Illinois General Assembly: Policing & Police Accountability

10/27/2020

Illinois 105^th

Chemberly Cummings (Democrat)

UPDATE: Chemberly Cummings lost her race to incumbent Dan Brady, 21,050 (37.3%) to 35,324 (62.7%) on November 3rd, 2020.

Zachary Gittrich: What steps do you think police departments should take to increase accountability among officers?

Chemberly Cummings: I think during the time we’re seeing things are not favorable for some people. Not all people feel like they’re being equally protected by the law. We hope that we can get for accountability sake we can get people to come in and review situations that might involve police. When you police yourself there becomes a conflict of interest. The first ting we really have to take a look at when we have these situations it should not be other police reviewing this information. I think that’s going to be very important as we move forward.

ZG: Do you support efforts to decrease the police budgets?

CC: I certainly believe we have a lot of work to do to improve community-police relations. There is a lot of work to be done in how we reimagine public safety as a whole. But the one thing I understand from being on the Normal Council, I don’t think necessarily defunding is the appropriate way to go. I do understand the thought process behind it and possibly reallocating – the only thing about the reallocation is understanding that it’s not that simple. When it’s not within that jurisdiction, youre asking a city to no longer allocate funds to one thing but to reallocate it back to the state. And it doesnt quite work that way. That’s why I don’t like to use “Defund the Police”. But, I do believe we need to begin to re-imagine public safety. I do think there needs to be a lot of investment in training. I think there is a lot of investment that needs to go into the hiring practive: making sure that we have the right people in place. I also think we have to look at what the military does where you’re out of service for so long and then you go back into service. What we’re finding out is officers are becoming desensitized. Why? They’re the first on the scene to some very brutal some very ugly situations. How they view people becomes very desensitized. It also plays into race as well. I don’t like to use defund; I certainly believe there should be reinvestment. I think in our own community people see things on the national level that they don’t understand doesn’t happen locally. Our local police forces don’t own helicopters or tanks. I had to tell someone “Do you know we have police officers of color in NPD?” I know one very personally. During one of the nights of looting, he was taunted for being black and a police officer, it made it very hard for him. A lot of people were upset at me because I voted to increase police salary. I asked my friend “How would you have felt if I voted no?” I wanted perspective. He said, “Because this is my job and this is how I feed my family, I would have felt some kind of way. I understand the protests; I understand people are upset. But there are those of us that do what they’re supposed to do. We go home and we have to feed our family.” So, I have a wider lens on this so it doesn’t sit well with me to just say Defund the police. But I am so wanting us to sit down and reimagine public safety. And I call it public safety cause we’ve done enough policing. What I mean by that is if you’ve ever read Lee Atwater and Dog Whistle politics his whole theory was law & order. I feel like we’ve done enough of that. We do want to keep our community safe. We do wanna be able to have a process to prosecute those who do ill will to others within our community. But we don’t want people to feel targeted; we do not want people to feel unsafe with those who are supposed to keep us safe.

ZG: I just want to go back real quick you were mentioning how it’s not always so easy to defund because a lot of the money that local governments use to pay their police are actually provided by the state. Are you saying that money is earmarked for policing?

CC: So, a lot of people want police funds to go into Social Services. Social Services are provided by the municipality. So, if we defund that amount of money it would just go back into the general fund for Normal. it would not necessarily go to the state so we wouldn’t be paying that to the state.

ZG: Are their cuts you can think of that would be worth making?

CC: I can only speak for Normal. I’ll be honest: Normal has already done quite a few cuts already. It’s not directly from George Floyd. There’s certain things like positions that haven’t been filled on the police force. We are going to do some back deal a little bit because you know we’ve had people retire, we know more are going to retire and you at least want to be stacked well enough to be able to have you know the backfield in a sense or at least enough people to take those position or take over duties of certain position. When people come work for the Town of Normal, they tend to stay their whole careers. So when we have retirements they happen in clusters. It’s usually like ten-twenty people at a time. We’ve actually pushed a couple cars from being swapped out. That’s ways we’ve cut bet. How you maintain your day-to-day is something that we just can’t get around. Really what people don’t realize the biggest cost is the benefit package cause it’s not just their salary: it’s their salary, their healthcare, and their pension; and it takes up over 80% of the budget.

