(logo whooshing) (upbeat music) - Welcome to At Issue, I'm H Wayne Wilson.

Thank you so much for joining us.

When you talk about police departments, there's always something to have a discussion over.

It could be staffing issues, it could be traffic stop issues, it could be any number of things and we have a seasoned veteran of the Normal Police Department and a brand new chief over in the City of Bloomington to give us an update on Bloomington and Normal Police news.

And let me say welcome back to At Issue Chief Rick Bleichner who is a 10 year veteran as the chief and how long in the staff?

- 30 Years as of September.

- [H Wayne] Okay, welcome chief, thank you for being with us.

- My pleasure.

- And his counterpart over in the City of Bloomington is brand new one, I think we can still say brand new.

- Yes, sir.

- [H Wayne] He's still smiling so (laughs) it's must be brand new.

Chief Jamal Simington welcome aboard and congratulations.

- Thank you, sir.

Thanks for having me.

- And let's start with you Chief Bleichner because WGLT radio in Normal reported recently, and it just depends on how you wanna count the numbers, but your authorized staffing is down somewhere between 13 and 20%, making it difficult to go out on patrol and carry forth.

And these are authorized positions.

What's the reason behind being so low on the staffing and what kind of steps are you taking to correct that?

- Yeah, I mean, we are down about 12 positions right now and out of a staff of 84 sworn that's a fair amount though.

The most that I can remember in my time there but it's kind of a culmination of several things.

I think it's a part of it is there's no secret.

There's been a lot of discussion, a lot of focus on policing and the last few years, well-earned but a lot of focus on that.

There's been some legislative changes that have happened, but the big thing, I think that's really driving that is really that the economy is chugging along and it's in a pretty good shape.

There's a lot of private sector jobs that are available out there.

Out of the individuals that we've seen that have left our agency a very small percentage of those are even going into policing anywhere.

So, in law enforcement, I think for us, again, it's kind of rebranding what we do.

It's trying to continue to recruit and try and retain the people that we have because when the economy is good and there's organizations out there that are hiring daytime, weekends off, it's difficult for law enforcement to compete with those because we're a 24/7 operation.

And so, that's a factor out there as well, too.

But we've seen that over the years when the economy is good we're usually in a hiring cycle pretty regularly.

When things change, individuals will then typically look to municipal employment as something that's gonna be maybe not quite as lucrative as the private sector but it's very steady, it's stable and it's dependentable.

- Before I ask you about steps to try to correct that situation.

I want to turn to Chief Simington and ask, are you down in staffing at your police department?

- We are, we're down about 10 as well.

Certainly we were trying to ramp up our recruitment efforts and hope that more people take interest in the City of Bloomington and the Bloomington Police Department here in the near future.

- So back to you Chief Bleichner.

What steps can you take?

Because it's not an easy process, it's seven, eight, nine months before you can... from the day you hire someone until you can say, okay, you're good on the street.

What steps are you taking to try to fill that void?

- Yeah, I mean, you're correct.

We were limited a little bit in the fact that if we have a brand new individual that we hired today, it would be six or seven months in a perfect world before they're able to be out on solo patrol.

So when we have individuals that are retiring or near retirement age, we can plan for those.

But when we have others that wanna leave for family reasons, spouse moves out of state they need to move or they wanna have a career change, it's a little more abrupt and we don't have the ability to plan for those types of things.

We're also limited by there's only so many police academies that happened during the course of the year.

And so if somebody were to leave today, for example, the earliest police academy we could get somebody into would be in early January.

And so that's if there are seats available.

And so, although what we're seeing in Normal with some vacancies and the need to hire people, I think every agency across the state is seeing that in some way, shape or form.

- One of the struggles is that there aren't quite as many applicants as there used to be.

Is that making it more difficult for you?

- Yes, it is.

When I applied for jobs in the past, there were several hundred people showing up to test and now that's downsized tremendously.

So we're finding that the interest level is very low for being in a public service environment and in a police agency and we're trying to effectively find ways to that around and ramp up the interest level.

- Is part of this the George Floyd effect that you're not getting as many applicants or is there a concern that people aren't applying to be police officers because they may be put in a position where the public will criticize their activities?

- I think there's some of that that's out there.

I think a lot of it comes down to the job satisfaction that individuals want and seek.

And I think there was a Bloomberg article that I saw a couple of weeks ago, and there were three professions that were losing staff at an alarming rate.

One was the restaurant industry, which I wouldn't think it'd be a surprise given all the openings and closings and the intermittent starts and stops due to COVID.

The other one was the healthcare industry, especially in the nursing staff.

And again, I think that's a lot of it that would be pandemic related.

