Prairie State Wire

Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, Traffic Data Stop Task Force met Oct. 24.

Here are the minutes provided by the task force:

Task Force Member Attendance	WebEx  3,2,1	Absent
[A] Dr. Christopher Donner, Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology Loyola University Chicago	YY X
[A] Jack McDevitt, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University; Director of Institute on Race and Justice	YY X
[B]Tyrone Forman: Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, UIC		X
[C] Major Jody Huffman, #5964 Illinois State Police North Central Patrol Command	YY X
[D]Sean G. Joyce, Deputy Chief, Chicago Police Department		X
E) Joe Leonas, representative from the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police (Apt, August 20, 2024)	YY X
[F]Jim Kaitschuk, Executive Director, Illinois Sheriffs Association	YY X
[H] Donald "Ike" Hackett, Illinois Fraternal Order of Police		X
[I] Khadine Bennett, Director of Advocacy and Intergovernmental Affairs, ACLU		E,X
[J]Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain, Executive Director, Live Free Illinois		X
[J] Gregory Chambers - Ill coalition to end permanent Punishments	AYX
[J] Amy Thompson, Impact for Equity Staff Counsel, Criminal Legal System	YAX

Quorum = 7/12

E= Excused, Y= Yea, A= Abstentions, R= Recusals

Also present were: 

Sean Berberet, Illinois Department of Transportation

ICJIA Staff Present: 

Timothy Lavery, ICJIA Research Director; Facilitator

Kimberly Atkins, ICJIA Strategic Project Administrator Minutes/OMA Vanessa Morris, ICJIA Administrator, OMA

Jacob Derrick, ICJIA Director Policy Governmental Affairs

Emilee Green, ICJIA Research

Gowri Kuda-Singappulige, ICJIA Research

Minutes by: Kimberly Atkins ICJIA Strategic Project Administrator, Editor (OMA)

I. CALL TO ORDER/ ROLL CALL 

• Tim Lavery, ICJIA Director Research, Facilitated the second meeting of the Traffic Data Stop Statistical Taskforce Meeting and called the meeting to order at 1:04 p.m. Mr. Lavery stated meeting was recorded by Kimberly Atkins.

• Vanessa Morris roll call: quorum has not been achieved

• Kimberly Atkins: announces quorum achieved

II. OLD BUSINES/ MEETING MINUTES

• Mr. Lavery asks motion for Approval of the Minutes from September 26, 2024 

• Motion: Made by Jack McDevitt to approve the minutes.

• Motion Second: Chris Donner

• Vote taken by Vanessa: All Ayes. No Nays. No Abstentions/R.

III.WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS 

• Facilitator Tim Lavery, ICJIA provided framing and a summarization of some events at the last meeting. Mr. Lavery announced the two nominations for Chairpersons to jointly Chair the taskforce. The two nominations are Khadine Bennett, Director of Advocacy and intergovernmental affairs at the ACLU and Amy Thompson Staff Counsel for Impact for Equity. Mr. Lavery thanks the two candidates and provides direction for voting on the two candidates separately and independent of the other.

• Mr. Lavery asks motion for Voting Amy Thompson Chairperson.

• Motion made: Gregory Chambers

• Motion Second: Jody Huffman

• Vote taken by Vanessa: All Aye. No Nays. Abstention: Amy Thompson

• Vote Passes for Amy Thompson Chairperson

• Mr. Lavery asks motion for Voting Khadine Bennett Chairperson.

• Motion made: Jack McDevitt

• Motion Second: Chris Donner

• Vote taken by Vanessa: All Aye. No Nays. Abstention: Gregory Chambers

• Vote Passes for Khadine Bennett Chairperson

• Kimberly Atkins hands the meeting back to the facilitator Tim Lavery IV. NEW BUSINESS 

• Facilitator: Tim Lavery - Presentation – The first item of business, Mr. Lavery provides an update on the activities of the, the racial profiling prevention and data oversight board mentioned in past meetings. Executive code requires IDOT to convene the oversight board while Illinois vehicle code requires ICJIA to convene this task force. We determined it makes sense to align efforts or at least be aware of each other’s activities. Sean Berberet is our representative from IDOT and may provide if there are any updates, new information from the from the oversight board. Sean had provided information that the

• Board voted on seven changes to the, the traffic and pedestrian stop data collection forms. However, there's continued discussion on which items might require legislative amendments to be affected. In addition, there's been discussion around If these were to be implemented, how would the larger law enforcement community be engaged on the changes.