ZG: Since you’re running for State office are there things that you think that could be done at the state level that would kind of ease the burden on local municipality as far as being able to fund police departments and maybe make Cuts towards other social services

CC: Oh absolutely. The state has to be invested in understanding our necessity for social services. Including making sure our health departments – both physical & mental health – have what they need because I think those are both necessary. I think at the state level find ways to make social work and social services more attractive. One of the things I hear whether its guidance counselors for schools or the McLean County department of health, it’s hard to even find people to take these jobs. So, what are we doing from a state-level to make it enticing to get people to want to work in this field cause it’s one we so desperately need people to be a part of. It could be student loan forgiveness you know those types of things we have to really consider. Maybe covering the cost of some of the training I think especially any cultural sensitivity training which is currently not mandatory. There was a bill that was put forth in 2017 but the session ended and it never got picked back up again.

Whether it’s federal or state mandates should come with some type of financial assistance so it does not become a burden on a municipality. I would be willing to back that with cultural competency training.

ZG: One of the costs is health insurance. If we were to get some type of Medicare-4-all type healthcare plan, it could actually alleviate local municipalities currently paying for their employees health insurance. Is that something you could get behind?

CC: I certainly believe that Healthcare is a right not a privilege. When you have a healthy Society overall, it does better. I know it’s not going to be a snap of a finger or even a signature from a bill you know we’re going to have to go with this incrementally because we do have people who are very adamently against this because we live in a very capitalistic society. But I think that as we move towards a universal health care system, you’re absolutely right it will allow us to not have to deal with health insurance for fire, police, or any level of government.

ZG: would you support the creation of a civilian review board for Normal or some kind of bill at the state level really encouraging civilian review boards throughout the state that could investigate police for alleged wrong doing?

CC: Here is my own experience and my own thoughts on this just from watching Bloomington’s: it doesn’t change behavior as much because the civilian review boards are only as good as whether or not people are actually put in complaints. I was in the NAACP, and I often helped assisted our legal redress. When people would come to the NAACP, we would always ask, “Did you file a complaint?” and you will find over and over again no because a lot of times people will say they scared even just coming to the NAACP. They’ll say, “Well, I don’t want my name out there.” Then, we can’t help you if we don’t know who you are; we have to be able to use your name, your likeness, to determine what happened and push the issue.

A lot of civilian review boards are not very effective. It depends on their relationship with the police union because the union often has final say when it comes to the outcomes of what happens to a police officer. So, these boards could possibly help if people actually report incidents, otherwise it is just kind of there. I wouldn’t want that to happen, I feel like if we’re going to put the investment behind we need to see results we need to see the impact.

ZG: Speaking of police unions, do you support weakening or abolishing police unions?

CC: I’m a union girl. I believe in unions overall. However, I’ve never see a union strong arm the way a police union does. You do hear about some that work well with the community, they trust the chief and when he writes someone up they don’t fight the chief on it. But, there is also cases where police unions will fight with their chiefs tooth and nail and in most cases they win. We have to understand a balance. A union can be good for collective bargaining purposes and when there’s truly wrongdoing on the behalf of the employee I understand it but in these situations we know that a lot of times it has not been that the employee has been wrong. I want the unions to allow the police chiefs to do their job.

ZG: Would you support turning the Sheriff’s position into a non-elected position?

CC: We’ve talked around this question so much. My only question becaomes who selects the Sheriff? You might leave it to a body where you’re not sure what they will do. If we did this, it would be great if the selection was made by a non-political body, like a hiring commission who don’t have a political stake in it.

ZG: This brings me to a larger question because in Illinois state law actually greatly restricts the way that counties are allowed to have oversight over their Sheriff and their jails so would you support granting County jurisdictions more oversight and control over the sheriff’s department and the jails?

CC: That’s a good question. I think the county knows it’s community’s need more and I feel like maybe they can tailor to that so I would be in support of it.

