Elburn Police Department swears in new full-time officer

The Elburn Police Department swore in a new full-time police officer at the Village Board meeting July 15.

Maurivio Silvestri will fill a spot vacated more than a year ago, completing the full-time force of 12, including Chief Nick Sikora.

For a variety of reasons, officers who had been offered the position within the past year did not work out. One decided to accept a job with another department, one completed police academy training but did not make it through the field training program and one who was certified through the academy decided not to leave his position.

Sikora said many police departments of Elburn’s size have a more difficult time attracting sworn officers who usually end up going to work for larger departments.

While not a sworn officer, Silvestri joins the department with an associate’s degree from Waubonsee Community College in criminal justice and experience working for the college as a police cadet.

Silvestri’s start date was July 17. He will complete several comprehensive training programs, beginning with in-house training to learn the department’s policies and procedures.

Given that he passes a state-mandated physical agility test, he then will begin a 16-week police academy training course in August to graduate in December.

The police academy curriculum, set by the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, consists of topics such as traffic law, criminal law, firearms, defensive tactics, ethics, investigative procedures, cultural diversity and community policing.

Once he graduates from the academy, Silvestri will come back to the department to begin 16 weeks of field training, where he will be observed and graded on a daily basis.

Handling service calls, controlling and defusing situations, making the decision to arrest and determining what charge to make and handling a vehicle crash are skills that he will need to demonstrate before going on patrol on his own.