, he said.