Terry Gainer looks the part of the state's top cop. He has a commanding gaze, a policeman's erect posture, even the standard moustache.

But he's a cop in more than appearance.

Gainer has spent nearly three decades in law enforcement, working his way up from the streets of Chicago to chief of nearly 2, 000 sworn officers responsible for the safety of the state's roads.

And he has friends and mentors in high places who cannot say enough good things about him — he's sharp, intelligent, ambitious, they say, a man with qualifications, an experienced enforcer of the law.

With his looks and background, he would seem to be a cop's cop, a perfect match for his job as director of the Illinois State Police.

So why are so many troopers so unhappy with State Police Director Terrance W. Gainer? Why does Gainer himself seem at times to be itching to move on? And why does he feel as though he has hit a brass ceiling in Illinois, a block to his continued rise through the ranks of the Edgar Administration, if not elective office?

Highs and lows
Gainer has been State Police director since March 1991, when Gov. Jim Edgar recruited him for what is now an $83, 300-a-year job. He currently oversees some 3, 400 employees and a budget of $245 million. Since then, he has endured highs — his successful handling of security for the World Cup soccer games — and lows — the nightmarish traffic jam on the Edens Expressway when troopers and local police laid siege to an empty Greyhound Bus in search of a murder suspect who was miles away.

But through it all, Gainer has been a loyal team member, following and even going beyond Edgar's orders to all department heads to reduce staff and cut budgets. Not only did Gainer offer his staff the statewide early retirement program backed by the governor's office, he sought and won the governor's permission for a second one — an effort to shrink his department even smaller. Though he took heat from his own troopers for slashing his agency so deeply. Gainer played the good political soldier without any obvious political reward.

Still, his current position represents quite a climb for the 48- year-old Gainer, the sixth of 10 children born to a man who worked as a milkman because he was too short to become a cop. Gainer's family, and the family he married into, has so many members who do police work that it could easily handle the patrol for most small towns. He and his wife Irene, a nurse and lawyer, have six children, and Gainer proudly says one son just became an FBI agent.

To explain his success. Gainer cites a newspaper's description of him that he says has always stuck with him: "For a cop, Terry is almost a classic overachiever."

That was written in 1978, when Gainer was still a Chicago homicide detective. He was a 10-year veteran who had moved from pounding the streets to an inside job. The only reason he was back on the streets was a conversation he had had with his boss, Michael Spiotto, a deputy superintendent who would eventually head the department.

Chicago colleague Dennis Nowicki, now police chief in Charlotte, N.C., recalled the conversation: "Spiotto asked Gainer what he wanted to do with his career. Gainer said, 'I want to be superintendent of police.' And Spiotto replied, 'You'll never be superintendent unless you've been a detective.'" Within a week, Gainer applied to become a detective.

He did not stand still. Gainer attended DePaul University part time to earn a master's degree in public administration in 1976 and a law degree in 1980. He created the Police Department's first law office, negotiated the first contract with the police union, and served as liaison to the office of U.S. Attorney Samuel Skinner.

But Gainer didn't become Chicago police superintendent.

Instead, a political revolution and a new mentor came along. In 1983, Harold Washington, an avowed enemy of the remnants of Richard J. Daley's political Machine, upset the political order by becoming the city's first black mayor. In response, many Democrats jumped ship. At about the same time. Gainer had moved into the orbit of Jeremy Margolis, a voluble, short assistant U.S. attorney fascinated by street police work. Margolis lured Gainer, a lifelong Southwest Side Chicago Democrat, into state government and the Republican Party.

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When Margolis made the leap to state inspector general in 1984, he took Gainer as his deputy. And when Margolis became State Police director three years later, he again tapped Gainer as his second.

Gainer's partisan switch also led to his one shot at elective office: a suicide run for Cook County state's attorney against Richard M. Daley in 1988. (He wasn't the party's first choice — reportedly that was James Montana, a former federal prosecutor and later Edgar's chief legal counsel.) But Gainer gained no apparent political payoff from that sacrifice. After all, there aren't many options for a Republican in a heavily Democratic county.

Following the election. Gainer returned to the State Police, where for the next nine months he says he was a "deputy director without portfolio." When Skinner became secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Gainer wrote him a letter looking for a job. Skinner hired him to head drug enforcement. The job lasted "a whirlwind 19 months," Gainer says.

That all ended when Jim Edgar became governor. Janis Cellini, a member of Edgar's transition team, asked Gainer to take Margolis' old job. Gainer said he was going to turn it down, but a two-hour meeting with Edgar changed his mind.

"When I left the meeting, I didn't know who to call first, my wife Irene or Sam Skinner," Gainer says. "And actually, I think I called Sam Skinner first."

A vision
Gainer returned to Illinois in early 1991, and says he sat down with his deputy directors to create a vision of what the Illinois State Police should be in 1996.

"The vision to me and my staff was pretty clear," he says. "We'd have to be a leaner operation, spend less time and money on the bureaucratic part of the office, maximize the use of a limited number of people and the limited number of dollars that would be thrown our way."

So was born Terry Gainer's five-year plan, which ultimately would shrink the ranks of commanders by a third and the number of troopers by a quarter while saving an estimated $15 million a year. Gainer's plan fit right into the goal of the new Edgar Administration, which was to fight the state's fiscal crisis with employee buyouts and budget cuts.