And then law enforcement was the third one, and I think in that situation as we talked a little bit before, it's a whole host of reasons there.

But again, if you have a constant you maybe feel you're in those situations when you're on the street and when you're handling those calls, you can be put a lot of times in a loose, loose situation.

Even if you do the right thing for the right reason at that time you're going to be criticized.

And it takes a special person to be able to understand that and to cope with that on a day-to-day basis.

Because again, at the end of the day, we all want to have value in what we're doing and feel that we're making a difference in the community.

- Chief Simington, how did you go about telling potential recruits this is a good job?

- Yes, so certainly we're looking for someone who's service minded, who wants to give back to others, who wanna make a difference in a community, serve and it's an exciting job.

It's one where it's not the same every single day.

It's one where you're able to reach hundreds of people throughout a week, for instance and to make a difference in their life.

They're looking for a police agency that has people that have are of the mind of to serve others and to step in when they need help.

And so we're looking for an individual who's capable, cognizant of wanting to give back and to serve and protect others.

- I wanna turn to Illinois Department of Transportation study.

Do they do this every year in terms of traffic stops?

In Bloomington, the city of Bloomington African-American drivers were stopped at a rate of approximately 6.2 times more likely than white drivers, that is 2020 statistics, 2019 it was 4:1, 6.2 up from 4:1, over a normal chief, it was about 4.1:1 and that's up about four point.

The Chief Simington those are just overall numbers.

Have you had a chance to look at those numbers and how might you address that situation?

- Yes, so I've taken a dive into those statistics.

I'm looking at those internally.

We are trying to come up with a way where supervisors can supervise and coach and mentor their officers and have the data real time.

Instead of waiting a year and a half for the department of transportation statistics to come out the better we're able to provide them that information they can make decisions and coach their subordinates effectively.

And we will see a turnaround in those numbers and certainly identify any areas of concern, it may need to be addressed or training or otherwise.

- And to you Chief Bleichner?

- Yeah, no, I mean, certainly we look at those numbers and there's room to improve and we certainly look at that.

But I can tell you in addition to that, I mean we also have a lot of other internal processes in place.

I agree with Chief Simington on having the information in rather than look at it quarterly, maybe we can have that monthly to where our supervisors are, can have those open conversations with line staff so that they're aware of that.

But for us, there's also... we don't wait until the report comes out annually to tell us that we've got a problem.

I mean, we have other mechanisms in place within the police department to look at those things.

I mean, we look and track a whole host of things.

We have an early warning system that looks at individual employees for areas where they may be having... whether it be personnel matters, whether it be at fault crashes, where there may be citizen complaints at a higher level than other officers as a guide for us.

We have oversight from our police supervisors when they review in car cameras, they review body camera footage on a regular basis to make sure that individuals carrying out the goals and the objectives of our department in a manner that's acceptable to us in the way we want it to be done.

And then we also gauge into a lot of other analysis on things whether it be citizen complaints, use of force and all those types of things.

So I think it's a holistic approach here in how we do that, because if we just relied on the one report, we potentially would be missing a lot of things but I think again, there's a lot of room to improve, and I agree with Chief Simington and having that data available more readily to take quicker action is gonna be helpful.

- You mentioned use of force, so I'd like to turn to training.

What kinds of changes have there been in training?

And this is mostly post George Floyd in terms of deescalation, use of force and even possibly in the future, calling upon other agencies who have expertise to assist police officers?

- Post George Floyd and this year the safety act was passed in Illinois.

And there were a lot of changes, several of the things you mentioned as far as deescalation, it requires scenario type training where it's at hands-on training with different encounters and different situations that officers might encounter.

There's also requirements for officers to intervene when they see force that's being used, that's excessive or outside of the policy, and also a duty to render aid whenever they see situations where someone needs care, needs aid, there's a requirement to do that.

And I can tell you, those are all... they're certainly good things to build into our policy, we were fortunate in the sense we've been accredited through the commission on accreditation for law enforcement agencies since 1994, which is a national accreditation process of best practices.

And a lot of those types of things that were in the safety act were already built into our policies because of that ongoing national accreditation process, where we're continually looking at those policies, we're reviewing them and we're bringing them up to date.

- And likewise Chief Simington, use of force deescalation training changes that are coming in Bloomington?

- Yes, like Chief Bleichner.

Certainly we have things that are in place as well.

We have a level of accreditation, accountability levels, all use of forces are reviewed, and they're reviewed all the way up to the assistant chief.

And so that's going through three levels as well as a trainer looking at those videos and outcomes from those types of situations.

