There has been a Kissane on the Brookfield police force for the last 33 years and there might be a Kissane on the force for the next 33 years. This summer long time patrol officer John Kissane retired just about the time his daughter Kathleen was hired.
“They got rid of one Kissane and they got another,” jokes John Kissane.
Kathleen, 24, is proud to be following in her father’s footsteps. She proudly wears the same badge that her father wore.
“He turned it in and they turned around and gave it to me,” she said in a recent interview.
“Hopefully she’ll keep it cleaner than I did,” he said. But the elder Kissane can’t hide his pride in his daughter.
“She’s carrying on a tradition,” he said.
Kathleen Kissane decided by the time she was a teenager that she wanted to be a cop like her father. But she admits that it wasn’t always easy growing up in the same town where her dad patrolled the streets.
“It was difficult because everyone knew my father,” she said. “You couldn’t jaywalk or litter, without someone telling my father. I never did anything wrong so nobody ever saw my name on a roster.”
But she knew she wanted to be a cop.
“I made my mind up a long time ago,” she said.
At Riverside Brookfield High School she was active in Snowball, a group that promotes a lifestyle without drugs or alcohol. Her father taught her how to fire a gun when she was about 18 or 19.
She also followed in her father’s footsteps by attending Western Illinois University and obtaining a bachelor’s degree in law enforcement. She likes the challenge of police work, and the job security.
“Knowing that every day you face a new situation,” she said. “You’re constantly solving problems, helping people and as an additional bonus knowing you’ll always have a job.”
She was working at an Eddie Bauer store in Naperville when she took the patrolman’s test for Brookfield. She wasn’t set on getting a job in her hometown, but it just worked out that way and she is glad it did. “I would have taken a job anywhere to get the experience and the knowledge, the benefits, but it’s a blessing being in Brookfield because half the battle is already won,” she said. “I know the hundred blocks, village ordinances and statutes and the times businesses open and close and the schools.”
But Kathleen Kissane, who has been out on patrol for approximately two months admits that sometimes it can be a challenge to work in a town where so many people, and fellow officers, know her and her family.
“I have dealt with people I went to high school with or know as neighbors,” she said. “It’s not a problem yet and I don’t foresee it to be because I have a pretty good name with the badge. People are respectful of it. It’s Officer Kissane, not Kathleen.”
She says that she knew a few people that she could no longer associate with.
“Some of their activities were questionable,” she said. “They weren’t really friends; they were like high school buddies. I just told them: no more, no more contact.”
Kathleen Kissane is only the second female sworn officer the Brookfield Police Department has ever had. The first was Linda Christeon who was on the force for five or six years in the early to mid 1980s.
Kathleen Kissane is proud to be the second.
“It’s kind of neat to have someone come up to you and say congratulations, you’re the first female officer in a few years,” she said. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like being the only girl in a pack of guys because they kind of watch over me. I like it because now the officers don’t have to worry about searching a female prisoner or arrestee because now I get to do it. That takes an added stress off of them.”
Because many of the officers know her they are willing to help her out although she is careful to say that she doesn’t want any special favors. “Because I know most of the officers they’re just more willing to help me and I like that,” she said. “In fact, I love it.”
But sometimes they tease her although she says no one has played any practical jokes on her, yet. “It’s kind of like a fraternity,” she said. “You have to earn your way in. They made it a little hard. They get in their punches and digs.”
The new Officer Kissane also has a separate place to dress. “I have my own locker room,” she said. “It’s a nice little broom closet.”
She also has her father’s old desk drawers and his old radio.
Kathleen, who lives at home with her parents, talks with her father about her work almost every day. They replay situations and he gives her advice with the wisdom that comes from 33 years of experience.
John Kissane says that the job of a police officer is much harder and more complicated today than when he was hired in February 1984. “When I was hired, the criminal code was the size of a Time magazine,” he said. “Now it’s like a phone book.”
As she was growing up John Kissane did not expect his only daughter to follow in his footsteps, but now that she has he couldn’t be more proud.
“I never gave it much thought when she was a little girl, or even a teenager,” he said. “Right now I’m pretty proud of her. I know what she’s going to have to face. It’s going to be tougher for her generation than it was for mine.”