Category Archives: Peoria Police

Peoria Police

Settingsgaard on red-light cameras: “I don’t care about the revenue”

92 Comments

Peoria Police Chief Steven Settingsgaard says he’s not proposing red-light cameras as a way to bring more revenue into the city, but only as a way to improve safety because speeding is one of the most common causes of rear-end collisions.

“I don’t care about the revenue, not one bit,” Settingsgaard said via e-mail. “It would be a Council decision ultimately but I would like to see any revenue go toward something that also helps traffic safety in the City rather than going into the general fund or to the police department.”

For example, he suggested the revenue could go toward construction or repair of sidewalks, which would improve pedestrian safety. “I believe there a lots of options here that would put the money to good use but would also alleviate any fears that red light cameras are first and foremost revenue generators.”

According to a recent Peoria Times-Observer article, Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis also “told [state] legislators this request was not being sought to create a revenue generator for the city.” Instead, it’s all about safety. “Our community is very dangerous,” he was quoted as saying.

According to the 2009 Crime Summary and additional statistics obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, only 2.8% of all traffic citations (721 of 25,476) and 3.8% of total accidents (173 of 4,560) were for red-light violations. But Settingsgaard believes these numbers can be deceiving.

“The number of citations or percentage of citations issued do not reflect the severity of the problem,” he explained. “It is the difficulty of enforcing red light running that is a major deterrent to enforcement and contributes to the low number of citations, not the lack of violators.”

For the police to safely and effectively enforce red lights, it takes two officers and two cars. One officer (the “witnessing officer”) is positioned in front of the intersection and is the one who actually observes the violation. The other officer (the “pursuing officer”) is positioned on the other side of the intersection and is the one who pursues the violator. It would be unsafe for the witnessing officer to try to pursue the violator through the intersection.

Given the time and staffing required to stake out traffic signals, Settingsgaard believes it would be cheaper and more effective to use photo enforcement.

While recent studies have shown that red-light cameras actually increased the number of crashes at photo-enforced intersections, those crashes have been rear-end fender-benders. In contrast, red-light runners cause “T-bone” style crashes, Settingsgaard point out, which “are extremely hazardous and injuries can be severe if not fatal.”

“It is important to note though that the need goes beyond the actual number of crashes or even the severity of crashes,” he continued. “Just like perception of crime is nearly as important as crime itself, perception of traffic safety is important. It is a common perception, and maybe a common reality, that it is wise in Peoria to pause before proceeding with a green light due to the prevalence of red light runners. This perception/reality impacts the quality of life in Peoria and it frustrates the public when they believe the police don’t give it enough attention.”

My take: With all due respect to the Chief and the Mayor, I don’t see any warrant for using photo-enforcement. I think it’s clear that all safety concerns are based on nothing more than anecdotal evidence and subjective experience. Thus, if photo-enforcement were established, there would be no objective way to quantify or measure its effectiveness. Any claims of improved safety would be anecdotal as well.

The only thing we would be able to measure is how many citations are being issued and how much money it’s bringing into the city. Despite the Mayor’s and Chief’s professed disinterest in that revenue, I don’t think it’s cynical to recognize the city will inevitably become addicted to the revenue once it starts. So even if the establishment of photo-enforcement is not motivated by desire for a new revenue stream, the end result will be the same. Red-light cameras will be little more than a means to extract more money from residents under the pretense of improving safety.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Police

Red-light cameras on Peoria Police wish list

11 Comments

I was reading over the agenda for the City Council meeting tonight, and this caught my eye: “2010 Legislative Agenda Items.” It’s described as “a list of items [that] are submitted to our local legislators with the expectation that the items will be reviewed with possible action taken in Springfield.”

One of the items on that list is a request that Peoria be able to use red-light cameras:

9. Automated Traffic Law Enforcement Technology/Red Light Running Expansion.

Current law allows for a governmental agency in a municipality or county located in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, Madison, St. Clair, and Will Counties to establish an automated traffic law enforcement system, in cooperation with a law enforcement agency that produces a recorded image of a motor vehicle’s response to a traffic control signal. The technology is designed to create a clear recorded image of the vehicle and the vehicle’s license plate. It further provides that the owner of the vehicle used in the violation is liable for the violation if the violation was recorded by the system, with exceptions. This legislation would give Peoria the authority to operate automated traffic enforcement technology for red light running.

On the one hand, I can understand the reason for the request. Since the City Council has cut dozens of police officers, the police department is having to look to alternative methods of law enforcement, including automation. These red-light cameras would allow intersections to be monitored without any officer present at all. If a vehicle runs a red light, the camera snaps a picture and the driver automatically get a traffic ticket in the mail.

On the other hand, however, photo enforcement is a bad idea. Consider this Chicago Tribune report that came out just over the weekend:

If improved safety is the goal of red-light cameras, then it is a mission largely unaccomplished for the first crop of area suburbs that raced to install the devices after they became legal in 2006, according to state data.