The law literally puts on the books the things that the Bloomington police department has been doing for years and it's actually exciting to be able to say that to sister to police departments have been on the forefront of making changes in assuring professional level policing and constitutional policing in our two cities.

- I wanna talk about one particular case.

The Jelani Day, a case of the graduate student at Illinois State University and your department was in charge of the initial investigation, further investigation done up in the South County but is there anything new in the Jelani Day case?

- Sir, there's nothing new.

We have certainly joined in the multi-jurisdictional investigative team.

We are there on a daily basis participating in that investigation.

And the men and women of both the Bloomington Police Department, Peoria Police Department, the LaSalle county Sheriff's Department and others are working with diligence to make sure that we can seek out the truth.

And the Multi-Jurisdictional Investigative Team is getting along very well.

And we were just asking the public again, if anyone has any information to please, please come forward, and no matter how small it may be, provide that information to the investigators so they can follow up on those types of leads so we can advance the case.

- Chief Bleichner, Peoria for some time now has had a don't shoot philosophy, and you say that you would prefer to focus on don't carry rather than don't shoot.

What is your hope there?

Why don't carry instead of don't shoot?

- Well, I mean, over the last 10 years and even longer, Bloomington Normal has been pretty fortunate.

We've had certainly gun violence that has happened in our area but it's not been to the level of what a lot of other communities have seen similar size to us.

And so I know... and again, not saying that the don't shoot program, isn't a good program, I just don't know that it's the best fit for Bloomington Normal.

And part of the reason being is because we don't have quite the volume of other agencies do, and when you get to that point where you've got a handful of shootings that are occurring every week, it really taxes your resources.

So my thought on that and it's not just me I mean, it's really been kind of a county wide approaches.

It's almost impossible to shoot and kill somebody if you're not carrying a firearm.

So when we look at this across the board, a lot of times we see a tragic situation that happens where somebody shot and killed and people say, oh my God!

How could we get to that point?

Well, it's not somebody who goes from not carrying a gun one day to carrying a gun and shoot and killing somebody the next day.

It's a series of steps along the way and going from a young individual who doesn't have firearms or doesn't carry them to now all of a sudden somebody who wants to carry it on the street 'cause they feel they need it for whatever reason, that's a big leap.

The next leap from that is now you're showing it off, you're displaying it to people.

That's a smaller leap.

Now, all of a sudden, you're in a situation where maybe it's hided, there's an argument you make a bad decision, now you're pulling it out and pointing it at people, a smaller leap.

Next thing you know the gun goes off and somebody is shot and killed.

If we had an opportunity to intervene along that way somewhere, whether it's individuals posting photos of them with firearms on Facebook, if it's catching them when they're carrying firearms and other locations that they shouldn't be carrying them, they can't lawfully possess them.

Yeah, it may result in a criminal charge, it may result in maybe even some jail or department of corrections time but those individuals would be alive.

And if we are able to intervene in that types of scenario, hopefully we can prevent the issue downstream where we're having multiple shootings.

- You mentioned young people.

Is there a concern and you know they're exposed to well, "Hey, here's a revolver".

Are you concerned that there's a trend toward young people, younger and younger people gravitating toward weapons as a display of authority?

- Yeah, we've seen that over the years where the ages have gradually moved down to where we have young teens that we're catching in possession of firearms now.

And I know in some communities, they call them straw purchases where somebody who's got a lawful ability to purchase a firearm purchases one and then gives it to somebody who can't lawfully possess one because of their status.

We don't typically see that in Normal, most of ours where individuals are in possession of firearms, where they can't lawfully possess them either because they don't have firearm owners ID cards, or because they've got felony convictions or something else that would prohibit that.

Those are those are firearms that have been stolen, whether they're out of vehicles or whether they're out homes.

And so part of the message there is really trying to encourage people to do what they can to secure those firearms, to make them less accessible.

Because that's what we're seeing a lot of the times with those young people that's how the guns are getting into their hands.

At least in the town of Normal they're being taken from areas where they're not secured.

- In Bloomington (mumbles).

Any concern over younger people starting to have access to weapons?

- Yeah, so that is certainly a concern we're seeing the same demographics where more younger people are turning to guns, have to resolve conflict.

And so conflict resolution seems to be an area that needs focus, whether that's in the schools or through other community groups to help the youth try to develop an ability to resolve conflict other than using violence.

And so, yes, that is always a concern of ours.

- I know that the final decision doesn't sit with you and for those that in the audience, this is a communications situation but it's called NetCom.

But Bloomington for about 15 years has been out of NetCom a centralized communication system.

Have you had time to look at NetCom and where do you have a preference at this point?

- Yes, sir.

