At one time MANY years ago when I tested for the ISP I was told that they assigned troopers to specific counties, mostly due to the need for court assignments and paperwork for the specific county of assignment. Once assigned to a county the trooper had to live within that county or a specific distance from it. Since the class I was offered in only had openings for Districts 2, 3 and 4, I turned down the offer as I wanted to move downstate (preferably District 8 where I had family property I could build on in Varna). By the time a class for other Districts opened up I was firmly ensconced where I ended up for 30+ years.
These days I don't know if this is the case or not. Is it? Are Troopers assigned to specific Counties? How does this affect District assignments these days?
The Illinois State Police is an Agency of perpetual change. It is not uncommon for changes to be implemented with a change in Directors or upper command. It is fairly common to reverse course to doing the way things were done in the past. The bureaucratic maze never seems to get smaller and the trend is to control everything from the top is very prevalent.
If you look at the newly implemented Troop boundaries, they are very similar to the way the ISP districts were configured prior to getting sub post or additional districts. I remember when there were thirteen districts but the current use of STARCOM and IWIN with CAD, I could see fewer geographic Troops/Districts. One thing which is unlikely to change is the geographic size of the State of Illinois. With limited man power resources it becomes difficult to staff large geographical areas. Going to larger geographic area Troops results in longer commute times for travel to assigned patrols or assignments. Additionally the time required to travel to distant counties for court or assignment affects available manpower and response times.
The State of Illinois is not known for utilizing resources wisely and political decisions rarely have the best interest of the citizens as the goal.
The policy whether written or utilized within a work group frequently changes as to required residency and the distance to your work assignment. The current situation is very difficult because of the Safe-T law, politics and proposed structural changes within the ISP. There are so many unknowns for the employees no wonder there is very little information known to the public.
