Larry Lapp, 62, oversees a police force of nearly 25. The officers come from law enforcement backgrounds, he says, and function much like the police officers of a municipality do.
But, in some ways, what these officers do is a bit different. Residents of Aurora, North Aurora and Montgomery might see them patrolling their local parks, enforcing the Fox Valley Park District’s sunrise and sunset hours or its prohibition on building fires in undesignated areas, for example.
Lapp, the Fox Valley Park District’s Chief of Police and Public Safety, said when he arrived at the district in 2022, it had two full-time officers, and a few part-time ones. Now, they’re up to seven full-time and 16 part-time officers.
But with that expansion came a space issue, which the park district has remedied by a recently-completed renovation at the district’s Cole Center Administrative Office at 101 W. Illinois Ave. in Aurora.
The park district manages 172 parks, according to its website. It also oversees miles of trails, three community centers, two outdoor pools, a sports complex and other facilities, Executive Director Jennifer Paprocki said.
Along with managing the upkeep and operations of its parks and facilities, the district also does educational programming. Its police department has jurisdiction over all of the park district’s land and facilities and enforces its ordinances governing park use, per the district’s website, along with providing contracted services to the city of Aurora at Phillips Park, which is a city-run park.
The Fox Valley Park District has been around since 1947, and its police force was founded in 1951, park district officials said. Its aim is to “provide Fox Valley Park District guests with a safe and enjoyable environment and experience connected with use of trails, parks, programs and facilities offered by the district,” and to “create a positive effect on the lives and well-being of our community members and afford more opportunities for stewardship and accepting responsibility for the protection and use of public resources.”
When Lapp joined the park district’s police department in 2022, he said he felt it “didn’t have enough officers to really patrol the district.”
But, as it expanded its ranks to the numbers it has today, the space available became insufficient for its operations, Lapp said. So he drew up a plan for a renovation of the administrative building that used a portion of its storage space to expand the police department’s offices.
Work on architectural plans began last summer, Lapp said, and construction on the project started this past winter. The renovation is now complete, and, as of Thursday, park district officials said the police force had started to use the new space.
The park district is partially funded by property taxes, Paprocki said, along with fees for park district programs and grants it receives. Capital projects — including the new police facilities — are funded by bond issuances.
The police department project came in at about $660,000, according to Paprocki. The newly-renovated space includes a training room for police, lockers for weapons and other equipment, designated space for police interviews and additional office space — much of it in response to issues with the force’s current operations.
For example, until now, police officers were using a conference room when they brought a suspect in for questioning, Paprocki said.
“They’re like coming in through the front with, you know, patrons out there and everything and with staff,” she said. “There was no real secure or private area to … do an interview or even for them (the police department) to have their meetings.”
And its previous weapon storage “wasn’t really secure,” Lapp said, because the lockers were among those for the park district’s other employees. Now, there is a police-specific locker room.
As the district hired more officers, Lapp said the goal of the park district police — which it has since reached — was to ensure it had shifts covered from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. It doesn’t have an overnight shift because district parks and facilities are closed at night, he noted.
In addition to its sworn officers, the district employs 20 park service officers, uniformed civilians who patrol facilities like the district’s pools and its sports complex. Some of them are college students, Lapp said, who plan to go into law enforcement.
Along with its size and number of facilities that need patrolling, Paprocki said that part of the benefit of having an in-house police force is that its officers have expertise in the rules governing the parks.
“We kind of have our own set of rules,” Paprocki said. “For example, parks are open from sunrise to sunset. You’re not going to have that, necessarily, in a parking lot or something that’s not ours.”
The police officers’ duties include what the park district considers “proactive” tasks — wellness checks, for example, and patrolling district facilities — along with answering calls dispatched to them for issues on the properties they own, Paprocki said. The park district force sometimes assists other police agencies with calls, officials said.
“We’re not out there to catch people doing bad things,” Paprocki said. “What we’re trying to do is prevent it from happening.”
The district’s police do enforce park rules, Lapp noted, like not drinking alcohol in the parks. But he said officers “try to come up with creative solutions, instead of necessarily just arresting somebody or citing somebody.”
That might look like connecting a homeless individual who had been staying on property they oversee with a community organization which can help them, Lapp said.
“Traditional police departments, they have the ability to do proactive patrol, too, and they do it,” Lapp noted. “But, sometimes because of the number of calls they receive, that’s kind of limited.”
That’s also part of the reason the park district has its own police force, he noted, saying it’s a “pretty unrealistic expectation” for the Aurora police, for example, to patrol all the district’s parks and facilities given its other responsibilities.
And part of the approach of the park district police, he said, is just being around.
“I hear people all the time, when I’m patrolling the bike trails especially, thanking us for being present, being visible,” Lapp said. “(It) makes people feel safer.”
It also has officers stationed at district facilities at closing time when they’re able to, Lapp said, to help district employees feel safe going out to their cars.
Now, with a new space to file reports, conduct interviews and train its officers, the park district’s police department is gearing up for summer, which Lapp said is its busiest time.
And Paprocki said the new space will benefit not just park district patrons and the broader community, but the officers who work in it.
“They now have a place where they can actually do their job, instead of having to do reports out in their vehicle, or whatever,” Paprocki said. “I think this is one more way to say, ‘You guys are important enough to us. … You’re helping keep everybody else, including our staff, feel safer.’”