After finishing an early-morning meeting Tuesday, new Elmhurst Police Chief Michael Ruth took to the wheel and spent an hour patrolling the neighborhoods.

Ruth said he likes to “lead from the front” — engage with the community, go on patrols, work those weekends and holidays that are part of the job in a police department, and attend roll call for uniformed officers.

For anyone, going for a drive on a clear fall day like Tuesday can cue a reflective mood. For a police officer, it can be a reminder of the job’s core values and commitment to community service.

“I was just refreshed by patrolling,” he said. “And it sounds so fundamental, but for those of us that appreciate where we come from, and enjoy that basic principle of patrolling residential neighborhoods … looking around at things. I had the opportunity to do that. The core value of what we do is patrolling our community.”

As Elmhurst’s new top cop, Ruth is becoming reacquainted with a city he was fond of as child. Growing up in the southwest suburbs, his father worked at a sheet metal company in the industrial zone on Larch Street in Elmhurst.

“Getting to come to work with my dad on the occasional Saturday — the downtown area was much different then it is today,” he said. “But I can remember going to the York Theater. So it was a big deal going to Elmhurst as a young boy in the ’70s.”

Ruth spent more than 29 years in the Skokie Police Department, moving up in the department from patrol officer to commander. About two years ago, he took the chief position in Countryside, where he had initially planned to stay.

“But when the opportunity came up for Elmhurst, what an amazing town,” he said. “And it brought back … nostalgic memories for me and with a police department with such a great reputation, I thought I would participate in the interview process.”

In his second week in Elmhurst, Ruth said he is assessing the department’s strengths and weaknesses to prepare a strategic plan.

“Clearly, residential burglaries seem to be one of the top priorities here in Elmhurst,” he said. “We had the same issues in Skokie with residential burglaries. But the (Elmhurst) detectives here have done a really good job with making some arrests and apprehensions of people responsible for residential burglaries. But, the trend continues.”

Preventing burglaries and most other crimes, he said, comes down to community involvement and back and forth with residents.

“It’s really reestablishing relationships with the community,” he said. “The residents in the community, by observing suspicious people, suspicious vehicles and suspicious circumstances, by working in partnership with the community to call in suspicious activity, affords us a greater level of protection.”

Ruth pointed to the relative lack of violent crime in Elmhurst, which is supported by last year’s crime statistics released by the FBI this week.

In Elmhurst, only 14 violent crimes were committed in 2011, along with no murders or forcible rapes.
The city does grapple with narcotics issues consistent with the neighboring suburbs, he said, especially the rise of recreational heroin use beginning in 2009, something he also saw in Countryside.

“In terms of how we get the arrests — basic police work 101 — through traffic enforcement, visual observation, calls from neighbors of suspicious cars,” he said.

Often times the use of cocaine or heroine is what drives the burglaries, too, he said.

“The narcotics offenses, the drug offenses, if you take a look, for the most part they’re low level, small quantity,” he said. “We’re seeing the recreational use that some people have. And you can equate a lot of the crime versus property back to people with narcotics addictions.”

Ruth said transparency and proactively engaging the community will be a priority for his department. In Countryside, he posted all the department’s calls for service on its website at the end of every week.

“Having the police department more involved in community events, I’m real big into that,” he said. “We’re trying to put something together for Thanksgiving and helping some of the less fortunate within our community.”

Reiterating a point he made at his swearing-in ceremony last week, Ruth stressed the importance of treating people with compassion as police officers.

“A police officer comes into people’s lives at perhaps some of the most difficult or challenging times in their life,” he said. “And to us, as the police officers, it’s a routine course of business. Whether they’re involved in a motor vehicle collision, a car crash, perhaps there’s a problem with the neighbor or there’s a lost child or an injured person or an ambulance call, or unfortunately a traffic stop. But for us it’s just another call for service. But we make an impression on people. And that impression, that couple of minutes contact with them, lasts for their entire life."