'I'm No Vigilante,' Tinley Park Mayor Says Of Calumet City Incident

TINLEY PARK, IL — Another south suburban mayor is asking state officials to investigate Tinley Park Mayor Mike Glotz after accusing Glotz of abusing his power during a search for his daughter's stolen car in January.

Calumet City Mayor Thaddeus Jones said Glotz came into the city Jan. 10 with a baseball bat and two Tinley Park police officers in tow after the car was stolen earlier that night outside the Even Hotel.

While Jones criticized the search as an irresponsible overstep, Glotz said he didn't ask for any special treatment and was simply trying to recover his daughter's car.

According to Glotz, the mayor began searching for the stolen Toyota immediately after his daughter called to tell him the car had been taken right out of the hotel parking lot. After contacting Toyota support, Glotz said he began monitoring a GPS tracker that was inside his daughter's car.

A few hours after the car was taken, the tracking application showed the car had stopped outside a Calumet City home.

From there, Glotz said he took his daughter's spare keys to the address with the hope of giving them to Calumet City police to help find the car by using its alarm. During the half-hour drive to the nearby town, Glotz called Calumet City police to let them know he was on his way and asked them to meet him at the location.

In a social media statement from Jones, the Calumet mayor said Glotz ordered two officers to meet him at the home and even requested helicopter support for the search.

A Chicago Police Department helicopter was dispatched to the south suburbs that night, but Tinley Park police said the helicopter came as a routine response to the radio dispatch of a stolen car, not because it was ordered by any one person.

According to Glotz, Tinley Park police accompanied the mayor to the Calumet City address because the search for the stolen car was a "Tinley Park investigation." Police said another car, a Jaguar, had also been stolen outside the hotel the same night by the same suspects.

The case also had an Orland Park connection, police said, since security footage showed a man exit a BMW and drive away with Glotz's daughter's car. The same BMW was reported stolen from an Orland Park dealership the day before.

Because the crime happened in Tinley Park, Glotz said Tinley Park police were within their rights to pursue the car into Calumet City.

"Tinley Park officers were dispatched to the scene to see if they could recover the vehicle. This is a routine procedure," Glotz wrote in an email to Patch. "Tinley Park works in collaboration with other departments to recover stolen vehicles. This is vital because stolen cars can move from town to town very quickly and cross multiple jurisdictions."

According to police records, Tinley Park officers also went to Calumet Park and Dolton locations in search of one victim's phone and purse, which were sold at stores in those towns.

Jones, however, told the Daily Southtown that the village should have forwarded tracking information on the car to Calumet City police and let them handle the search while it was within city limits.

In the end, Glotz's daughter's car was not found at that address, but instead at another lot in Calumet City a few days later.

"I am totally appalled at the blatant abuse of power and the 'extremely wild' tactics of Mayor Glotz," Jones said in a written statement to the Daily Southtown. "Just imagine if I as the first African American Mayor of Calumet City was to show up at a Tinley Park home with two baseball bats along with two Calumet City Police officers. It would make national headlines."

In response to Jones's comments on the baseball bat, Glotz said he keeps a bat and mitts in the back of his car for frequent trips to the batting cages with his son. The bat stayed underneath the back seat of his car during his entire time in Calumet City, according to Glotz.

"I'm no vigilante," he said. "I never even left the car."

Dispatch calls provided from Calumet City officials detail a back and forth between Tinley Park and Calumet City dispatchers, with frequent updates on where Glotz was while he attempted to narrow down the car's location.

Jones told Patch he hopes to bring the entire situation before Illinois State Police officials so they can investigate the incident. Glotz said the situation was never meant to be a political statement or abuse of power.

"To be clear, I never requested or asked for any special treatment," Glotz said. "I was there as a citizen and as a father, and it never even crossed my mind to contact Mayor Jones."

According to Glotz, contacting the mayor for his own benefit would have been an abuse of power in itself. Both Jones and Glotz attended a legislative session in Springfield last month, during which Glotz reported seeing Jones and being introduced as a "good friend"of the representative. Glotz said the incident never came up during his visit.

"This happened three months ago, mind you," Glotz said. "If Mayor Jones had an issue with my actions that night, he made no mention of it until this week."

Illinois State Police did not immediately respond to Patch's request for comment on Glotz's actions or questions on whether they've opened an investigation.