Watch: Naperville Safety Strategies with Police Chief Jason Arres

In this interview, Naperville Police Chief Jason Arres sits down with Dan Firks — Founder & CEO of the Dan Firks Team at Coldwell Banker Real Estate Group, who runs Naperville.com’s Living in Naperville series — to explain why Naperville consistently ranks among the safest cities of its size, which crimes officers actually see most often, and the simple 9 PM Routine that protects homes and cars. The conversation also covers how residents can spot scams, where to meet safely for online-marketplace sales, and what families can do about online safety for kids and teens.

Read the full guide: Is Naperville Safe? A Complete Guide to Crime, Police, and Community Safety →

Video Transcript

Introduction & Why Naperville Stays Safe

Dan Firks: Welcome to this episode of Living in Naperville. Today I have the honor of interviewing Chief of Police Jason Arres. Let’s go inside and see what he has to say.

Dan Firks: Chief, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us today. I appreciate that. And we just want to get to know a little bit about yourself, a little bit more about the police department here in Naperville. So, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Chief Jason Arres: Thanks, Dan, and thanks for having me. Super excited to be here with you today. So, a little bit about me — I grew up locally, next door in Woodridge, attended high school in the area, college in the area where I got my bachelor’s in math. I met my wife at college, still happily married, or at least I am — 22 years later. Thank you, thank you. I have two beautiful daughters, one in high school and one in middle school. But really, you know, what we’re here talking about today is me as the police chief. So, this is my 24th year with the Naperville Police Department. I’ve been blessed to serve in a lot of different roles here, from undercover detective to an intelligence detective, the SWAT team, held many different supervisory positions, and for the last four years now, I’ve been your and the community’s chief of police.

Dan Firks: Oh, we know that Naperville is consistently ranked as one of the best places to live. And by Niche, we just won that award again. So, what role would you say the police department for safety helps Naperville get to that level of being number one?

Chief Jason Arres: Well, you know, I’m going to give you the selfish answer that it has a lot to do with it, but I think when you look through it, to have one of the best communities to raise a family, to live in, to grow in, you have to be a safe city. And we are also consistently ranked one of the safest cities for a town our size. So, yes, our men and women that are out there on the street patrolling this city, maintaining a visible presence, following up on crimes that occur — ’cause while we would love to say we have zero crimes, there is a thing: we are a low-crime city, but not a no-crime city. So the police department has a huge role in that, for what I’ve talked about. But I also like to give our residents credit, because a safe city isn’t just how good your police department is — it’s how engaged your community is. And that’s something that makes Naperville very special. We have a very engaged community that has high expectations for all of us, regardless of what our role is within the city. But they want a safe city. So what does that mean? They call 911 when they see suspicious activity or criminal activity afoot. They keep us informed of things going on in and around their neighborhood, their business community, etc. So, there’s a lot of things that go into a safe city. But, if we’re going to get back to your original question — what does it take to be one of the best cities to raise a family, or be in the police department — safety in general has a huge role in that.

Dan Firks: I appreciate that. And you mentioned the community is always involved, which is a great asset to have. What are some ways that the city or community can get involved? Are there any apps that they can follow? How can the city help the police department? What platforms you speak?

Chief Jason Arres: Oh, that’s a great question. I love to really promote our social media, because as many users and people as we have subscribe, it’s still not enough, especially for a town our size. So we regularly put stuff out on Facebook — the police department does have a Facebook page. I have an Instagram page. We have an X account. We have a system called Naper Notify, where residents can sign up for different notifications — public safety notifications being one of them, but many other types of notifications — where when something major is going on in the city or there’s major events, the city will send you communications proactively on that.

Dan Firks: And I do have that on my phone, by the way. So I do get notified.

Chief Jason Arres: Excellent. Good job. Naper Notify. Correct — it is Naper Notify. Very good. And now, what I also think is a very underutilized tool that I’ve really tried to promote for the last few years, that I was a part of starting up, is — I’m a big believer in transparency. And one of the big questions we would always get for years, especially from prospective home buyers, is, “Hey, I’m thinking of moving to this neighborhood. What’s crime like in this neighborhood, or what is police activity?” And it’s a very easy thing to see. So, there is a public safety incident map that we have available to our residents — you don’t even need to sign up for that. If you search “Naperville Police public safety incidents,” you can go online, search that up, and you can see all the calls we’ve been responding to, or being proactive in, in and around our neighborhoods.

Dan Firks: Do you happen to know what that site is so we can share that with the audience?

Chief Jason Arres: I—

Dan Firks: Okay.

Chief Jason Arres: Online, I don’t. But if you search “Naperville Police Public Safety Incident Map” in a Google search, it’ll pop right up there for you and it’ll take you right to our page.

Dan Firks: Perfect. That makes it nice and easy for our audience.

Chief Jason Arres: Yes, it does.

Dan Firks: So, check it out, guys. Chief, tell me, what are the most common crimes here in Naperville that we have?