• The data collection forms, several from our last task force report, may recall that we spent most of the time during the task force, proceedings, discussing the forms and talking about if anything needed to be changed and really going through them with a microscope. Some of the changes that were suggested were, changing the time of stop to military, start, and end, by adding fields. adding model and the color of the vehicle, and adding GPS coordinates for the location, of the stop and adding a use of force checkbox, a body camera check box, and adding a rest is an option for the result of stop. and finally distinguishing between.

• Jim Kaitschuk Inquirers if the taskforce is looking for input from law enforcement on any of the concepts mentioned by Lavery? The police would have significant issues with all those options mentioned. I'm not sure if everybody's familiar with the size of the back of citation and the information we get, we don't get GPS coordinates, e.g., So, I'm not sure where some of this is coming from. Mr. Kaitschuk makes note that marijuana wouldn't be considered contra band if it were in a legal container.

• Timothy Lavery- Much of the information came from the last task force report and we are providing a debriefing on the direction of those responses from law enforcement. The concerns or actions from last year we may not be able to modify for that group at that time.

• Sean Berberet – adds his voice to the conversation as the oversight board considers the larger law enforcement agencies are aware of potential changes prior to initiating them or having them amended.

Mr. Berberet states that in the task force report that was issued, three years ago, had a lot of votes opposing a lot of these changes to the data collection forms by law enforcement. It is very apparent to us that even though the task force and our oversight board have approved or ratified or recommended the changes, they should be scrutinized by the law enforcement agencies, including the Illinois Chiefs to police, the Sheriff's associations, and other larger agencies throughout the state. We don't want to go to the governor recommend these changes, start the legislative process without feedback from the law enforcement. We are very aware of the importance to vet this to the law enforcement agencies. When is that going to be? I do not know. The Chair of the Oversight Board is Karen Bass- Eher, Attorney General Office. She is hopefully learning more about the recommendation process from this board and the next steps that must happen for changes to occur, as Tim mentioned prior. Some of these may need legislative amendments. Some are just clarifications in maybe the definitions, but whatever the process is going to be from the governor's office to the legislative body, the law enforcement side will have a big voice. There will be a session at some point where all the recommendations will be provided to law enforcement agencies, today is not the day.

• Timothy Lavery recognizes Mr. Chambers.

• Gregory Chambers- References two questions 1) whether an officer on a traffic stop may ask to search a vehicle and 2) whether an officer may conduct a search of the vehicle.

• Sean Berberet: Are you are asking if on the data collection form, there is a section of whether the police officer asked for permission to conduct a search and then if a search was conducted with or without permission, is that correct?

• Gregory Chambers Yes.

• Sean Berberet The answer is yes, it is both available on the forms.

• Jim Kaitschuk Provides response if police ask for consent to search and consent is given or denied or if we have probable cause to conduct a search, addresses findings during the search. So just, just so you know it's both those categories.

• Timothy Lavery Thank you. The oversight board, at the upcoming meeting in November, members will be present to answer questions regarding the 2023 stop study report. Sean has generously offered to answer if there are questions for that meeting. Please make sure Sean receives questions to communicate to the oversight group regarding Niak Policer and the Mount whisper Consulting Group

• Sean Berberet We can relay to Tim Lavery information regarding the past 2023 study, whether it's benchmarking, whether it's methodologies, whether it's examples of certain agencies. There is information where the statistics and the numbers show a difference. If we can get Niak ahead of the meeting so we can be prepared to answer questions distinctly. If you were to attend our oversight board meeting to ask questions, it would only be in the open or the public form or public discussion forum. Mr. Berberet will try to get Niak available on one of ICJIA upcoming Task force meetings. If you have some general questions, I can deliver those to him ahead and then present them during the meeting and get them answered.

• Timothy Lavery – The ICJIA taskforce has about two to two and a half months of idea generation. We may be us reaching out to individual members to just to give them a little opportunity on their schedules to provide feedback. We may need to add additional meetings for a special topic meeting or lengthening the time in the upcoming meetings which is at 90 minutes.

