Police department awarded grant to target retail theft 

Forest Park’s village council approved a $12,758 grant from the Illinois Office of the Attorney General at a council meeting Sept. 9. The grant will give the Forest Park Police Department more resources to investigate and prosecute organized retail theft in town.  

The Organized Retail Theft Crime grant will fund three cameras at a total of $7,758 for the police to photograph evidence recovered from retail thefts. The grant also covers $5,000 of officer overtime pay for police staff to investigate and prosecute retail crime.  

“It would be outside the officers regularly scheduled work day,” said Police Chief Ken Gross. Officers usually have eight-hour shifts, and will now be able to sign up for four-hour overtime shifts to address local retail theft. 

Gross names the Dollar Tree, Walgreens and Walmart as locations with high retail theft in Forest Park. In the next month or two, he is going to start having police patrol the areas around those stores and sit in their parking lots to deter retail theft offenders, and respond quickly when there is a theft. 

Gross said the village applied for the Organized Retail Theft Crime Grant because it was available to help target retail theft, which Forest Park sees regularly at Dollar Tree, Walgreens and Walmart. The “organized” part of the grant’s name doesn’t necessarily carry the connotations that one might expect. 

“It’s probably not organized crime like we think in terms of movies, like Goodfellas,” Gross said. Rather, someone who commits retail theft could sell the items to another reseller. 

“Sometimes the people that are buying stolen goods are using them for nefarious monies that they make for nefarious reasons,” Gross said.   

The grant is expected to extend through June 2025.  

On July 1, the Illinois General Assembly appropriated the Attorney General’s general revenue fund $5 million to fund grants for law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute organized retail crime.  

The village has to submit financial and activity reports every quarter, or risk delaying the grant money or not receiving the funds at all, according to the grant agreement from the office of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.