Most Common Crimes & Spotting and Avoiding Scams

Chief Jason Arres: I really appreciate that, and it really is another advertisement to how safe we are. What I’m happy to report is we don’t have a lot of violent crimes that occur in Naperville. Most of the crimes that occur fall into one of two categories: crimes against property, or financial crimes. So, I want to start with the financial crimes one, because that’s really taken off the last few years, where people are being heavily scammed in a lot of different ways. To the tune of — last year, this community lost over $5 million in financial loss, based on different types of scams: people impersonating people, whether that’s the government, or these toll-way scams that are out there. So, it’s—

Dan Firks: Toll-way scam. Tell me a little bit about that.

Chief Jason Arres: So, there’s texts or emails that go around and say that you’re late on your tolls and you should be paying your fines and you need to click on this link. So it’s very, very important to be aware that government and state agencies are not going to text you with fine issues or say you have a warrant via text message or email — there’s other means of communication. My, my safety advice to our community, okay — whenever in doubt about something, whether it’s a scam or not, reach out to us. There’s a ton of information about common fraud and scams that are out there on our website. However, you can call us at any time to vet something. I’d much rather our residents or our community members call us to make sure they’re not about to fall victim to a scam, to make sure something’s legitimate, than potentially lose tens, hundreds, or millions of dollars of their hard-earned money out there.

So, outside of the financial scams, the next biggest crime we have, which is extremely preventable — one of the biggest crimes — is burglary to motor vehicles. So, on average, we have a lot — sometimes a hundred, sometimes multiple hundred car break-ins. The reason I say it’s so preventable is, generally on average, about 90% of our car burglaries are unlocked vehicles. On top of that, many of our stolen vehicles — especially in our residential neighborhoods — are unlocked vehicles with keys left inside. Totally preventable crime. And if we would just lock our cars at night, we would stop this from occurring. So, we have something we recommend called the 9 PM Routine.

Dan Firks: Okay?

Chief Jason Arres: And we, we, we recommend that for a reason, because it’s very easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of life. And a simple thing, like leaving your garage door open or leaving a vehicle open — all those things make you vulnerable to being criminalized, right? Victimized. So, in the 9 PM Routine, we recommend checking all your doors, to include your vehicles, to make sure you’re locked. Is your garage door down? Keep your outside lights on at night — that’s a huge deterrent. Simple things — lock your windows on the first floor. Simple things that our residents can take to be vigilant about protecting themselves or their families to prevent victimization. So, between the online scams, car burglaries, and probably the last one would be our theft from businesses — so, retail theft, whether that’s our big box stores, without naming any of them, but the big box stores are very victim to theft, grocery stores, places of that nature — generally theft from businesses. So that would be our top three: fraud scams, car burglaries, and thefts.

The 9 PM Routine

Dan Firks: And like we were talking about, like the car theft and the home theft — all we have to do is just take a second before breaking down for the night, like you said, the 9 PM rule. Just lock it up.

Chief Jason Arres: Yes. We live in a lot of the safest areas, but still bad things happen even in the safe areas. And all we have to do is one little extra step. That’s it.

Dan Firks: Yeah. And then with the online burglaries or online theft, just a phone call — that’s a one-minute phone call that could save a lot of hassle.

Chief Jason Arres: Oh, and a lot of money.

Dan Firks: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with the audience.

Chief Jason Arres: Yeah. Yeah.

Safe Places for Online-Sale Meetups

Dan Firks: Okay, Chief, I have a question for you. When I pulled up today for our interview, I noticed some signs out front that said “internet pickup.” I had no idea what that is, and I have a feeling it has something to do with technology. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

Chief Jason Arres: Yeah, absolutely. I’m so glad you asked that, because as much as we market those spaces, people still aren’t using them the way we’d like to see them used. “I’ve never seen it before, I had no idea, I’m like, what is this?” So, whether it’s Facebook Marketplace — I’m dating myself here — Craigslist, any online purchase platform that you may use, a lot of folks will meet up at people’s houses, or they’ll meet them in a business location. I will tell you, and this isn’t to scare everybody, but we have had people robbed, or had their items stolen from them, on these meetups — and not just necessarily in Naperville, but we’ve seen that trend across the country. So, what we’ve done is we’ve designated parking spots in our lot. We’re safer to be than — to exchange cash and goods at a police department. So, the nice thing is you can do that in our lobby, should you wish, if the item is small enough where you can bring it into the lobby and meet the person there, or if it’s too big to lug around or whatever, we have those spots that are there for that. If somebody’s parking in them, you can park around there. And we have cameras on those spots, so it’s under video surveillance — not to the point where we’re watching it 24/7, but god forbid should somebody try to do something, or take your goods without paying for them in the lot and take off, we’re going to be able to get them, based on license plates, things like that right there. And it just gives you that extra sense of security. And I will say — I’ll never say anything is 100%, this job has taught me never to speak in absolutes — but I can say there’s a very, very, very strong possibility that if someone was going to scam you, that scam is not going to occur right in front of the police department. They’re not showing up. So it’s another level of safety you can feel, that you’re doing it in front of your local police department, or inside your local police department, when our lobby’s open from 7:00 in the morning till 8:00 at night. But in either case, a lot of people are thinking about doing bad things.

Dan Firks: I think that’s — I think that’s brilliant. Thank you. You’re on that. How long have you had that here now?