You know the reality is nothing is working. Nothing is working at any level. So if we haven’t tried it – I know it’s different – but it might work better for us. It may change the dynamics, improve community relations, maybe the necessities that are needed in our jail may be attended to faster when you have a body that does more tangible things right there and is accessible.

ZG: Would you support abolishing qualified immunity?

CC: You know what I think is one of those things that if it was to change it may change some accountability I think if if people knew that their personal livelihoods were at stake, they may take a second thought about what they’re about to do. If you know the city is going to pay out, you’re going to continue to behave in that manner. But, if you might lose your house, that could correct bad behavior.

ZG: Do you support making police discipline records public?

CC: Oh absolutely.

ZG: Do you support abolishing cash bail?

CC: Absolutely.

ZG: What should the overall goal of the jail be? Regarding jails, it seems the main goal is incapacitation for trial? Should the jail have more of a role in actual rehabilitation?

CC: Absolutely. And I agree with you on that. Once again, you’re speaking with an African-American who has seen certain things. People wonder how I can support abolishing cash bail. I’ve seen people do serious time because of cannabis before it became legal in Illinois. If we saying you’re innocent until proven guilty, that’s what it needs to be unless we can show beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are dangerous to the community.

ZG: Currently, inmates are counted for representation in the location of their penitentiary, boosting this voting power of districts with penitentiaries. Is that something you’d like to see changed?

CC: I feel like if we’re going to do that then just give them the right to vote. If you’re going to utilize them for representation, it’s not fair they aren’t getting the opportunity to make a choice. If you have to count them, then count them in the district they originally came from or don’t count them.

ZG: That’s all the questions I have. Do you want to add anything else for the readers?

CC: I want people to understand that it is time to have representation from someone who understands and wants to make changes within our criminal justice system. And understanding how all these things are interconnected: with education, with job opportunities, wealth retainment, & equity. They are all involved in each other.

Illinois 88^th District

Karla Bailey-Smith (Democrat)

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Zachary Gittrich: Who do you think should be in charge of reviewing and punishing officers alleged to have committed wrongs?

UPDATE: Karla Bailey-Smith lost her race against incumbent Keith Sommer, 20,245 (35.4%) to 34,331 (60.1%) on November 3rd, 2020. Libertarian Kenneth Alison received 2,549 (4.5%).

KB-S: The first thing we need is implicit bias training. I don’t think it has been done state-wide. I’d be happy to legislate that at the state level. There are too many situations where the police say they’re afraid and basically the person they’re afraid of is not white.

ZG: Do you support efforts to decrease the police budgets?

KB-S: I support reimagining what policing looks like in our community. Right now policing is reactive and police need to be… It’s under the guise of public safety. But what we see happening, if you look at the statistics at what police are called to do a lot of it is responding to situations involving homelessness or mental illness. We need to reimagine what our police forces looks like as a whole. Who is on the police force? Who is responding to certain types of calls? Maybe the police don’t need to be responding to someone sleeping in their cars.

ZG: Are there cuts you can think of that would be worth making to police budgets?

KB-S: Well, I’d definitly like to see our police not spending money on military grade equipment. I would like to demilitarize our police. The federal government should not be offering military equipment to local police departments; there is no need for that. Situations over the summer and going back all the way to Ferguson, Missouri the reason violence happens is because the police show up with tear gas and tanks. Under the umbrella of public safety and there’s too many people here. Then the police start pushing back against the crowd. That happened in Ferguson and Portland, people were trying to peacefully protest and there were not problems until the police showed up and started attacking the crowd. I don’t wanna see our police armed in that way.

ZG: Do you support the creation of a civilian review boards for at the state level really encouraging civilian review boards throughout the state that could investigate police for alleged wrong doing?

KB-S: Yes. I actually think we need to have a national database so police officers cannot move from one state to another or even from one town to another within a state. If an officer has a handful of complaints against them for excessive force, we need to make sure their employment record follows them. Starting with a state-wide review system. Right now, it’s up to individual police departments to record this information.

