James O’Shea, the retiring River Forest police chief, remembers vividly his first month on the job, in January 2018.
There were a million things going through his mind – the pressure of moving up a rank, to say nothing of becoming police chief, a whole town to look after, spending time with officers and supervisors. And much more.
There’s a phrase he uses that accurately conveys what those days were like for just the second internally chosen police chief over the past four decades.
“There wasn’t anything, but everything, going through my mind,” O’Shea recalled. “The former chief, Greg Weiss, left the department turnkey. There wasn’t a lot of cleaning up that had to be done.
“It was, ‘How do we need to serve the community?’”
Matt Walsh, village administrator, said O’Shea’s successor will be announced this week, and will be an internal promotion, though he declined to elaborate. O’Shea will officially step down April 30.
O’Shea is a Fenwick High School graduate, and began his law enforcement career in 1991 with the clerk of the Cook County Circuit Court. In 1995, he joined the River Forest Police Department as a patrolman and rose through the ranks to detective, detective unit supervisor, patrol sergeant, patrol division commander and ultimately deputy chief before being named police chief.
O’Shea has done a lot in his tenure as police chief, particularly through the technological lens. He implemented license plate readers, a village-wide street camera system, body-worn cameras and in-car mobile cameras, along with several chase mitigation technologies.
But another of his major achievements was bringing the department to full force even as other local departments have remained short-staffed. How did he achieve this?
“We needed to make sure we were competitive,” he said. “[It was] a combination of great marketing and competitive wages and creating an environment where you are caring about officer wellness and their families. They want to come to a place with a family environment.”
He said the marketing piece extended well beyond Illinois, into Wisconsin and Indiana and elsewhere.
To say O’Shea’s tenure was interesting is a gross understatement. There were the repercussions of national events, civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, demands for police reform and, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic. Those situations required an “all hands on deck” posture, he said, while at the same time keeping the department safe.
Walsh said keeping residents safe includes being a positive presence. That, he said, is where O’Shea excelled.
“Being approachable is one skill he has,” he said. “He took efforts to host community safety meetings and answers questions and addresses crime trends and make suggestions for residents to secure their homes.
“I think it’s a great asset to have a police chief that has been with an organization so long. He knows the town like the back of his hand.”
As for his successor, he played an integral role in that selection. He said the key to success there was to “cultivate and mentor our future leaders. It’s the current members of our department that know the community best and all the towns around us.”
But working with people like Walsh and Cathy Adduci, village president, has made a difference as well.
Adduci said that River Forest is a stronger community because of his efforts.
“I want to thank Chief O’Shea for his dedication to this community and for leading the modernization of our police department,” Adduci said in a press release. “Public safety is the village board’s top priority, and Jim executed this very important assignment. I congratulate him on his retirement.”
O’Shea serves as the executive director of the West Suburban Directed Gang Task Force and the Triton College Law Enforcement Advisory Committee. He’ll have to step away from those duties, but that doesn’t mean he’ll step away from law enforcement completely.
He said he is going to take the summer off to spend time with family and head to his Wisconsin property to fish, boat, hike and camp. After that?
“I anticipate you’ll see me out working with another agency or on the private side,” he said. “I’m keeping that close to the vest.
“I’m too young to sort of sit back and not share the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the past 30 years.”