• Moving on to, to new business. So, the main idea that cropped up through the.

• Timothy Lavery -The survey ICJIA distributed gave focus on the data forms and looking at what we're collecting. Now we want to pivot to focus on how the data is being used as it currently exists. What are the actions necessary to improve its utilization? And I proposed to examine this from both the law enforcement lens. The community lens could be advocacy groups, community orgs, public at large, etc.

• Timothy Lavery I'd like to eventually hear from, from everybody in the task force. We've just created a jam board

• Jab Board Notes 

• Timothy Lavery Emily has started to organize this even more. The notes on blue, summarize from the last meeting. Emilee Green puts the Jam board on screen.

• Timothy Lavery It would be fair to ask community members how they're using the data

• I think Chief Mayton, and Chief Leona's had a since of how the data is being used from a law enforcement or community perspective. Are there changes or improvements that need to be made? What would it take to implement those? Does anyone have any thoughts on these topics on the Jam board

• Jack McDevitt Is there a law enforcement is there anyone in law enforcement who can summarize how the data is being used? 

• Joe Leonas community perspective on some of these questions for a little bit of context.

• Amy Thompson Staff council for Impact for Equity and we are part of the freedom move coalition, which is an alliance of community and advocacy organizations trying to make more racially equitable traffic safety system and a big part of that includes a focus on traffic stops. Initially we were really focused on Chicago police department especially. Over the last few years, a lot of my work has included kind of going over these studies, also looking at the underlying data from these studies to try to make the reports a bit more accessible, because the reports are quite complex.

• Impact for Equity, wanted to do a little bit more translation and explanation for community members about, what does the data this mean? What are the numbers really telling us? I think that is the way that we have used the study, as a basis to then translate information to the community. We believe there is a bit of a gap. I think there are some accessibility problems for the average community member. I don't think that I would give them the link necessarily to the studies and say, here you go, this will tell what you are needing.

• Amy Thompson - It takes a bit of work to try to understand the data in addition to the kind of more nuanced information that we get from the studies. Communities may need more visualizations or more tools that community members can use to really help understand exactly, what's happening in their own communities. What do these ratios mean or what do these numbers mean? How should I be thinking that in relation to my own experience? I guess as a community member from the law, thinking about how it should be used by law enforcement. I think ideally, we would hope that law enforcement would be reviewing the data, analyzing their own practices to understand why their practices resulted in whatever numbers. If there were racial disparities thinking about strategies to really try to reduce those, as well as communicating with their local community what the results were of the study and, and their own internal reflections on that.

• Amy Thompson To that point, I'm thinking about another person to hear from, and asking if there are other states that have done this well of taking a more complex disparity analysis and translating it and helping develop strategies to address any disparities that we're seeing. Ken Barone from Connecticut racial profiling prevention and data oversight board is who has done a lot of research working directly with law enforcement to help develop strategies to address racial disparities and other numbers that they see in their state report.

• Timothy Lavery Amy, who did you target when you reached out to communities?

• Amy Thompson There was just a general lack of knowledge about the study. I think there was a bit of a gap of really understanding that the study existed. There was a problem because a lot of them are directly impacted folks who have been stopped, and they felt like there were racial disparities in the practices at least in Chicago. But in terms of understanding the broader data, there was just a lack of awareness there and I think as us as an advocacy group. Looking at the studies ourselves, it didn't feel like something that would be very easily accessible to the average person.

• Jim Kaitschuk what do you mean by accessible? if the information in the reports is out there, what, what else are we looking for here? The concern here is IDOT or the group that most recently reporting is making interpretations about the studies. They shouldn't be making conclusions because the studies reference how do we think the data and reports are currently being used by law enforcement? There hasn't been much input by law enforcement as they're going through the Study. Accessibility often means visualizations. Whereas rather than a thousand-page document of tables, having visualizations for each department so that someone from X community or Y community could look and get a sense of, ok, here's how these disparities.

• Amy Thompson- Visualizations can provide a compare a pop out bubble that says, when we say ratio, this is what we mean rather than cross referencing the executive summary with the larger PDF. I think it's just making it easier for people to really understand. Joe Leonas commented in the last meeting that it was a little bit inaccessible in that way. Across the board having something that's a bit more understandable would be helpful for folks.

