Harwood Heights, Illinois Speed Traps

Police will sit in the Store lot and radar check north bound traffic. When they get somebody the usual practice is to pull behind them at the light, wait until they cross the street into Chicago, and then pull a pursuit (into another jurisdiction) and ticket.

Police hide in grocery store lot. Usually behind trees , looking for North bound traffic. 30 m.p.h. zone after a long curve . Speed limit is 30 , will ticket at 35.

Oak Park has a golf course all along one side of this stretch of road, and a quiet residential community on the other. There are no stop-signs and it is very easy to speed here and not be aware. Well, the cops are aware and they hide down the little sidestreets all the time. There are a few schools and churches on that side of the street as well, and you can see the policecars patiently waiting in the parkinglots of these establishments waiting to poach the speeders. Personally, I think the Harwood Heights police need to spend more time inside the Church and not just in the parking lot!

Police sit on one of the many sidestreets running perpendicular to Harlem Avenue usually on the west side of Harlem. I believe they are taking radar or looking for other moving violations or possibly DUI drivers. I have seen on a couple of occasions in the early morning hours police giving field sobriety tests. I think that it is good to keep the drunks off the street, but I don’t think they should pull you over for speeding unless it is really excessive, especially at 2am when nobody is on the road anyway.

There is a cop sitting at the Butera parking lot off of Nagle. He is there usually in the morning and late at night. Nagle has a Golf course on one side and no side streets on the other so it’s easy to speed while the speed limit is 30 mph. Be careful!