As a young college grad with a freshly minted management degree from Eastern Illinois University in the early 1990s, Dave Disselhorst had no inkling that his career soon would take him directly into the footsteps of his father, a 32-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department.
But as many young college grads do, Disselhorst dabbled in a few different jobs for several years before realizing his calling as a police officer at the age of 27. As a newly hired patrol officer in 1995, Disselhorst said he never turned down an assignment. That can-do attitude helped him move quickly through the ranks during the past 21 years until he finally made it to the head of the Norridge Police Department this year, earning the top rank of police chief.
“Did I dream of being police chief? No, I never envisioned getting above sergeant,” Disselhorst said. “I wasn’t expecting it because we’re a small department that’s not like Chicago, where you have hundreds of leadership opportunities.”
Disselhorst spent the last five months filling in as acting police chief following the December retirement of former Police Chief James Jobe, who retired and moved to Florida at the end of the year.
Jobe had explained his decision to announce his retirement six months in advance of his actual departure as a way to ease the village’s transition to new police leadership, and Disselhorst started fulfilling the duties of the head of the department well ahead of his official appointment to the position following the April 27 Village Board meeting.
In the early 1990s, Disselhorst was a young newlywed who had just moved from Chicago to Norridge and was working as a production scheduler for a manufacturing company when he decided to look for a more satisfying career path, he said. He opened the classified section of the Pioneer Press in 1994 one day and saw a “help wanted” ad that had been placed by the Norridge Police Department.
Without any working background in law enforcement, Disselhorst took the police entrance exam, scoring high enough to land a job as a part-time auxiliary officer in 1994. A year later, the department brought him on full-time, and he continued to move up the ranks of the department when he was promoted to street corporal in 2001, then to sergeant in 2011, and commander in 2012.
By 2014, he had moved up to the department’s second-highest ranking position, deputy police chief.
Disselhorst said that while Norridge’s historically low crime rates have remained steady over the years, he has found himself facing modern-day challenges in his new leadership role, particularly in finding ways to better connect with the community his department serves.
“The role of policing has changed in that officers are being held more accountable for their actions and the community expects the police department to be better engaged with them,” he said. “A large part of that has to do with communication — how we communicate with each other and with our residents.”
The police department has found ways to form a closer connection with the public in recent years, both online through its Facebook page and by getting involved in an annual charity event, “Shop with a Cop.” The program gives underprivileged kids the chance to go shopping with a police officer around Christmastime.
Although his father saw the appeal in fighting crime in the big city next door, Disselhorst said working in a smaller town like Norridge presents a special opportunity to form closer bonds with the community he serves.
“I think we do a good job of providing the kind of services the people in this community want,” Disselhorst said. “We’re a stable community without a lot of change in our crime rate, and I think that’s why most of our officers choose not to leave.”
Natalie Hayes is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.