Accidents rose — in some cases, significantly — at half the 14 suburban intersections outfitted with traffic cameras by the end of 2007, the data show. The number of crashes fell at just five of those intersections after cameras went in, while two showed little change.

These findings aren’t unique to Chicago. In fact, numerous independent studies have shown an increase in traffic collisions due to red-light photo enforcement. Peoria (Arizona) saw the number of accidents double this past year at intersections where red-light cameras were installed.

Of course, these statistics are routinely ignored by municipalities because of another, more compelling statistic: increased revenues. Photo enforcement can be a cash cow for municipalities. A physical police officer at an intersection can only catch so many people in a day running red lights, whereas cameras catch every person, every time. That means a tremendous increase in the number of traffic citations, and hence, a windfall of revenue. A report by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, for example, found fine collections in Kingsport (TN) quadrupled after cameras were installed.

It’s because of this conflict of interest (revenues vs. safety) that many people are opposed to photo-enforcement.

The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and some municipalities with red-light cameras have allowed themselves to be corrupted by the love of money. The National Motorists Association reported in 2008 that six cities were caught shortening the length of yellow lights at photo-enforced intersections in order to increase revenue. In some cases, the yellow lights were so short that they were actually unsafe — i.e., drivers got caught in a situation where they were too close to the intersection to stop safely, but too far away to make it through before the light turned red. Thus, these municipalities were blatantly trading safety for revenue. In other cases, the municipalities simply tried to trick motorists by making the yellow light durations shorter at photo-enforced intersections and longer at non-enforced intersections.

Yellow light duration turned out to be an interesting topic when looking up information on red-light cameras. Several sources cite studies that show longer yellow light durations are more effective than photo-enforcement at increasing safety and reducing red-light running. So if safety is really the motivating factor here, perhaps instead of asking legislators to approve photo-enforcement in Peoria, the police department should ask the Traffic Engineering division to increase yellow phase duration at intersections.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Police

No council meeting Tuesday

Leave a comment

From Alma Brown, City of Peoria Communications Manager:

Pursuant to Rule 32 of the Council Rules, the Peoria City Council Meeting scheduled for November 17, 2009 is hereby canceled.

The cancellation is due to the City Council’s inability to make budget decisions necessary to close the deficit and bring forward a balanced budget in the absence of specific concession information from our Police Benevolent and AFSCME bargaining units.

The City Council has directed staff to continue meeting with these units in order to reach agreement on the requested concessions.

My sources say that some sort of concessions might be forthcoming from the Police union, thus accounting for the delay in making final budget decisions. Despite the wording in the e-mail, there doesn’t appear to be the same optimism regarding AFSCME. But we’ll see what happens between now and next Tuesday.

City of Peoria, Peoria Police

Police Benevolent: Why haven’t they agreed to wage concessions?

24 Comments

After the Tuesday night City Council meeting, I caught up with Troy Skaggs, president of the Peoria Police Benevolent, and asked him why the police union had not agreed to any wage concessions. He said there were basically three reasons.

He told me that the union met Monday night, and that City Manager Scott Moore gave a presentation. During that presentation, Moore said this wasn’t going to be a one-year concession. It was likely that the city would be back next year asking for concessions again. And probably the year after that. This was the first time the city had come out and said these requests for concessions would be ongoing and not a one-time deal. That’s the first reason the union was uneasy with agreeing to wage concessions.

Secondly, Skaggs pointed out that the police department is already down 16 positions. Seven positions are vacancies from the beginning of the year that they simply haven’t filled, and an additional nine positions are officers who took advantage of the Voluntary Separation Initiative (VSI) recently offered by the city. They’re not going to fill any of those positions, yet the council wants to cut the department by an additional 17 positions. At the same time, according to Skaggs, the fire department is “back-filling” ten positions, eight of which were vacated due to VSI. So the police union doesn’t see the equity in these two situations.

Finally, the city wouldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t lay off more officers anyway, even if the union did agree to wage concessions. That really made the union uncomfortable, since they could give up wage increases and lose a bunch of additional officers anyway, meaning they’d be doing more work for no additional pay. Before I talked to Skaggs, I had asked Mayor Ardis about negotiations with the police union, and while he directed me to talk to the union president, he did mention that the police department had wanted some guarantees but the city didn’t feel comfortable with the offer having strings attached.

My take: I can understand, on the one hand, the city not wanting its hands tied in case the forecasted (or actual) deficit gets worse. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me for the police union to expect some sort of commitment from the city in return for wage concessions.

Bottom line, though, we need police protection. We can’t balance the budget at the expense of public safety. If we “punish” the police union for not taking wage concessions by laying off more police officers, we’re only hurting ourselves.

The council needs to face the music and raise revenue somehow. They simply can’t balance the budget by reducing expenses because the cuts are too deep. Even the City Manager recognizes this — he identified 22 positions that have been cut so far that he’d like to see restored because they’re critical for the city. Those positions include restoring six police officers and several support personnel in the police department.