So it has surfaced as of last week.

So there is conversation being started as to whether that would be the most efficient way for government to put together resources to solve and make it more efficient the communication efforts when a 911 call is made, if it goes to the correct center or not, that's always concerning.

And so any delay in getting emergency resources to those that are in need, wherever that can be enhanced, certainly I think it's worth us looking into.

so we'll see where that leads and I'm certainly that decision doesn't rest with me but we will do what's best for the city of Bloomington.

- But you could make a recommendation once you have had time to study this?

- Yes, sir.

- And let me... we're talking about communication.

So let's talk about radio.

Every one in McLean county, I believe is using encrypted radio?

And what's the advantage of what are the disadvantages in using encrypted radio transmissions?

- Well, the advantage for us is obviously the there's certain things that we wanna protect obviously.

Some of the tactical things that we may do as far as where we're at, if we're looking for individuals where our units are positioned and things like that there's also it became pretty clear during the... as we're still in the pandemic there's times when medical information can be transmitted over that radio frequency.

And so there's some concerns when you've got things out there that are sensitive in nature, that shouldn't be, really aren't meant for the masses.

And so how do we deal with that?

The bigger part, going back to the tactical part of it, and just a couple of examples, back in 2019, I believe it was March, there was a situation where there was a US Marshall's deputy who was part of a task force in Rockford who shot and killed an individual there was coming through our community.

And we had a pursuit that involved with this individual and part of it was putting out some stop sticks where the individual may run over that with her vehicle, air is released in a controlled way from their tires and wish to hopefully slow them down.

Well, as part of that, there was an individual who was following with a scanner that was so close, they actually got in the middle of that, and it had damage to their vehicle as a result of that.

And then fast forwarding to end the may beginning of June last year, we had some situations where we had some civil unrest on the heels of the George Floyd incident.

And we were dealing with that.

And with some larger crowds, some that had turned violent.

We, during that course of that, we found that there were times when groups or individuals were utilizing those radio frequencies and the scanning of those against us.

And so what we did at that time, we had the capability to switch over to encrypted channels, we did and we were then able to kind of gain the upper hand in that.

So for us, it was a matter of trying to balance sharing that information, protecting the information that needs to be protected, whether it's personal, privacy stuff and the officer's safety component of it is important to us.

- Chief Simington, one of the complaints about using encrypted radio transmissions is it steps into the realm of lack of transparency.

How do you address that complaint?

- Well, I would disagree.

Certainly, we have social media now.

We are pushing out vital information to the public when those emergencies surface and our ability to push that out fast, it means it's, it's coming to you it's accurate and it's timely.

And that's our focus and that's part of our mission so we will get better at doing that.

So the public does get the information that they certainly need at the time.

And I don't foresee that being an issue.

- Well, a final topic is the City of Philadelphia this week came out and said that they were going to ban low level traffic stops.

Police officers will no longer be initiating low-level traffic stops.

I've just asked for an initial response to this do you think that's a good idea?

- In the City of Philadelphia they obviously thought so.

For me, I would think it's really when you balance out the public safety or the safety of the public against those individual rights.

And if you can draw something back to whether it's traffic safety, community safety, I think you're in a good place there but I think part of it kind of goes back to our earlier conversation about the traffic stop data.

I think it's a clear signal that we really have got to kind of dial in on this.

And we have to look at this and get it fixed because if we don't there's other entities out there that wanna step in and we don't wanna have a situation at least in Normal, where the council now has believes that the police department is not capable of managing that where the public has lost trust in us in being able to do that and now where they have to come in and legislate that.

So I think it's an issue that we've got to look at, we've got to tackle and we've got to make some meaningful changes.

- Briefly to you, chief Simington.

- Yeah, so certainly the police is the public and the public is the police.

We want to do the right thing for our community and by way of traffic safety, solving crimes and things that get your crime, crime is mobile.

And we certainly understand that there are people that die in traffic crashes or are severely injured in traffic crashes.

That is a concern of the police and the community as a whole.

So we wanna make sure we get that right.

- And with that, our half-hour is already over.

We hope to continue and have you back for another edition of At Issue in the near future.

Chief Rick Bleichner, the town of Normal Police Chief thank you so much for being with us.

- Thank you H. - And counterpart over in the City of Bloomington Police, Chief Jamal Simington, thank you for being with us and congratulations on being the police chief.

- Thank you, I really appreciate it.

- And we thank you for joining us in this discussion, we'll be back next time with another discussion, this time we're going to be talking about the lack of sports officials at the high school and elementary school level.

We'll have the heads of the IESA and the IHSA on At Issue to have that discussion, join us then.

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