Site Visit

For my agency report, I chose to go to the Minooka Police Department and do an interview with a juvenile police officer. I was able to do an interview with police Sergeant Gary Fiedler. Sergeant Fiedler has been an officer with the Minooka Police Department for 19 years.

When I went to the police department I was originally supposed to meet with Chief Doug Hayes. Unfortunately he was busy, so therefore I was not able to receive any information about the budget or get an overview of all the officers that he has hired. Sergeant Fiedler believed that the mission of the Minooka Police Department was changing all the time. Everyone has different goals that they are trying to accomplish, so the department needs a mission statement that is flexible to the goals. Fiedler believes that the biggest things with the mission statement is being able to incorporate community police and having the police officers and the community work as a team rather than police as enforcers.

Sergeant Fiedler is a high school graduate. He has attended junior college and then went on to Western Illinois University where he received a bachelor degree. He also takes more and more classes every year so that he can continue his education. Although it is required for employees to only have a high school education, more and more people are coming in with bachelor degrees.

As a juvenile officer, I asked what Sergeant Fiedler typically does. He said that as a juvenile officer, it is his responsibility to make sure that all of the juvenile’s rights are being granted. They are for the most part given the same rights as an adult. However, police are required to attempt to contact the juvenile’s parents. Juveniles are read their Meranda Rights just like adults. The only thing about juveniles is that juveniles are required to be detained separated from other adults. One question that I was curious about when it came to arresting juveniles was how he felt about it. Fiedler says that he has no problem with actually arresting and handcuffing a juvenile offender. However, the officers need to use their own descretion when determing what is appropriate. Sometimes maybe all it will take is for the juvenile to ride in the car next to the officer. Fiedler says this because actually arresting a juvenile can be a very traumatic experience and he does not want to cause any problems when it comes to the juvenile’s psyche. Fiedler understands that everyone makes mistakes and that the consequences need to be appropriate.

One big thing that I wanted to talk about was whether he believed that it was more the parents or the peers that were causing delinquent behavior. Sergeant Fiedler believes that it is both. People learn what they know and what they see. Some juveniles grow up in homes where there is a lot of fighting and commotion all the time. Therefore, this is all they know, so they tend to repeat the behavior. There is also the