After 48 years in law enforcement, Jim Hollenbeck has retired. The Marseilles mayor says he wanted to make it fifty years but with the stigma about police officers right now, it’s not worth the risk. He says he started to see a change in how police were looked at before laws that stopped criminal bonds from existing happened, but the Illinois SAFE-T Act was the last straw.
He says when lawmakers want to get rid of qualified immunity, the doctrine that protects police officers from civil lawsuits, it tells him that an officer can do everything right but could still be in trouble. Hollenbeck also says there was a lot of law enforcement training he had to go through.
His last job was working with the Utica Police Department. He first started working with the Marseilles Police Department on Valentine’s Day 1975 and later worked thirty years for the state serving in the Illinois Fire Marshal’s Division.