"We knew it wasn't going to be easy, and that it was going to require a lot of change," Gainer says. "On one of the first

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Gainer wanted to save money by shutting several old headquarters buildings and consolidating some of the 22 police districts dotting the state. But the public and political outcry forced Gainer to scrap that approach.

"I underestimated the rapport that the local communities and the local officers had for these buildings," he says. "In their minds they were thinking, 'If you close the building and consolidate it somewhere else, that would mean abandoning that part of the state.'"

So he went to work internally, reorganizing and reducing the force by merging the department's six divisions into four, eliminating a layer of command officers and their staffs, and inviting older, more expensive veterans to leave through early retirement programs. About 400 sworn officers took him up on the offer.

But once again. Gainer had to scrap what he said was a key part of the original plan he had proposed to Edgar: hiring 50 new troopers each year. Edgar's priority was to hold the line on taxes. "We got caught with some real cash shortfalls," Gainer says. The first new class since 1990 graduated last November. Another will graduate this month.

By squeezing his own staff. Gainer showed he was a team player. In fact, he says if he had to choose between the state's hiring more caseworkers for the Department of Children and Family Services and troopers, he would opt for the DCFS hires. Yet, Gainer's staff reductions carried a price. They jeopardized relations with his troopers, who complained that he had put highway safety on the line.

The budget cuts disturbed most troopers, and outraged some veterans. The harm, they say, was detailed in an auditor general's report in May: Total tickets issued by troopers dropped 12 percent from 1992 to 1994, arrests declined 21 percent and convictions plummeted 36 percent. Meanwhile, with fewer troopers on fewer highways, the average speed has increased, making highways more dangerous. State figures show that traffic fatalities have increased in each of the past two years, reversing the five-year trend of fewer deaths on the road.

Gainer rejects making a link between highway deaths and reduced highway patrols, saying the climb in traffic fatalities is a regional, if not national trend. But he says he's not insensitive to the effects of cutbacks.

"I know it was tough on the troopers on the road," Gainer says. "I went to a lot of district meetings, but I heard it generally more in the Chicago area. There is not a commander who wouldn't say, 'I could use more troops and use them now.'"

Some troopers also complain about Gainer's management-school style, which clashes with their decades-old routines. Gainer argues he has upgraded the Illinois State Police so much that it now sets a national standard with its modernization and restructuring. But some veterans still rankle when he uses the buzzwords "empowerment" and "self-actualization" to describe the new command.

Further, there was a clash over the department's "inspector" position, a special status that can be conferred on officers or civilians in or out of the department. Some troopers complain Gainer uses it to circumvent the merit board, which sets requirements for sworn officers. Inspectors can carry a badge and a gun, and get a pension boost. Gainer appointed some of his top civilian administrative staff inspectors — including the legislative liaison, chief fiscal officer and head of information systems — causing troopers to grumble about cronyism. Even the auditor general's office criticized Gainer for failing to establish appointment standards and training for inspectors.

But he stuck to his guns. He denies he was making his "old buddies" inspectors so they could get better pension benefits — it would take them 20 years to cash in, he says. Besides, he maintains, he had the power to make the appointments and he will stand by them.

Gainer makes no apologies for the way he runs the department, despite the views of some troopers. "They've got to have a bigger vision of it," he says. "I'm confident they're out doing their job, and they've got to be confident my commanders and I are doing our job."

Peaked out
After Edgar's recent re-election, rumors began surfacing that Gainer was about to leave his job. "I did talk to the governor, and he did talk to me about other things," Gainer says, including the position of general counsel to the governor or head of the gaming board. But in the end. Gainer says, he made a two-year commitment to stay on as State Police director.

"The only thing I'm weighing right now is the next two years," he says. "That's the extent of my long-term goals."

His ambition, however, remains strong. He knows some people are happy to reach a certain level. "But there's another group of us who say, 'I've done that, and now I'd like a little bit more responsibility and a little bit bigger challenge,'" he says. "And I still look for that."

Yet, Gainer concedes he may have reached his peak in Illinois. There is no higher law enforcement job. He has tied his star to Jim Edgar, who values him most in his current position.

Further, he has no independent political base on which he can draw. Although he boasts his family and friends — all life- long Democrats — worked hard on his ill-fated run as a Republican against Daley, Gainer acknowledges that his home turf in Chicago's 19th Ward is solidly Democratic.

And few offices where he could use his law enforcement experience are lacking for candidates. His old police colleague Michael Sheehan is entrenched as Cook County sheriff; the Cook County state's attorney's office belongs to Jack O'Malley.

And, of course, he hasn't helped his cause anywhere in the state by undermining his own base among troopers.

When pressed. Gainer admits he has given more than a passing thought to returning to Washington, D.C., where he says he enjoyed his sojourn as the Transportation Department's drug cop. Besides, he says Washington is home to his dream jobs — head of the FBI or the Drug Enforcement Administration.

As he put it, "I'd love to see a Republican back in the White House." 

Tom Brune is a Seattle-based free-lance journalist who writes regularly for the Chicago Tribune. He spent nearly 12 years as a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, where he co-authored articles about the effects of trooper cutbacks on highway safety in Illinois.

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