John Joseph “J.J.” Bittenbinder was a former Chicago police detective and Cook County sheriff’s investigator who became nationally known for dispensing crime prevention tips in seminars and on television.
Bittenbinder, 80, died of natural causes on May 26 at his home, said his wife, Sally. He had been a resident of Argyle, Wisconsin.
Born in Buffalo, New York, and raised in Lincoln Park, Bittenbinder attended DePaul Academy, his wife said. He served in the Marines and then managed a retail store, where he was stabbed four times by a thief who he chased from the store, he told the Tribune in 1993.
Seeking a transfer to a store in a safer neighborhood, Bittenbinder was offered a position in Detroit. Instead, he took the police exam and joined the Chicago Police Department in 1971. Five years later, he passed his detective examination, and after that, he began investigating homicides and other violent crimes, he told the Tribune in 1993.
Bittenbinder investigated many of the city’s major murder cases starting in 1976, and was the department’s liaison to the Illinois attorney general’s office during the 1982 Chicago Tylenol killings.
“I’ve handled triple murders, double murders, and murder-suicides,” he told the Tribune in 1993. “I’ve had ’em stabbed, shot, stomped and strangled. They’ve fallen out of windows and through the ice.”
In 1982, Bittenbinder made his first speech about safety in front of a civic group in the Wrigleyville neighborhood after a serial rapist was loose.
“Department policy is you don’t discuss a pending case because you never know when the bad guy might be in the audience,” he told the Tribune in 1993. “But I had to tell people something. So I started talking about how not to be picked as a crime victim, how to make your home safer, and so on.”
Bittenbinder cut a striking figure, sporting a bushy mustache below a full head of hair and employing colorful — and at times salty — language. Soon he started receiving calls for more such assignments.
In 1992, Bittenbinder appeared in a PBS program, “Street Smarts,” which was taped before a studio audience who listened to him explain how people can become tougher targets for criminals. He taped another “Street Smarts” special for kids later that year, and other appearances on programs including “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and ABC’s “Prime Time Live” followed.
“Street Smarts” is “likely to make a star of Bittenbinder,” then-Tribune TV critic Rick Kogan wrote in 1992. “It is also likely to make people more aware of the streets on which they walk and enable them to act in ways that will keep them out of harm’s way.”
In early 1993, WBBM-Ch. 2 signed Bittenbinder to be a regular contributor on crime prevention and safety. The following year, he started hosting “Tough Target,” a short-lived, nationally syndicated, weekly TV show providing advice on how people could avoid being the victims of crime.
Locally, Bittenbinder continued giving public talks about personal safety and how the public could protect itself from bad guys, including at public schools.
“I did it for 10 years and never had any idea there was money to be made,” Bittenbinder told the Tribune in 1993, referring to talks he gave to schools and community groups. “It will sound corny, but I wanted to help people. That’s why I became a cop. To help people.”
Bittenbinder conceded in a 1993 interview that “some of why I do this is ego” and that “some of it is money.” No matter the motivation, his personal safety seminars were very popular with audiences, whom he educated on the mindset of the criminal.
“So this goof comes out of the alley. What do you do?” he asked an audience of 300 at the Chicago Hilton & Towers in 1993. “Let me tell you about these guys. These goofs aren’t rocket scientists. I’ve thrown a lot of people up against the wall, and I have yet to find a Mensa card. But they are ready.”
Bittenbinder retired from the Chicago Police Department in 1994, and at that time began providing safety programs through The Learning Organization Inc. He then worked for about a decade for the Cook County sheriff’s office, as an investigator and leading senior citizen programs, before retiring around 2004.
Bittenbinder’s book, “Tough Target: The Street Smart Guide to Staying Safe,” was published in 1997.
Bittenbinder enjoyed participating in cattle drives and cattle roundups at a ranch outside of Cody, Wyoming.
A previous wife, Sheila Brodsky, died in 2006. Survivors also include a daughter, Jennifer Buzenski; two sons, John and Jason; a daughter, Salomea; and a sister, Lois Imbrogno.
Services were held.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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