Demoted Joliet Deputy Chief Got $18K Raise To Retire

JOLIET, IL —Darrell Gavin had a successful tenure as a detective sergeant at the Joliet Police Department, but his last two years as a deputy police chief were not a success. Rather than be demoted down to sergeant in January, Gavin negotiated a $17,688 raise to spike his pension and boost his retirement severance from the city, Joliet Patch found.

Gavin got an 11.5 percent salary increase during his final full week on the job, Joliet Patch confirmed through a series of Freedom of Information Act requests and subsequent interviews with several city officials.

Gavin had been making a deputy chief's salary of $153,817. Joliet let him retire with a final salary of $171,505, Joliet Patch discovered. In addition to the $171,505 salary, Gavin also got $3,080 in annual longevity pay, $6,138 for special holiday pay and $2,100 as his annual court stipend, bringing his total annual compensation to about $182,825.

On Jan. 12, new Joliet Police Chief Dawn Malec issued a memo announcing that Gavin was being demoted back to sergeant, his rank from 2018 before Al Roechner promoted him and made him a trusted confidant within Roechner's upper police command staff.

Gavin's demotion was set to take effect on Jan. 15, which was a Friday.

On Jan. 14, after 22 years of service with the city, Gavin sent Malec an email letting her know he was retiring rather than accepting a demotion.

A Joliet payroll department memo indicates Gavin's $17,688 raise took effect on Monday, Jan. 11, the first day on the job for Joliet's new permanent city manager Jim Capparelli.

During an interview Friday at City Hall, Capparelli told Patch he approved the raise for Gavin in light of the $31,045 raise that outgoing city manager Jim Hock had approved the previous week to convince Gavin's boss, Chief Al Roechner, to retire.

Capparelli told Patch it was his understanding that Gavin had already spoken with Hock about a similar financial arrangement, so he considered it a fairness issue and approved the $17,688 bump in pay, knowing Gavin would retire immediately.

If Hock had not approved the 19.2 percent raise for Roechner the previous week, Capparelli said, he never would have approved the pay increase for Gavin.

"Absolutely not," Capparelli said Friday afternoon. "It was my understanding that Jim Hock verbally represented to (Darrell Gavin) so I abided by that."

Gavin sought the double-digit pay increase because he knew Joliet's police pension system is based on the officer's final salary plus their years of service.

If Gavin had stayed and returned to his old rank of sergeant, his future Joliet police pension would be based on a sergeant's salary, which is much lower than what a deputy chief made.

After 20 years of service, a Joliet officer's pension rate increases by 2.5 percent annually. Gavin's pension should have been 55 percent of what he made as a deputy chief, which was $153,817.

If that were the case, Gavin's starting annual police pension would be about $84,599.
However, by negotiating the 11.5 percent pay increase to $171,505, Gavin was able to spike his Joliet police pension by almost $10,000 annually, to $94,327.

The 11.5 percent salary hike increased Gavin's payout for his unused vacation and sick leave to $66,109. Without the pay hike, Gavin's unused vacation and sick bank payout would be about $6,000 less.

In December 2018, Gavin was introduced to the Joliet City Council as Roechner's new deputy chief of criminal investigations.

By January 2020, the city of Joliet paid for Gavin to attend the FBI National Academy for three months of executive development training, according to Gavin's LinkedIn profile.

Several weeks after Gavin returned from the FBI, Roechner moved Gavin into the role of deputy chief of administration and transferred Marc Reid to deputy chief of investigations and promoted Joe Rosado from lieutenant to deputy chief of operations.

But things did not work out for Gavin in his new role, and Malec, the city's new chief, wanted Gavin to have no part of her upper command staff moving forward in 2021.

In fact, just days before Malec was named Joliet's new chief of police, Jerry Hervey, a Black Joliet community activist, urged city officials to do more than just accept Roechner's departure.

Hervey said Joliet needed to get rid of three of Roechner's deputy chiefs: Gavin, Rosado and Reid. Hervey did not call for the removal of Roechner's fourth deputy chief, Mike Batis.

"As we all know, the chief of police has just resigned, retired, whatever he's done, but there's still some cancer there," Hervey told the Joliet City Council.

"Marc Reid, Joe Rosado and Darrell Gavin all need to be held equally accountable. They were complicit. They misbehaved. They abused the system, and they still need to go, too. The only cure for cancer is to remove all of it. You can't take a piece and leave the rest. So I'm expecting with everything that's going on, you all are taking a step in the right direction, get rid of them."

As of March 1, Reid and Rosado remain on the job with the city of Joliet, while Gavin and Roechner both retired in January.