Patrick Goetz was a geologist by training and was working at a small drilling company in the Chicago suburbs when, at age 36, he had an epiphany: He really wanted to be a police officer.

It wasn’t easy finding a law enforcement agency to take him on – Goetz had missed the age cutoff for most departments – but he found a ready taker in the La Salle County Sheriff’s Office. Goetz was hired in August and graduated from the academy on Dec. 19.

“I think I found my calling,” the 40-year-old said.

Good timing helped Goetz find his niche. La Salle County Sheriff Adam Diss, in an effort to put more deputies on the road, had shifted funds from corrections to patrols. With fewer people jailed under the SAFE-T Act, which gave all suspects the presumption of pre-trial release, why over-budget for guards when patrol officers were needed?

The budgetary shift was agreed to after discussions last year between Diss and the La Salle County Board. Over the past two decades, the office’s workload had soared from 3,000 calls for service to 15,000 calls and that five-fold increase demanded more boots on the ground.

“Our manpower has never changed in that time,” Diss said then. “Our deputies are more overloaded, more burdened and taking more calls than they can handle sometimes.”

Diss and the board agreed to phase out a few corrections officers through attrition and rolled the budgetary savings into patrol. Eventually, the funds were there to hire Goetz and five other officers, including Andrew Damron.

“Ever since I was young, probably just out of elementary school, I knew I wanted to do something in law enforcement,” said Damron, who counts many family members in the field including former deputy and Utica Police Chief Rod Damron, a distant cousin. “I’m loving it so far.”

Undersheriff David Ortiz said he’s pleased with the current crop of recruits and is excited to welcome four more in 2026. Even with some expected attrition, La Salle County will still have a net gain in its patrol corps.

“We don’t get the turnouts like we have in the past,” Ortiz said, acknowledging room for more applicants, “but we are getting some really good quality persons applying.”

Other law enforcement chiefs agreed that the volume and quality of candidates have improved.

Peru Police Chief Sarah Raymond said her department recently hired two off our eligibility list and still has a dozen waiting in the wings.

“I think recruiting has come around – still not where we would like to see it – but definitely on the upswing,” Raymon said. “We will be testing again sometime in the spring and I believe there will be quite a few great candidates.”

Mendota Police Department is now fully staffed – an academy graduate recently joined the force – and Chief Jason Martin said he has an eligibility list of seven with “a couple lateral candidates reach out about either testing or applying for us.”

“I think it is trending up,” Martin said of recruitment, “but still a ways to go.”

Capt. Marc Hoster of the Ottawa Police Department said that, as of February 2025, the eligibility list included 21 candidates who scored above the required 70% threshold.

That represents a slight increase from the 18 candidates on the 2023 eligibility list, he said, and a “significant” increase from the 2021 list, which included only eight candidates.

“One ongoing challenge affecting hiring is the limited availability of Police Academy spots for new recruits. As of Dec. 23, 2025, the next available opening at the Police Training Institute in Champaign begins on August 30, 2025, with the academy running for 14 weeks. From a staffing standpoint, the department is currently short one officer.

“We are accepting lateral transfer applications and anticipate hiring a replacement officer in February 2026, based largely on academy availability and scheduling constraints.”