EVERGREEN PARK
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Noisy trains may soon be silenced
Residents and businesses soon could have more peace and quiet with plans to curtail trains from blowing their horns as they rumble through the village.
The Village Board this week unanimously approved an application for a $314,000 grant with the Illinois Commerce Commission to make the old Grand Trunk Western Railroad a train-horn abatement area. That means the trains that go from 103rd Street to 87th Street near Kedzie Avenue will no longer blow their horns.
“We will get a lot more sleep than we’ve ever gotten,” said Evergreen Park Mayor Jim Sexton, in announcing details of the grant. “It will not cost us any money” he added.
The village several years ago obtained a horn abatement for the old Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which stretches from 99th Street to 87th Street near Maplewood Avenue in the village and then through the Beverly neighborhood of Chicago.
Janice Neumann
FRANKFORT
Lightning strikes Village Hall phones
The phones are working again inside Village Hall after a lightning strike Monday scrambled communications.
Frankfort Village Administrator Jerry Ducay said the building wasn’t damaged and nobody was hurt after the afternoon incident. He said a small fire was extinguished before the fire alarms went off.
The building was evacuated and damage to the electrical system disrupted the phone system, he said.
Incoming calls weren’t a problem, but calls couldn’t be transferred and the voice mail setup malfunctioned.
“If you got a strange man answering the phone about 2:30 this afternoon, it was me,” Ducay said.
Firefighters from the Frankfort Fire Protection District arrived at the scene quickly and got the situation under control, he said.
The telephone system was repaired Tuesday afternoon.
Pat Harper
JOLIET
Police go hi-tech to track evidence
The City Council on Tuesday approved Joliet police to switch to a bar code-based system to track the more than 300,000 pieces of evidence they have collected.
Currently police officers and evidence technicians fill in paper logbooks to monitor and manage the chain of evidence.
“The laws changed to require us to hold evidence for a much longer time, in some cases indefinitely,” said Police Chief Fred Hayes.
Now, evidence is piling up “from floor to ceiling,” Hayes told the City Council’s safety committee this week. “We’re looking for off-site storage locations,” he said.
Audits of the paper system, which was designed in the 1960s, have shown it continues to work well.
“But we need to make the process more efficient,” Hayes said.
More evidence means more time spent verifying the time of collecting evidence at the crime scene, transferring it to the crime lab for forensic analysis and final disposition, he said.
With the new $38,400 computer system, “We know exactly where it’s at in the system and who had it,” he said.
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Naperville and Schaumburg are among the Illinois police departments already using the bar code system, Hayes said.
Dennis Sullivan
TINLEY PARK
Seniors group gets crime-watch award
The list of accomplishments the Tinley Park Seniors in Law Enforcement Together, or S.A.L.T., submitted to the Illinois Crime Prevention Association was so extensive that the group won the statewide Organization of the Year award in an overwhelming vote.
“They were outstanding,” said Debbie Schmidt, president of the association. Schmidt was Tinley Park’s previous crime prevention officer and did not participate in the voting process for this year’s award.
“The criteria are based on how an organization assists in crime prevention efforts and helps to promote or aid a law-enforcement department. And S.A.L.T. was the best we had,” Schmidt said.
The group has about 60 members, all at least 50 years old.
“The seniors help us out with many events,” said Police Cmdr. Phil Valois. “Plus they have a guest speaker each month and receive training on con games, identity theft and how not to be a victim.”
Dina Navas, the village’s community resource officer, will accept the award June 27 in Springfield.
“Winning this award speaks well of the volunteer spirit of Tinley Park and on the strength of volunteering in the community. This is a group that is always willing to help,” Valois said.
Patricia Trebe