• Timothy Lavery -You feel there's an awareness gap as well? People don't know of its existence. If the community and public at large did know of the existence of the data, through advocacy groups that make the use of information available, would the same gaps exist. gaps exist? How would the gaps be remedied and how would the information be used?

• Amy Thompson-There may be gaps in both the advocacy, and with community members at large. We have talked with more advocacy groups who were aware the study exists. A report comes out, a community member would hear about it through local police or broader bulletins and have access to a link know what's going on in my community. Here's what these numbers are telling you, and resources the local law enforcement department provides to talk about in the context of their community. Having access to the resources, as well, is a form for community members to respond to what they saw in their report.

• Jody Huffman -looking at the traffic stop study summary, is provided by IDOT and a consulting company, mountain whisper light statistics. 

• If there are issues about understanding the data, is this something that we can get in an easier format to understand? The cross-referencing executive summaries with this is a document makes it 49 pages. Perhaps, we need to be a little bit clearer in what we're asking from the consulting company and perhaps from IDOT. We can put out the information, but we need to make sure that they're also providing a summary that is clear, to Amy's point. The current format is difficult to understand.

• Timothy Lavery – The theme is the, the complexity of the information. I see we have a comment in the chat from Greg Chambers

• Greg Chambers - A focus needs to be made on how this information is currently being used and what access does the public have, in agreement with Amy. We need to know more about it and to perform an assessment of the how this information was disseminated to the public and written in an understandable manner. It defeats the whole purpose of making a public report if it is not understandable to the audience it is intended.

• Jack McDevitt- Thank you. One of the challenges is that some members of the community feel racial profiling is going on and they'd like to have a report that tells them where and how often. The police feel that the report that's being done now doesn't accurately measure that. We do not need another algorithm for the public to be satisfied. There may be some agencies identified as having some areas of improvement.

• Jim Kaitschuk The public wants transparency. law enforcement agencies across the state and across the country that continue to work towards increasing and improving transparency. People want to identify agencies or know what's happening in their community.

• Timothy Lavery- To what extent are, are off our law enforcement agencies do we believe using it from an internal or internal purposes both directly for, for profiling issues or otherwise?

• Gregory Chambers- Exempt rank law enforcement maybe concerned with transparency, but the ranking file may not be equally concerned about transparency especially if that part of the ranking file is part of the problem. There will be a divide where exempt rank is concerned but, on the street, if you're the beat top, if you're the practical officer, or if you're in a special operation unit or doing something that is that is potentially illegal, then then you may not be equally present about transparency.

• Joe Leonas- it's a nuanced conversation. We're all here for the same reasons and all very interested in this topic and make sure everybody's doing it the right way. A report coming out in July, six months after the year ends of an analysis of what happened six, for the twelve months prior to that is a delayed report. There is NO real chance to make any corrections on an individual officer level. It's an aggregate. A dashboard that shows all activity real time, weekly, monthly, however we just determine to use it. The dynamic is that for the last 20 years we've been doing this report. It assumes a few things, number one, when you try to compare year over year, it's impossible to do that. The profession has turnover and change at the leadership level, the line level, so one year to next, it's maybe a completely different department officers making traffic stops. The state is very diverse, so the suburban counties from Chicago are different than the southern part of Illinois or Central Illinois. Even if they have the same number of people it's going to be different depending on where you're in the state. When WBEZ article came out it's not using the mountain whisper data. WBEZ is choosing the kind of data. They're just using an overall population of a minority population to say that there's a, there's a correlation there or that's what the benchmark is. So even the press can't understand it to use it in their articles because they've never referred to the methodology benchmarking at all. They just refer to an overall population.

• Joe Leonas- police officers are risk averse, and if, if ever there was a time where an officer didn't want to view a traffic stop, it's today. If Police had a choice on who they were stopping, they wouldn't want to be involved in anything that would cause controversy if they could choose. We have body warning cameras, and we all are using them. There is transparency through technology. A complaint or if a supervisor saw a trend, there's a lot of data to instantly address that. If you feel somebody on your shift is doing something wrong or a special unit, their numbers are off. We do random checks on video all the time for traffic stops. I think law enforcement wants to meet the public where they're at and provide a service that the public would like us to provide.