There needs to be space for people to come to the review board without any police being present. To put yourself on the line can make people who complain feel unsafe.

ZG: Would you support turning the Sheriff position into an appointed position?

KB-S: I like the idea of the sheriff being hired on their credentials and it not being an elected position. I think that would help a lot to weed out people who have things in their background that might make them less effective in that position.

ZG: Would you support abolishing qualified immunity?

KB-S: Yes.

ZG: Do you support weakening or abolishing police unions?

KB-S: I don’t support abolishing them. But a union should not exist to protect their members from valid complaints. Let’s think of it from a labor union point of view. If you have someone on a job at a construction site who is sexually harassing people or spouting off racist stuff on the work site, I would say most of our unions now have something in place to address this. A union should not exist to protect members who are doing harmful things to others.

ZG: Who do you think should be in charge of reviewing and punishing officers alleged to have committed wrongs?

KB-S: We should have a local civilian review board and a state-level review board that is made out of HR type people who are not police officers to review these. I would support encouraging local municipalities to institute their own local civilian review boards a long with a state-level board where people could appeal to.

ZG: Would you support police discipline records be public?

KB-S: That’s tricky. There’s a fine line between a person’s individual right to privacy and the public’s right to safety. If we were going to institute something like that, I don’t necessarily think its fair for the public to have access to all the complaints, but citizen review boards should have access to those records so they can identify patterns and individuals who are dangerous.

ZG: What should the overall goal of the jail be? Incapacitation for trial? Should the jail have more of a role in actual rehabilitation?

KB-S: Only if they are transformed into drug rehabilitation centers. I don’t think local jails should be responsible for people who needs rehabilitation for drugs and anger management for violent tendencies. One of our biggest problems is that people with drug problems are jailed. I don’t think drug addiction should be a crime. I don’t think most drug possession should be a crime. If someone has a drug addiction and they’re stealing to feed their drug problem we need to handle it in a different way.

I think jails need to be a place to keep people who are clearly a danger to society locked up until trial. Of course, I am for ending cash bail.

ZG: What changes would you like to see in the state’s penitentiary system in order to reduce recidivism?

KB-S: First, we have to reduce the amount of people we’re incarcerating. I have a neighbor who has been jailed many many times for traffic tickets and license violations. We should not be locking people up for these things. We should find other ways for these people to pay their debt for society. Reduce the number of people I the prison system.

Then, take the money we save from reducing incarceration, and look at prison systems where recidivism is very low and copy those models.

KB-S: Yes. I think if someone is incarcerated and we don’t give them a vote then why are we counting them.

ZG: Would you support granting county jurisdictions more oversight and control over their Sheriff’s department and jails?

KB-S: Yes, absolutely. I want to see changes from the state-level legislating Sheriff’s do not have as much autonomy as they do. Giving a single person that kind of power is not good for the most part.

ZG: Is there anything else you’d like the readers to know?

KB-S: My passion for criminal justice reform comes from my Unitarian Universalist faith, and the principle that everyone has inherent worth and dignity. We have a very active prison ministry program. Through educational opportunities at my church, this is where I started to learn about the ills of mass incarceration.

Ken Allison (Libertarian)

UPDATE: Kenneth Alison lost his race against incumbent Keith Sommer, 2,549 (4.5%) to 34,331 (60.1%) on November 3rd, 2020. Democrat Karla Bailey-Smith received 20,245 (35.4%).

Zachary Gittrich: What steps do you think police should take to increase accountability among officers?

Ken Allison: I think there’s a lot of attention that gets put on our police officers. They’re charged with a heavy responsibility keeping our people safe on a daily basis. We need to have an intelligent conversation about qualified immunity. We have police officers who have been on the jobs and I feel like they get fatigued. Sometimes what happens is they make bad decisions. I spent 27 years wearing a military uniform; I did 3 combat tours. That’s not the same thing in a lot of ways, but in some ways it is. When you’re carrying a firearm, you’re charged with carrying it ethically. It’s a huge responsibility. If you think about these police officers that have been on the job for a long time maybe in high crime areas, imagine what that’s like. I’m a 100% permanently disabled by the VA for PTSD & nerve damage. A lot of that is just from being in high-stress environment. I think a lot of them might just need a reprieve.

