“Officer down!”
Park Forest Police Chief Pete Green remembers that day a year ago when he got the terrible news from his Deputy Chief Christopher Mannino. One of the village’s police officers was shot.
“Officer down” is the most obscene phrase in the vocabulary of every police department. In their world, it meant a member of their close-knit family was injured. If you read this and are a police officer, you know the anguish it creates. If you are like most of us — civil and civilian — you may have sympathy, but you may not grasp the torment.
Mannino had worse news for Chief Green.
“It’s Tim Jones.”
It was Jones, the only son of Country Club Hill Police Chief William Jones, a 25-year veteran of police work and a father who proudly pinned badge number 204 on his son’s uniform when he was sworn in less than one year ago.
Early on the morning of March 19, 2016, Tim Jones, accompanied by two other officers, responded to a break-in at a vacant home on the 300 block of Neola Avenue. Police established a perimeter but 21-year-old Thurman Reynolds, who grew up in Park Forest, then moved to Texas before returning to this area would have none of it. Reynolds didn’t have a job but he had a gun and his friends said he had a bad temper.
In the last seconds of his angry, aimless life, Reynolds came out of the house shooting. He fired twice before police shot and killed him. Those two bullets, however, struck Tim Jones; one in his head and one through his jaw, lodging in his chest.
“Officer down”
Pete Green knew the camaraderie that exists among police made his next decision simple.
“I had to go tell Chief Jones,” Green said. “I had to be the one to tell him.”
This was the second time he had been to the Jones home. The first was when rookie officer Jones fell asleep and rolled on his cell phone which kept on dialing the Park Forest police. Later the three men would laugh about the goofy incident.
No one laughed this morning.
It was early Saturday and Jones was home alone. Ironically, His wife and daughter were having their hair done in a Park Forest salon.
Chief Green blurted out the words. “Tim was shot.”
William Jones is a quiet yet imposing man. To see him one could believe he must be the prototype of what police officers should look like. But at this time and this moment he was an anguished father.
“He became emotional,” Green recalls. “He kept asking me over and over ‘is he dead? I can handle it. Tell me if he’s dead.’ “
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William Jones’ first job as a police officer was in North Chicago in 1993. He joined the Country Club Hills force in 2003 and became its chief in 2014. This tough-minded cop built a border wall between his public duty and private life and believed he could handle almost anything.
Nothing could have prepared him for Chief Green’s news. The logical, orderly world that Jones created for his family was spinning out of his control. “I was in disbelief,” he says. He (Green) drove me to the hospital and I was thinking how you never know what tomorrow brings.”
When father saw son in his blood-drenched uniform he thought “God help us.” He asked the doctor “is he gone?'” The physician said no but shook his head.
“I saw him only yesterday” said Jones. “And now look at him.”
Now nothing else mattered except Tim. Everything was moved to the unlit back burner of life. For the next two weeks, from the time they wheeled him into the emergency room at St. James Hospital in Olympia Fields, to his air-vac to the Level One trauma unit in Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, the Jones’ family — William, wife Temmera and daughter Tiffany — were next to his bed, praying and hoping against logical hope.
They never left.
That incredible bond that police have for each other was on display when Tim Jones arrived at Christ Hospital. More than 200 police officers of all ranks from dozens of departments lined the halls in a silent tribute to a fallen brother.
Less than one week later thousands, including police from more than a dozen departments jammed into a Culver’s restaurant in Matteson, where, for three hours, 20 percent of each food order would be earmarked for a fund to help defray family expenses. It was supposed to last until 7 p.m. At 6:30 the line stretched out the door and down the street. Some four hours later there were still people waiting their turn.
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Tim was put in a coma to relieve swelling on the brain and doctors told the family there was no hope. Tim would likely die within 24 hours. Chief Jones recalls that one doctor told him he’d “never seen anyone wake up from something like this.” Another doctor said the odds of him winning the Power Ball were better than of Tim living one more day.
“We never accepted that,” said Chief Jones. “We are a people of strong faith and believed it was in God’s time. We were waiting for a miracle.”
The family was bolstered by Mary Ann, a nurse who said she too believed in miracles and told Jones she felt the need to be there because she lost her son two years before. He and Tim went to the same high school. “She was our angel,” said Jones.
More than two weeks after he was shot, Tim Jones still clung to life and after an operation around Easter the “angel” named Mary Ann told Jones “go see your son.”
“His eyes were open, they were blinking and staring at me,” the Chief said. It was not just a reflex action, it was a knowing response, he added. “We knew we had our miracle.”
Soon Tim was following his father with his eyes when he moved around the bed and would respond to his name. One doctor told the father he had heard about such things happening, but until now had never seen it.
A college classmate once jokingly complained he wanted Tim to reimburse him for all the money spent on tolls coming to the hospital. Tim smiled. That grin was another step forward. He could chew and he could swallow and now he knew the difference between sarcasm and humor.
Today Tim Jones is a patient at the Rehabilitation Institute in Chicago and is still a member of the Park Forest Police Department.
William Jones shows with pride a cell phone video of Tim flexing and rolling his left leg inward and outward. It is one of the millions of little movements we make each day; movements of no importance that we never remember. Recently, when the engine of his car virtually exploded while being driven by his sister, Tim reminded his father of an extended warranty that would pay for repairs.
This Sunday will mark one year since Tim Jones was shot and the Village of Park Forest has proclaimed the day in his honor. A Blue Mass honoring all First Responders will be held at St. Irenaeus Catholic Church in his honor.
The Jones family has even come to terms with the shooting. “We as a family, forgive him (Reynolds) for what he did. There was simply no winner there.”
Writers dislike the word “miracle.” It is ill-defined and too-often used in meaningless games. But the Jones family has a precise definition. Their son is alive.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance journalist and can be reached at [email protected].