• Joe Leonas -A report this last June saying that there's a crisis with pedestrian deaths and traffic fatalities. The state of Illinois and in Chicago there is a crisis. Traffic safety is important to the public, but everybody wants the police to do it correctly. So, disconnect if there is one traffic stop that is inherently going to be adversarial. Its unique in America for police to be encountering citizens in a potentially adversarial way for what is mostly usually a relatively minor violation speeding ticket. The lingering feeling that the police either shouldn't have done that or they were rude can be solved, although I don't know that we want it solved.

• Joe Leonas -Police unfortunately is a plural. They're individual people trying to do their best to enforce traffic loss for traffic safety. As a leader in law enforcement, I have a responsibility to ensure that they're doing it correctly and that we have taken steps to do it correctly. The reality of it is just like we talk about there's crime and compared with the fear of crime. Fear of crime almost always outpaces the actual crime. Fear of police profiling is a fear that is very high. I just haven't seen evidence of profiling in my department, and I've been in this professional long time. I'm sure it exists to some extent, but I think using this report is almost impossible to discern that in the current format.

• Jack McDevitt- Would there be an appetite among the chiefs to say, who's doing it well in a closed conversation with just chiefs? Who's got some good ideas? A best practice can be formed that big and small agencies could review differences and define a good way to use this data as limited as it is.

• Joe Leonas- Or is it just not useful? If there could be a way to interpret the data, maybe you're the one to do it, and add these conversations about the data and the methodology. 1st and foremost among the police, there must be a trust of the data. If it looks bad, it's because it is bad, not because the data was washed or cleaned or repackaged or redone. The raw numbers I have are low enough that I can do it. Do think you're trying to get law enforcement to appreciate the complexity of the methodology, they just must understand there's probably a better way to do that. yes, there would be beneficial to have best practices for traffic stops.

• Joe Leonas A conference next April, after this report, the Illinois chiefs have an annual conference with opportunities to have Jack come out to talk about this. I would love to have a discussion forum with the community members, with social scientists with everybody and get to the heart of what we're trying to accomplish, what we've been trying to accomplish for 20 years.

• Timothy Lavery- Are there other novel ways that the state isn't looking at or exploring yet how to collect data like random sample GPS data? If there is funding put up, we could get data from another source. we may have some groundwork for flagging certain behaviors in the video itself, and then develop programs to look to see if it occurs and if we can all agree on the efficacy of those programs, well, then that's more reliable to see only .05 %.

• Gregory Chambers- responding to the statements what success would look like? Success would look like more amounts of interaction between police and the public would be indicator of the Success.

• Jack McDevitt- Is it reflective of someone who might be biased if the person gives citations only to black drivers? The 2nd layer may look at if there is there a reason for this. Sometimes there is a reason, and you've heard me say this, it, you could be doing an investigation of a particular gang and that gang happens to be all people from one ethnicity and that's why you're pulling those people over and you're looking at it and it could be something that you can explain. If you can't explain it, then you have a problem. The leadership in the department can say, do we want to retrain, monitor, talk to the officer to get them to change their behavior? The place that we can't get away from is what the community says is happening. The community may say profiling is happening on a regular basis to lots of people of color, and the police say we don't do it. How do we get past that? I don't know.

• Timothy Lavery - Media would need to be involved to move the needle in small ways, but sometimes that's what you, you must do. Keep a dialogue. Clearer terms are needed for interpreting things and placing more emphasis than what might be warranted given what it tells us.

• Timothy Lavery – Emily and I will come to a meeting of the minds between her, I, and the jam board. We'll come back to what everybody said, and we'll strategically try to start to organize the notes, color code the notes, and see if there's areas that we might need to focus. This is a difficult topic. We did get one or two solid recommendations given the time that we have. Delay in stating the taskforce meetings was largely due to the member vetting process that led us to delays in being able to schedule.

• Facilitator Timothy Lavery - open for public comments.

V. PUBLIC COMMENT 

Tim Lavery opened the floor to public comment. No public comment

VI.ADJOURNMENT 

• Next Meeting is Thursday, November 21, 2024, 1:00pm-2:30pm 

• Motion By: Gregory Chambers at 2:31pm

Seconded By: Jack Mc Devitt

Tim Lavery: adjourns the meeting

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