Maple Park police chief planning for May retirement

MAPLE PARK – After 40 years of public service in Kane and DeKalb counties, Maple Park Police Chief Michael Acosta plans to retire in May.

Acosta, 61, joined the Maple Park force as its leader in 2009 after in 31 years of work at the Kane County Sheriff’s Office, he said.

Under Acosta, the Maple Park police raised more than any department in the state in the Torch Run for Special Olympics fundraiser in two consecutive years, and mended what he felt was a disconnect between the community and local law enforcement.

Family matters, however, have encouraged Acosta to announce the retirement he had been considering for the past few months.

“My mother-in-law has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and is not expected to live long,” Acosta said. “So I started thinking you need to start enjoying life before your life is taken from you, because you don’t know how long it’s going to be.”

Acosta’s last day with the department will be May 14. His time as police chief added an element of structure to the community, Village President Kathy Curtis said.

“Chief Acosta brought professionalism and stability to the Maple Park Police Department,” she said. “I think he’ll be best known for the relationships he built with the residents and the businesses in Maple Park.”

From his first day on duty, Acosta’s energy was focused on repairing what he saw as a fractured relationship between the department and the community, starting with its children.

“The kids, when we first came in here, there was like a wall between us,” Acosta said. “Now, I have kids stop in my office and there will be five or six bikes outside stopping in to talk to the chief or the police officers.”

Acosta packed a room at Village Hall with arcade games, couches, and a popcorn machine, so he could host a regular movie night with the community’s children and the police department.

The spot also served as a safe alternative for kids who might otherwise find themselves running with the wrong crowd, Acosta said.

“If we don’t reach our kids at an early age like about 10 or 11, somebody else on the street will and that’s where the gangs come in and that kind of negative influence comes into their lives,” he said. “It’s not a problem in Maple Park, but to avoid that, that’s what we do. You want to get your children active in something soon.”

The hangout is supervised by volunteers and open to the public from 6 to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

Although Acosta hopes to spend his retirement sleeping into the early afternoon at his Sugar Grove home, he plans to stay involved with one of his favorite organizations.

“He brought community pride to the community by working with the Special Olympics,” Curtis said.

In both 2013 and 2014 Maple Park took first place in the state by raising the most money for the organization.

“I have a small police department,” Acosta said. “I’m the only full-time guy and I have seven part-timers. We’re not a 24-hour police department, and we only have 1,400 people here in this town, yet in 2014 we raised the most [money] that they’d ever seen.”

As Acosta and his wife, Karen Acosta, prepare to settle into retirement with each other, the Village Board is in search of a new police chief, someone they hope to promote internally, Curtis said.

The board will decide by it’s Feb. 2 meeting if they will begin an outside search.

Acosta has just a few words of advice for whomever the board chooses.

“The community will tell you what their main complaint is,” he said. “People wave at you now. They like the police here.”