The unions are a lot of time protecting these officers from the context of protecting the job force. You take some officers that maybe have a track record for some issues, maybe too violent or maybe too rough-and-tumble, I don’t know. But, I do feel like labor unions have to have a part in the solution.

As far as actual police officers, training training training. I have a mixed opinion on body cameras because I think you see the video and we make opinions and judgments off a 30-second clips and that not reasonable to us to armchair quarterback.

ZG: One could make the argument that the police are the ones releasing the footage, and they control how much we as the public get to see. A lot of time with body-cam footage, the police have access to it but for whatever reason they refuse to release it all.

KA: Yea sure. I think there is a legal team involved, and the union is involved too. I don’t know. I’m not a police officer; I’ve never been one. I think right now what we need more than anything, across the board in Illinois, transparency is absolutely critical for us to get anywhere near to prosperity. Transparency is lacking at epic levels.

ZG: Do you support efforts to decrease the police budgets? Are their cuts you can think of that would be worth making?

KA: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re in a position to do it. How can we fight human trafficking when we’re defunding the police? Human Trafficking is something I’m deeply passionate about. I don’t believe we solve anything by reducing the amount of funding that goes to police and law enforcement. I’ve known hundreds of officers over a military career. A lot of people on the department are also national guardsmen. When we talk about that very small percentage of police officers that do get involved in these high profile cases; its a very small parentage of the law enforcement community. So, to make a broad sweeping effort because of a small few would be short sighted. What would end up happening is the safety of our communities would deteriorate. When that happens the first thing that moves in is organized crime. I think that will create the most risk.

ZG: Do you think local police departments are too militarized?

KA: No. If you look at the global war on terror, which has been going on for 19 years, I think its very difficult to not have bleed over. If you think about it, you can’t go into any retail store that sells video games that portray that military lifestyle. Now, that’s a very far off tangent. But, at the end of the day, we have a lot of the same people that are deploying over seas, they have equipment and gear that suits them. I twenty years ago, the number and type of serious actions wasn’t as prevalent back then. I think police need all the tools they can get.

ZG: Who do you think should be in charge of reviewing and punishing officers alleged to have committed wrongs? Would you be supportive of non-police officers reviewing and punishing officers?

KA: I wouldn’t support that because it would be just like me producing tax returns and then having somebody who is not as familiar with tax returns come and review my work based off of what they think the IRS code says. I think we would be doing ourselves a disservice to have unqualified people rendering opinions about whether or not people are doing their jobs.

ZG: Did you support the creation of a civilian review board for at the state level for people to file complaints?

KA: Possibly. I think the risk is that would be abused. I also think the state of Illinois also isn’t in the position to add more programs & oversight. That’s not a health & safety or human services program per say. I just don’t think we have the resources to allocate to that.

ZG: Would you support abolishing qualified immunity?

KA: I think qualified immunity is something we need to have a conversation about. These police officers are charged with a real responsibility. Same thing for me as an accountant, when I do tax returns I have to have errors insurance. Based on what I know about qualified immunity, it’s worth having a conversation about.

ZG: Do you support weakening or abolishing police unions?

KA: I don’t know I’d want to make a comment on that. I feel like the unions are there in place to protect the force.

ZG: Would you support police discipline records be public?

KA: What would they be used for?

ZG: If someone had a complaint against an officer, they could see if they had a prior history.

KA: I don’t know; I‘d have to think about that one. I think it would depend on what the utility is.

ZG: Do you support abolishing cash bail?

KA: I think that there’s an economic infringement that happens to individuals that are disenfranchised where they have to kick in a ton of money just to be able to have freedom until they have their day in court. Similar with qualified immunity, we need to have intelligent conversations about this. There needs to be consistency across the board. A good example is drug use. White people & black people use drugs at the same level, unfortunately people of color get punished much harder and end up being more disenfranchised cause they trump up these bail bonds before they can have their day in court.

