Dueling examinations of racism in ElginIL police department pose new obstacles to reform
The 2018 killing of a Black woman in a standoff with Elgin police sparked calls for reforms that have now spanned nearly five years. But the pursuit of those reforms has become clouded with dueling data and a police chief at odds with her own officers.
A Daily Herald review of a year's worth of emails, memos of understanding and interviews shows that finding a path forward will be complicated by the police department's efforts to get ahead of a public-relations nightmare. In an interview, Elgin Police Chief Ana Lalley expressed frustration with the first study and the process.
What followed were a series of delays, especially as departments across the country turned to the center in the wake of George Floyd's death in 2020. As months and years rolled on, tensions between the center and Elgin police rose, according to emails and interviews. Elgin police officials disagreed with the center's use of the city's demographics to test for possible racial bias in police stops or the use of force. That approach centers around the idea that -- while controlling for factors such as poverty and crime rates -- the percentage of police encounters with any race should be in proportion to how many people of that race live in the community.
At that point, Lalley stopped meeting with officials from the center and started seeking another study. A numbers game The second part of the center's work with Elgin was supposed to use the analysis to explore the possible policy changes. The partnership never got to that point. The center's work asks: If I'm an Elgin resident, what is the likelihood I'm going to be stopped by the police if I'm a white person, Black person or Latino person, and how likely am I to experience some use of force?
"It's implied that you are just an everyday person walking down the street, and an officer is going to jump out of their car and use force," Lalley said."Does that even make sense? We really wanted them to explain it to us, and they never did."Residents on the city's task on policing spent more than a year lamenting and dissecting incidents where either they or someone they knew felt they'd been stopped by police just because they were Black.
"When you go out and get another agency to give a whole other analysis over something we've asked this very credible organization to do, it doesn't look good," city council member Tish Powell said when the data was presented."There was a better way to handle all of this, because you know what this looks like to me? This looks like 'alternative facts.' I don't need alternative facts. I need real data from somebody who knows what they're doing.
"This looks like a trend, and that is good news," Goff said of the overall vehicle stops."Very likely folks with the Elgin PD are at least partially responsible for that good news."
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