Halloween might have been three months ago, but for one Illinois teenager it was not a one-night event.

A 14-year-old was arrested on the weekend and charged with false impersonation of a police officer, according to a Jan. 26 Chicago Tribune article.

On Saturday, the boy entered a South Side police station in full uniform and worked a five-hour traffic shift before a sergeant noticed the teen was missing the police star. Uniforms usually get checked in roll call, but there’s no roll call for traffic shifts.

This was not the first time for the teenager, as he was arrested in 2007 for impersonating a police officer and again last month at a shopping mall while wearing a police uniform.

The teenager had been living with a reverend for 11 months after the boy’s mother kicked him out of the house, but went back last month.

Now Chicago police are investigating the incident, but should try and focus not on what punishment the boy should get, but rather how they operate.

Police are supposed to be intuitive and get a sense of when things are wrong. There should have been earlier warning signs. Because the boy walked into the police department undetected, this should be a wake-up call concerning a flawed system. When a teenager is impersonating a 30-year-old cop, it is a good time to think about new security procedures.

The boy might need psychiatric help to see why he has repeatedly impersonated a cop. But there needs to be a limit to the educational program of being a “police explorer,” a community program that allows youths to interact with police officers, from which the boy had learned most of the police terminology and procedures.

The police department should concentrate on making certain evaluations while the boy goes under mental evaluation.

Hopefully this incident will encourage police departments to make changes to their security procedures to prevent this from happening in the future, possibly involving criminals.