Trustees support expanded Wilmette police force to handle mental health calls, public events and more

As Wilmette police prepare for a significant increase to the size of their station, the department will also soon likely see a notable boost in its staffing.

Wilmette trustees during a special committee of the whole session on Tuesday, March 11, signaled their support for a recommendation to expand the Wilmette Police Department’s staff.

Trustees’ support of the proposal gives village staff direction to prepare a budget ordinance for introduction during the board’s next meeting in early April. Officials could then vote on final approval of that ordinance during their April 25 meeting.

Approval of the recommendation next month would pave the way for the department to hire three new sworn police officers and one social worker.

Wilmette Police Chief Michael Robinson told trustees during the session that the new staff members will create two teams: a neighborhood engagement team and a co-responder team.

The engagement team will include two police officers and the co-responder team will feature one community relations officer and one non-sworn social worker. As part of that team, the social worker and community relations officer would work together as co-responders for calls with a mental health component, village documents say.

Robinson also said the new co-responder team will provide support to schools, houses of worship and businesses.

The two-officer engagement team had previously run as part of the Wilmette Police Department from 2013-2016, per Robinson, who noted it was “very beneficial for the department at that time.” The department, however, was unable to keep it going past 2016 because of a lack of staff, he said.

The Wilmette Police Department has 45 authorized sworn positions, consisting of administration, patrol and investigations positions, Robinson said.

Current staffing levels are “making it difficult to meet the increased public safety needs and expectations of the community,” reads a memo to trustees. Officials also said an “evolution” in community policing needs “has stressed the operations of the department.”

According to the memo, police department staffing levels have remained unchanged since the early 2000s, despite what officials describe as “growing internal and external pressures on the department.”

Some of those “external pressures,” which Robinson detailed during Tuesday’s meeting, include increased expectations for police presence at public events, growing needs from the business community, increased mental health calls for service, and the manner in which crimes are occurring in the Chicago region.

When expanding on those, Robinson noted “the Fourth of July tragedy in Highland Park kind of changed the paradigm of how we look at public events in terms of public safety.

“We have an expectation now to be present in much higher numbers, and more visible, than we ever were in the past,” Robinson added.

Safety concerns in schools have also increased significantly in recent years. Additionally, the department’s one school resource officer is tasked with handling almost 7,000 students in Wilmette across 12 schools.

Economic development throughout Wilmette has also created additional challenges for the department.

“The downtown area is vibrant; it’s much busier now than it ever was in any recent memory, which is great … but it does require more police resources and we should be more visible and more present during these times,” Robinson said.

“The shopping centers on the east and west sides of town are developing and drawing more people to the community, which in turn, has increased demand for police resources,” he added.

A few of the internal pressures Robinson discussed were the continued growth in legal mandates with which the department must comply, the lengthy onboarding process that comes with hiring a police officer, and the limited professional development and advanced opportunities existing in the current structure of the department.

Robinson detailed a series of goals for the new positions, which included an increased capacity to follow-up with victims of crimes, added presence in downtown Wilmette, greater ability to target crime patterns with policing efforts, improved responses to mental health calls, reduced response time for emergency calls and enhancing the ability of the school resource officer.

Wilmette officials started discussions surrounding increasing police staffing levels in November of 2024, Village Manager Michael Braiman said. Those conversations started at the public safety subcommittee of the Village Board.

The initial recommendation called for the addition of five new police staffers but the recommendation was revised after discussions at the committee level, officials said.

Part of the recommendation presented to trustees on March 11 also includes a future proposal of hiring two additional sworn officers that would be assigned to the department’s patrol division.

These two positions are not immediately part of the requested additions that trustees supported on Tuesday but will be considered by the board in the future after evaluating the impact of the four additions.

The memo says that the two additional positions would help the department work toward a reduction in forced overtime.

Trustees unanimously expressed their support for the additions during the meeting.

Kate Gjaja, who is the chair of the public safety committee, said she believes the additions “make a lot of sense.”

“I think this went through a really good process of trustee feedback and feedback from a lot of different sources,” she said. “I think this makes a lot of sense to me to start with this and see how it works and what we’re seeing and if the original recommendation still holds or not.

“I’m really excited about the increase of a social worker and a combined team,” Gjaja continued. “I think that’s a really interesting model that we’re seeing in other places and that I’m excited to pilot in Wilmette if we pass this.”

Village President Senta Plunkett said she feels the additions are “important for our community.”

“We have a great police force now and I can only imagine that it will be great as we continue,” she said.

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