ZG: The IL AG has supported licensing for police which would make it easier to remove bad officers. Would you support something like this?

KA: Ties right in to qualified immunity. I think you have people on the department that can either get insurance cause they have a good track record or can’t cause they don’t.

ZG: Would you support granting county jurisdictions more oversight and control over their Sheriff’s department and jails?

KA: I don’t know if that’s a real issue.

ZG: In the work that I’ve done in McLean County and with the local jail, county boards have very little oversight over the Sheriff’s department because the Sheriff’s department is an elected position. The reason for this is because of Illinois law.

KA: This is what I would say. If you have any elected official regardless of the position, transparency and accountability has to be at the forefront.

ZG: What should the overall goal of the jail be? Incapacitation for trial? Should the jail have more of a role in actual rehabilitation?

KA: I think for the way of county jails work is they are there for a holding position. What rehabilitation services would we even be able to provide? I think that would be a funding issue in the context of if we can’t afford it now I don’t know if that’s worth a conversation until we can get more financial prosperity. But, down the road I’d be open for it, especially as we talk about repeat offenders.

ZG: What changes would you like to see in the state’s penitentiary system in order to reduce recidivism?

KA: I’d take a look at the war on drugs. It has had a dramatic impact on persons of color. I think that is a massive contributing factor. What drugs can we legalize? As far as repeat offenders, I think we need to look at education & mental health discussions that go a long with that. How do you get people to stop committing crimes? It ties back to their communities and what resources they have there and what’s causing them to commit crimes to begin with. As you look at these impoverished communities where there are no resources, there’s food deserts, everyone is fighting for every scrap of liberty.

KA: Yes. Are those individuals able to vote?

ZG: Inmates are not able to vote in Illinois.

KA: Then, I don’t if it makes sense counting them for that district. Now, I’m not terribly familiar with this.

ZG: Someone might say that immigrants are also counted for representation even though they can’t vote.

KA: I’m not sure if I can give a real answer about that.

ZG: One solution is that the people who are imprisoned get counted for the district in they came from so that district doesn’t lose out on the resources that might be available, while also not inflating these districts with prisons.

KA: I would be more in favor of that than just “discarding” them altogether. It seems like those prison districts would be unnecessarily or improperly inflated. That doesn’t seem right to me.

ZG: Would you support making the Sheriff an appointed position?

KA: it depends on who they’re being appointed by. The main reason I’m running is the lack of trust and transparency in our entire governmental system all the way from the local level all the way to DC. When you talk about the Sheriff should be elected or appointed it comes down to who is pulling those strings because there is an awful lot of self-dealing and corruption going on in every level. That has to be eradicated. In order for us to go anywhere near prosperity, we have to get a wrangle on the corruption and self-dealing in Illinois. That’s the only reason I’m running for office; I’m not running for office to be a career politician. I’m running for office because I think we need someone willing to stand up for the truth, willing to stand up for transparency. And not necessarily just being tied to an R or a D. I feel like the duopoly between republicans and democrats has catastrophically failed us. We have these parties and we’re not getting access to good people. I grew up as a Democrat. And I became a Republican after 9/11 and I did two combat tours. You change as you get older, you’re values change. The reality is when I went to the Republican party cause I felt the conservative values mirrored more to me, I was shocked to find out that’s not how it works. These parties have a bench of people so this person gets elected this year, they’ll be in office for as long as they can, and they’ll have 4-5 people behind them waiting. When you have that, how do you have clear governance? How do you have people who are truly independent and know how to reach across the aisle and talk to people to find all these problems. A lot of times it comes down to funding and dollars. We’re doing ourselves a disservice by only having essentially a binary political system. We want to talk about the humans, the physicality of being a human is either binary or non-binary, and I get it. At the same time, how can we have a political system that is only binary? It’s kind of like our human existence can only be non-binary, but our thoughts and souls have to apply to some type of binary mechanism. White or black? Male or female? One or a zero? That’s just not the way life is. The world is non-binary. It’s a shame that we have the political system we have; it doesn’t work. I wanna try and fix it. I want to be public servant that people can trust cause they know I’m a man of my word.