Police Use Of Force Recommendations Accepted By Village Board

SKOKIE, IL — Following a nine-month Public Safety Commission review of Skokie Police Department policies surrounding the use of force, the village board Wednesday unanimously accepted a series of recommendations offered by the commission.

Commissioners affirmed existing police policies and practices while proposing some additional language be added — as well as the creation of a new community review board tasked with examining use of force statistics and findings from use of force incidents that result in complaints or injury.

Village trustees directed city attorneys to draw up ordinances to create the new seven-member board, which will consist of two members of the Public Safety Commission, one member of the Human Relations Commission and four at-large community members — one resident from each quadrant of the city.

The new board will meet twice a year and present reports to the existing commission. Its members will be appointed by the mayor and will serve for no more than three years, according to the recommendations.

"We're having this conversation because there's been trauma in our lives over the past year, because of what we've seen publicly, and the national conversation," Trustee Khem Khoeun said ahead of the vote. "And we hope that Skokie can be a model for what that can look like to have a truly welcoming and safe community."

Following last summer's protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Mayor George Van Dusen committed to the review and reform of Skokie police use of force policies as part of the Obama Foundation’s Reimagining Policing Pledge.

"When we envisioned this last year in the wake of the dramatic and hurtful events of the last summer, I was hopeful that we would get to a point where we are today, but I wasn't sure if this kind of process in the midst of a pandemic was even possible," Van Dusen told commissioners at Wednesday's village board meeting. "You proved not only that it was possible but it can be effective and that it can bring together the community."

Mark Penning, vice-chair of the Public Safety Commission, said the commission applauded the police department's efforts to improve and stood ready to support and assist those efforts.

"The recommendations in this report are in no way meant to imply that Skokie Police Department personnel are deficient in their daily efforts to serve and protect the community," Penning said, presenting the report.

As part of the commission's review, police provided statistics on race the number of use of force incidents and the race of those arrested and on whom force was used.

According to census data, about 61 percent of Skokie's population identifies as white, 27 percent as Asian, 11 percent as Hispanic and 7 percent as Black.

The 119-member Skokie Police Department is 73 percent white, 18 percent Hispanic, 5 percent Black and 3 percent Asian, according to the data provided to the commission.

From January 2015 to October 2020, 36 percent of those arrested by Skokie police were white, 36 percent were Black, 19 percent were Hispanic and 7 percent were Asian.

Of the 224 people subject to use of force by Skokie police during that period, 45 percent were Black, 39 percent were white, 10 percent were Hispanic and 5 percent were Asian.

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Police Chief Brian Baker said there were several factors that went into those disparities, one of which is that only one in four arrests are made by officers on their own initiative. Plus, about two out of three people arrested by Skokie police are not village residents, he said.

"So if someone robs you of your money and you call the police, and you call 911 and you tell us who did it, we have no control and no impact over who that individual is," Baker said.

"Approximately 80 percent of our arrests we are called to and told by other people who committed them," he said. "The other 20 percent are self-initiated. So that certainly has some impact on those numbers."

Several residents highlighted data showing Black people were significantly more likely to be arrested by Skokie police than white people and significantly more likely to have officers use force on them during an encounter.

"In other words, Skokie is not uniquely immune to systemic racism," Maggie Vandermeer told trustees during the board meeting. "However, there was a very strong narrative throughout many Public Safety Commission meetings that insisted upon Skokie's exceptionalism and supposed distance from the events in Minneapolis and elsewhere. In fact, it scared me a little how the irrefutable data about disproportionate arrests of Black people in Skokie almost got completely buried, but for the insistence of a couple commissioners that it be addressed."

Carrie Bradean, another resident, said additional training for individual officers has been shown to be insufficient to resolve the "crisis of racism" in policing.

"Despite the best of intentions, if we do not make significant changes to our systems that were build upon a foundation of white supremacy, we will continue to enact racist harm," Bradean said. "Addressing system racism requires far more than training individuals, it requires systemic changes to the policies and material realities that over-police and criminalize Black and Brown people. The intention to work for equity is an important first step and I urge you to please take the next steps and act on that intention."

The commission emphasized its support for two new police initiatives that have emerged during its use of force review: the "Be the Difference" internal department initiative focusing on accountability and improvement and the recently completed two-month co-responder pilot program — a collaboration between police, the Skokie Fire Department and the village's Health and Human Services Department.

Other recommendations included more mandatory training for officers, more department data to be made public and the new language that prohibits officers from placing themselves in jeopardy to justify the use of deadly force.

Read the full use of force recommendations from the Skokie Public Safety Commission »