Chief Jason Arres: A couple of years now.

Dan Firks: Hopefully you’re right.

Chief Jason Arres: Well, yeah. So, I — I wish we could say we’re the originators, but we definitely saw other departments doing it and glommed onto that trend.

Dan Firks: I think it’s great, that’s very good. Chief, tell me — you know, there’s a lot of families here in Naperville, a lot of kids. What would you recommend for online safety for children?

Online Safety for Kids and Teens

Chief Jason Arres: Don’t give cell phones to your kids.

Dan Firks: Okay.

Chief Jason Arres: All right, so we’re going to get past that, because you know that that is always my first. Be very deliberate about what age you decide it’s okay to give your children that device. Now, the next part is, make sure you lock it down, because kids are kids, and kids are still formulating what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s good, what’s bad. They shouldn’t have the freedoms that come with a cellular phone. So, I’ll give you some tips that my kids have to follow, even: there’s no chatting in these online games that they like to play. Even simple kids’ games — the Roblox of the world, or Cookie Run Kingdom — all these games have chats in there. There’s zero reason to let your kids chat with people in this software, because there could be people impersonating a kid that are 50, 60, 70 — I guess the age doesn’t matter, the point is you could have adults in these chat rooms trying to convince kids to do improper things. So, it should stay out of the chat rooms. If you give them social media apps, you should have all their logins and passwords. You should be able to see everything they’re posting, all their messages that are coming in. You really want to lock that device down, because again, unfortunately — and this isn’t to scare everybody, because not everything is bad — but we have to be vigilant, especially with our children, who are some of the most vulnerable population out there. So, if you’re going to take that step to give your kids these online tools, make sure you’re locking them down and regularly checking them. So, if a child goes to school, same thing — that 9 PM Routine that we talked about earlier — have a routine where you’re telling them, “I’m checking your text messages, I’m checking these messages, I am checking your phone on a daily basis.” So, to make sure they’re not doing anything they shouldn’t be, or someone’s not trying to reach out to them who shouldn’t be. And it’s — it’s like anything in life, you need to be engaged with your kids. And if you’re going to give them a huge responsibility that comes nowadays with basically a mobile computer in their hands, you have to take on the responsibility that comes with monitoring it. You are not overstepping — even if it’s a 16-year-old, you’re not overstepping your kid. That type of freedom — there’s a reason they’re still kids and they’re living at home. Yes, our teenagers are super smart, but in these formative years, which they’re still going through in high school, you need to be a huge part of their online life and make sure that they understand the responsibility, and they understand that people will still try to victimize them.

Dan Firks: And I think it’s important that the parents start in the very beginning stages, because then the kids expect that, and they don’t know any better — because from the very beginning, I’m getting this: this is how it’s going to play out, this is how we’re going to check it to make sure everything’s okay, and make sure your phone doesn’t get hacked — just so they don’t know, just to be informative and let them know, because then they can’t get mad at you.

Chief Jason Arres: Yeah, I think that’s such an excellent point you make, and I think it’s society as a whole, right? No matter what role you have, you have to set expectations. And if you try to set expectations after you’ve already allowed certain things to happen, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a parenting situation or a business situation — it’s hard to get that ground back, as opposed to, “Let’s think this out.” So, you bring up a plan: we’re going to give them this, here are the expectations we have for your device. So, to your point, it’s not a surprise when you’re asking to see the—

How the Community Can Help

Dan Firks: Anything else that you’d like to let our audience know about the police department? Anything coming up? Anything we can do to help support the police department? Anything you would like the audience to know?

Chief Jason Arres: Yeah, I will continue our “see something, say something” campaign. There are still too many times where I hear, “Hey, Chief, we saw this, but we didn’t want to bother your folks,” or, “You guys have better things to do.” Listen, I said this — you’ve probably heard me say it — we are paid to be bothered. If you see suspicious activity, there’s nothing illegal about calling the police. If it turns out to be nothing, that’s great, that’s okay. But you may have found someone casing your neighbor’s home for a burglary. You may see someone getting ready to do something nefarious. Listen, police officers do develop experience and are able to put some things together that maybe you wouldn’t, because you’re not in law enforcement, but a lot of what we have is just — if it doesn’t look right and it doesn’t seem right, it’s probably not right. We aren’t born with extra spidey senses or anything like that. So, if something doesn’t feel right to you — especially because, for most of the calls we get, no one knows their neighborhood better than those that live in it — so if something seems out of sorts, you’ll know better than we do. And same thing for your businesses in town, or what’s going on around your businesses. So, you see suspicious activity, you call us. Again, if it’s nothing, great — but if it’s something, you may really save someone’s day.

Dan Firks: Again, great.

Chief Jason Arres: Yep.

Final Thoughts

Dan Firks: Chief, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day. We really appreciate it. And we will see you around town.

Chief Jason Arres: All right, Dan. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Dan Firks: Take care.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Living in Naperville. Chief was great, and he had a lot of good information. And what I took to heart is: see something, say something. See you around town. Be sure to like and subscribe to get updates on our next episode. And for all your real estate needs, please visit naperville.com.

Read the full guide to safety in Naperville →