Joliet's Next Police Chief: 6 Possible Internal Candidates

JOLIET, IL — Joliet's police chief, which is one of the most powerful positions in Will County, has been entrusted to white men for several decades, but that may change starting next week.

After less than 2 1/2 years in the job, Al Roechner submitted his retirement notice Friday, a matter of hours before the Joliet City Council voted 6-3 to hire former Army colonel Jim Capparelli as the new permanent city manager for Joliet.

Friday marked Roechner's last day in the office as chief. He will be using these next two weeks to burn down his vacation time, Mayor Bob O'Dekirk told Joliet Patch.

With Roechner out of the picture now, Joliet Patch has assembled a list of possible successors from within the Joliet Police Department as the new chief.

It's also possible that some of these police officials mentioned below might be in line for a promotion to become a deputy chief, if they don't become chief.

At Friday's special City Council meeting, Jerry Hervey, a Black Joliet community activist, urged city officials to do more than just accept Roechner's departure.

Hervey said the city now needs to get rid of three of Roechner's deputy chiefs.

Hervey identified the three who need to be removed as Darrell Gavin, Joe Rosado and Marc Reid. Hervey did not call for the removal of Roechner's fourth deputy chief, Mike Batis.

"As we all know, the chief of police has just resigned, retired, whatever he's done, but there's still some cancer there," Hervey told the Joliet City Council Friday evening.

"Marc Reid, Joe Rosado and Darrell Gavin all need to be held equally accountable. They were complicit. They misbehaved. They abused the system, and they still need to go, too. The only cure for cancer is to remove all of it. You can't take a piece and leave the rest. So I'm expecting with everything that's going on, you all are taking a step in the right direction, get rid of them. Be done with them. They're all named in a lawsuit, and they have all been complicit in misconduct."

Provided that Reid, Rosado and Gavin are removed from their ranks as deputy police chiefs, Hervey asked the Council "to at least take a step in the right direction and put some women in these positions.

"We are not living in the Stone Ages," he said. "So they need to be a part of everything that's going on going forward."

(Joliet Patch article continues below this photo.)

Now that Roechner's time as chief has come to an end, and the growing possibility that some of his deputy chiefs will be replaced, Joliet Patch has assembled a list of a half dozen high-ranking members of the Joliet Police Department who could be in line to become Joliet's next chief.

It's also possible that some of these Joliet police officials who won't become the next chief would be elevated to one of the city's four deputy chief positions in the event that Reid, Rosado and Gavin, three of Roechner's loyalists, choose to retire or accept a demotion.

The following are possible candidates to become Joliet's next chief of police, or deputy chief:

• Dawn Malec, a lieutenant for the past six years and three months, according to her LinkedIn profile. Malec is approaching 27 years of service in the Joliet Police Department. Malec joined the Joliet Police Department in 1994. She worked in patrol for 15 years. In 2009, she was promoted to sergeant. After more than five years as a sergeant, Malec was promoted in November 2014 to lieutenant, a position she holds to this day.

Malec had an associate's degree when she got hired at the Joliet Police Department in 1994. In 2010, she obtained her bachelor's in criminal justice from Governor's State and in 2020 she obtained her master's in public safety administration from Lewis University.

Sources have told Patch that Malec's chances of being Joliet's next police chief are high.

• Sherrie Blackburn, a lieutenant in Joliet's Police Department. Blackburn was promoted last July to lieutenant. She had been a Joliet police sergeant prior to her promotion. Sources have told Patch that Blackburn is regarded as one of the city's top police officers. If Blackburn is not named chief, there's a strong chance she could be in line for a promotion to deputy chief, provided Capparelli or the new chief decides to part ways with Roechner's remaining loyalists.

• Chris Botzum, also promoted to lieutenant at the Joliet Police Department last summer. Roechner made Botzum, then a sergeant, as his department's public information officer. More recently, Botzum has been in the Internal Affairs unit. A promotion for Botzum might improve the Joliet Police Department's public relations. Roechner had a strained relationship with the press, rarely ever speaking with Joliet Patch or The Herald-News, and occasionally using the police department's Facebook page to criticize Chicago's TV stations.

Botzum's expertise has involved technology and data retrieval from cell phones for criminal investigations. Several relatives of Botzum have been with the Joliet Police Department. Although Botzum is younger and has less experience, his promotion could ensure Joliet's next police chief remains in the position for several years, unlike Roechner, who barely lasted two years.

• Joe Egizio, a lieutenant at the Joliet Police Department. Last summer, during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in front of the White Castle, Egizio was one of the Joliet police supervisors making sure the demonstrations remained peaceful. Patch saw Egizio strike up conversations with some of the protesters who were adversarial toward the police.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Egizio graduated from the University of Southern Illinois with a bachelor's in law enforcement in 1993. Joliet hired him as a patrol officer in 1997, and he remained in the patrol unit until the summer of 2005. He spent three years as a homicide detective. He became a patrol sergeant from 2008 until 2012. The past nine years, Egizio has worked as a lieutenant overseeing patrol shifts as well as schedules, payroll and budgets for the narcotics and SWAT operations.

• Mike Batis, named Joliet's deputy chief of technical services in December 2018, following Roechner's appointment as permanent chief by the Joliet City Council.

Batis served in the U.S. Marine Corps for six years from 1987 to 1993. He joined the Joliet Police force in 1997. During the past 24 years, Batis has held the rank of detective sergeant, detective lieutenant and watch commander of the operations division. He received his bachelor's in criminal justice from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1996 and is currently finishing up a master's of business administration at Benedictine University in Lisle, according to his LinkedIn profile.

• John Ross, promoted last summer to lieutenant. Related to Tom Ross, who spent 30 years with the village of Bolingbrook and served as public safety director under Bolingbrook Mayor Roger Claar.

John Ross has been rising through the ranks of Joliet's Police Department of late. In October 2018, the Joliet Police Supervisors Association welcomed Ross into their union as a new sergeant. Ross was the lead detective for years on the 2008 hit-and-run death of Melissa Lech, the 20-year-old University of Illinois student from Joliet. Her crime garnered widespread news media coverage. In 2012, Joliet police arrested 27-year-old David McCarthy of Naperville, though charges were later dropped against him two years later.