Prairie State Wire

Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority met June 30.

Here are the minutes provided by the authority.

Call to Order and Roll Call

Chair Jack McDevitt calls the meeting to order at 1:33 p.m. General Counsel Dawn English calls the roll. Quorum is achieved.

Attendees

Task Force Member Attendance	Present	Telephone	Absent
Assistant Professor Felipe Goncalves, UCLA			X
Professor Jack McDevitt, Northeastern University	X
Professor Tyrone Forman, UIC	X
Colonel Isaiah Vega, Illinois State Police	X
Commander Stephen Chung, Chicago Police Department	X
Chief Karl Walldorf, Illinois Assoc. of Chiefs of Police	X
Director Jim Kaitschuk, Illinois Sheriffs’ Assoc.			X
Second Vice President Dan Gorman, Chicago FOP	X
Second Vice President Keith Turney, Illinois FOP	X
Director Khadine Bennett, ACLU			X
President Teresa Haley, Springfield NAACP	X
Senior Counsel Fred Tsao, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights	X
Director Esther Franco-Payne, Cabrini Green Legal Aid			X
Reverend Ciera Bates Chamberlain, Live Free Illinois	X

Also present were:

Timothy Lavery – ICJIA Research Director

Dawn English – ICJIA General Counsel

Emilee Green – ICJIA Research Analyst

Austin Randolph – Springfield NAACP

Roger Huff – Public representative

Introduction

Ms. Green gives a brief introduction for the meeting. She mentions that the 2020 IDOT Traffic and Pedestrian Stop report will be posted in the near future. She then goes on to introduce some of the new members of the Task Force, including Chief Karl Walldorf and Desmon Yancy.

Approval of Minutes

Ms. English asks the Task Force if there is a motion to accept the meeting minutes from March 17, 2021. Ms. Haley approves the meeting minutes and Mr. Vega seconds.

Group Discussion

Mr. McDevitt leads the group in a discussion of the current pedestrian stop form and when it should be filled out.

Ms. Haley and Mr. Forman say that there should be a purpose for every pedestrian stop. Mr. Gorman refers everyone to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) website for an order that defines exactly when the stop report is to be completed and what a pedestrian stop is.

Mr. Forman asks if there would be any variation between various jurisdictions on how they go about enforcing a pedestrian stop and inquiries about the policy. Mr. Gorman says that he believes there is a difference in that CPD would perhaps be more restrictive than a smaller department down state.

Mr. Randolph brings up the issue that during a pedestrian stop, there has to be probable cause present at the site of the situation. Pedestrians can become disturbed by the fact that they are getting stopped for no apparent reason. Mr. Randolph states that this is the source of a huge problem with pedestrian stops within the community.

Mr. Turney also adds that the pedestrian stop information that CPD collects is very burdensome. He notes this is not ideal, as the needs of both law enforcement and the community necessitate collection to be user-friendly.

Mr. Walldorf says that police departments like CPD fill out more paperwork for pedestrian stops than is required. Mr. Walldorf suggests that only the necessary information should be included for an officer to fill out during a pedestrian stop.

Mr. McDevitt then steers the group toward the pedestrian collection form and asks if it is important for the duration of the stop to be specified in the sheet. Ms. Haley says that this would be helpful with some cases of harassment. Keeping that information on record could help protect the victim in the future. Mr. Turney follows up by saying that this may get too confusing if there is more than one person involved in the stop incident.

Mr. Tsao then goes back to the race category on the data sheet and briefly says that there should potentially be an ‘Other’ and ‘Middle Eastern/North African’ category added to that section, similarly to the discussion surrounding the traffic stop form.

Mr. Forman then asks the group if they think having some kind of specification on the type of drug found during a pat down/search would be helpful. Mr. Gorman says that he wouldn’t be opposed for marijuana having its own category to separate marijuana and controlled substance categorizations.

The topic is then shifted to whether or not a ‘use of force’ category should be included in the pedestrian stop sheet. Some law enforcement suggest that this may be quite redundant, as there are other specific forms devoted to capturing use of force data. Mr. Forman says it might be useful in finding patterns in different geographies.

Public Comment

Mr. Huff mentions that there are some agencies that are not compliant with the current regulations for stop data collection. He asks for the group to brainstorm on how to entice these agencies to report data, not just for research efforts, but for the benefit of the departments themselves. Mr. Huff discusses use of force and how in some police departments, if somebody is riding a bicycle, scooter, or other transportation, there is no specific category to check a box for that. He says that this should be further reviewed and considered. He sees potential benefits for the community arising if this is touched upon.

Adjournment

Ms. English called for a motion to adjourn the meeting. Ms. Haley moved to adjourn the meeting. The motion was seconded by Mr. Forman. The meeting was adjourned at 3:00 p.m.

http://www.icjia.state.il.us/about/overview#tab_meeting-materials