This week marks the last for retiring Buffalo Grove police Chief Steven Casstevens, who will bring to a close a nearly five decades-long career in law enforcement that includes local, regional and international leadership.
His official last day is Nov. 11.
“I feel good about what I’ve accomplished here,” said Casstevens, 63. “I decided it was time to move on. I’m young enough that I’d like to do some consulting for a few years and not set my alarm for 5:30 a.m. every morning.”
In an interview with Pioneer Press when his retirement was announced, the chief said that 20 years ago, he never would have imagined he would equip his officers with tools to help prevent opioid overdoses, load portable defibrillators in squad cars or hire a full-time social worker in the department.
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But these measures have saved lives, said Casstevens, who has been a leader in law enforcement locally, regionally and internationally for more than 46 years.
He and his wife own a consulting company, The Casstevens Group LLC, which provides law enforcement consulting. He said he plans to keep busy providing service to advisory boards while making more time to golf. But looking back on his long career, he’s proud of the work he’s accomplished and so are local leaders.
“Chief Casstevens has been an invaluable leader for the Buffalo Grove Police Department. His vision and mission to maintain the highest level of law enforcement and prevention services to our community have had a major impact on our residents’ quality of life,” said Village Manager Dane Bragg,.
Buffalo Grove Village President Beverly Sussman agrees.
“The village of Buffalo Grove has been very fortunate to have Chief Casstevens with us for the past nine years. He is the epitome of professionalism,” Sussman said. “We have had an outstanding Buffalo Grove Police Department under Chief Casstevens’ leadership. I wish Chief Casstevens all the best in his future endeavors.”
He developed his leadership skills at an early age.
Casstevens grew up in Triumph, Ill., a LaSalle County town of fewer than 100 residents. He joined the Army right out of high school and served on the military police force for three years with 101st Airborne in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, according to his bio.
After he was honorably discharged in 1979, he worked for the Mendota Police Department, and soon after, the Peru Police Department – both towns in LaSalle County – and then received a job offer from the Hoffman Estates Police Department where he would spend the next 30 years of his career before retiring as assistant police chief in 2011. Casstevens went on to serve as the police chief in Cary for over two years before joining the Buffalo Grove Police Department in 2013 as chief.
“We’re one of the best police departments in the nation,” he said of Buffalo Grove, a destination for many police officers.
Casstevens said he’s hired more than eight officers from the Chicago Police Department in recent years, as well as from smaller departments, to join his 61 sworn officers in Buffalo Grove.
“Because of our low crime rate, we were voted as one of the safest cities in the country,” he told Pioneer Press.
Brian Budds has been hired to take over the department from Casstevens. Formerly the police chief for the west suburban Western Springs Police Department, Budds brings more than 25 years of law enforcement service to the village.
A reception was held for the new chief ahead of the Village Board meeting Monday night. He was also sworn in at the meeting.
During his tenure as Buffalo Grove’s top cop, Casstevens was elected vice president of the International Chiefs of Police in 2015 and served as president 2019 to 2020. Additionally, he served as president of the Illinois Association Chiefs of Police from 2016 to 2017.
For the last seven years, he said, mental health-related calls for service have been increasing exponentially for police departments. As a result, his department, he said, was one of the first to execute the International Chiefs of Police One Mind campaign, training officers in mental health first aid, crisis intervention and de-escalation to be better responders to mental health crises.
“If you look back historically to the ’60s and ’70s when our country had a lot of mental health facilities, a lot of those facilities closed,” he said.
The chief explained that mental health facilities at that time accommodated some 600,000 people, while currently, there are fewer than 60,000 beds.
“Sadly, what we have in society is that it criminalized mental health because there’s nobody else to call but police,” said Casstevens.
Training officers under his command has been paramount for Casstevens, who said he believes it’s very important to the profession, especially now.
“My job is to buy the best equipment, provide the best training so they have the knowledge and their job to bring the desire,” Casstevens said of his professional philosophy.
He said he’s always stressed to his officers to treat everybody the way they want to be treated. Casstevens admits Buffalo Grove police are aggressive in traffic enforcement but there is a reason for that. He believes community policing starts with every traffic stop. If an officer stops a vehicle, the retiring chief said, they are trying to change driver behavior but also, it is a form of crime prevention.
He said thefts of catalytic converters, other thefts or burglaries, and transporting of guns and drugs, that is all done by car and often police are able to stop crime in its tracks.
Although many of his plans for his tenure as president of the International Chiefs of Police were derailed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic – which prevented travel – he focused his efforts on global road safety, testifying before Congress and reducing police officer suicides. In 2019, he said there were 128 officers killed in line of duty nationwide, but 228 officers lost to suicide the same year.
“We’ve seen a drop in suicides,” he said, “and we’re doing better by educating officers and police chiefs, developing peer support groups, having places for people to turn to and eliminating the stigma of mental health when it comes to police officers.
“We need to understand it’s OK not to be OK and OK to seek help,” he said.
Casstevens was in his role as president of the International Chiefs of Police when George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed May 25, 2020, by white Minneapolis police officers who were attempting to restrain him. The incident was captured on video and spurred protests against police across the country.
“If anyone looked at that video, as a police chief, you were disgusted,” Casstevens said. “If you didn’t think anything was wrong with that, you should turn in your badge right now.
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“That is not representative of the 850,000 police officers in this country and that is not typical of our profession.”
Soonafter, many Americans made calls to “defund” police departments — an idea Casstevens does not accept.
“Our society defunded mental health in the ’70s and look where that put us. That was a colossal failure,” Casstevens said. “At the end of day, that’s not the way to accomplish change in the profession. When you defund the police, all that does is hurt the communities they serve.”
However, he did say he was completely supportive of co-responder programs where police and mental health professionals are dispatched together on calls for service. He said hiring a social worker for the Buffalo Grove Police Department was one of the “greatest hires we’ve ever done.”
That social worker responds with police and provides follow up services to victims of crimes, particularly domestic violence.
Casstevens is also proud of his community relations officers, whom he considers among the “busiest and hardest working people in the department,” building relationships with residents, and village businesses and organizations.
Community relations manages the department’s social media accounts and educates the community quickly with important information. He’s happy to use Twitter and Facebook and found it beneficial in police investigations.
Casstevens is also an advocate of body-worn cameras for police officers, he said. In fact, he said he was the first police officer in Hoffman Estates to request a dash camera installed in his squad car. He considers it one of the greatest inventions for the police profession.
“There’s been so many changes in our profession,” Casstevens said, “it’s really interesting to see how we’ve progressed.”
Elizabeth Owens-Schiele is a freelancer.