The real mystery is why the council is so reticent to raise taxes for public safety when they’re so quick to raise taxes for private development schemes like the proposed downtown Marriott hotel deal. Nobody wants higher taxes, but if we’re going to be paying higher taxes anyway, the proceeds should go toward the highest public benefit. As it stands now, we’re paying higher taxes and getting less police protection in return.

Not only is that bad public policy on its face, it only exacerbates the city’s predicament because it drives residents and business out of Peoria. Nobody wants to live where it’s unsafe — whether perceived or actual — and nobody is going to want to shop and dine in Peoria when they can get the same goods and services at a much cheaper tax rate just over the river, or in Peoria Heights, or in any of the other surrounding communities. The city is cutting its own throat.

Crime, Peoria Police

Torched house was Drug Nuisance Property

11 Comments

The Journal Star reports that 1533 W. Butler St. was set ablaze around 1:20 p.m. by an arsonist who poured gasoline on both floors. Here’s what the paper doesn’t say: this is a known Drug Nuisance Property according to the Peoria Police Department. The website explains that “[n]uisance letters are sent to landlords, tenants and/or homeowners where illegal drug activity has occurred.”

When a landlord or homeowner receives a nuisance letter they are required to abate the nuisance up to and including eviction. By using this website, you will be able to view public records of individuals related to the nuisance letter who were arrested for narcotics possession or other offenses during search warrants or other illegal activity.
For those who are struggling with drug addiction and do not know how to recover from this illness at this page you will find online treatment and professional doctors that will be able to assist you.
The following individuals were arrested for various offenses at the listed addresses.

The listing for August shows:

Butler (1533 W.)     Beasley Jr., Charles W.
Brittine, Dexter
Burse, Ricky R.
Fitzpatrick, Allen S.
Yarbrough, Aerial D.

I’d say that’s a good start to a suspect list.

Peoria Journal Star, Peoria Police, Television

Kudos to Journal Star on some great reporting

8 Comments

A couple pieces worth reading, if you haven’t already:

  • Investigative Report on Overtime: With the city facing a budget deficit of $10-12 million, everything is under scrutiny, and that certainly includes the city’s largest expense: salaries. So kudos to the Journal Star — and specifically John Sharp — for the in-depth analysis of overtime expenses in the police and fire departments. All angles of the story were covered between the main article and numerous sidebars.

    I thought it was interesting that the police union would rather see property taxes raised than take a pay freeze, considering almost half the force lives outside of Peoria and would be unaffected by a tax hike. It was also interesting to read that Mayor Ardis is threatening the police department with layoffs if they don’t voluntarily freeze their wages.

  • Local Media Beat: Steve Tarter’s weekly column keeps us up to date on what’s happening in local TV and radio. His article this Sunday included some great news: Fort Wayne weatherman Jason Meyers is going away.

    A grievance filed by Channel 25 employees over displacement of station personnel by using the aforementioned Fort Wayne weatherman for weekend weather on the station’s local-news show was upheld by an arbitrator last week.

    The news is the last bastion for local programming on commercial television, and here’s WEEK outsourcing the weatherman — roughly one third of the local newscast — after they already obliterated WHOI’s independent news team. It’s sad that local content has sunk to such a low.

City of Peoria, Crime, Peoria County, Peoria Police

David Kennedy methods rolled out in Peoria

15 Comments

The Journal Star reports that the Peoria Police Department, in cooperation with the State’s Attorney’s office, is rolling out a Drug Market Initiative/Intervention strategy here in Peoria. Although he’s not named in the article, this is the program developed by David Kennedy on which I reported back in March, with a follow-up article in April. In March, Chief Settingsgaard said that he had “a team being trained by Kennedy and his staff.”

The paper summarizes the program thus:

The Drug Market Initiative/Intervention strategy targets geographic drug markets and involves prosecuting the most violent offenders. Low-level offenders are offered a second chance through interventions and help from social service agencies, along with the warning that another crime means jail time.

I applaud the police for trying new methods to reduce crime, and I’m especially pleased to see the police working with the State’s Attorney’s office. Too often there is an adversarial relationship between these two agencies. Best of luck to everyone involved in implementing this new strategy.

Peoria Police

A new way to fight violent crime

34 Comments

david-kennedyDavid Kennedy has been getting a lot of attention across the nation with his unorthodox — but successful — methods of lowering violent crime in urban areas. He’s the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. I first heard about Kennedy through the Smart City radio broadcast (you can listen to his interview by clicking here), and subsequently started reading up on him and his methods.

There’s a misunderstanding, says Kennedy, about what causes violent crime in inner cities. Conventional wisdom is that drugs are the common denominator in gang violence, but that’s not necessarily the case. In an article Kennedy wrote for the Washington Post in 2006, he explains:

My research … shows that in hard-hit neighborhoods, the violence is much less about drugs and money than about girls, vendettas and trivial social frictions. These are often referred to as “disputes” in police reports and in the media. But such violence is not about anger-management problems. The code of the streets has reached a point in which not responding to a slight can destroy a reputation, while violence is a sure way to enhance it. The quick and the dead are not losing their tempers; they are following shared — and lethal — social expectations.

I’ve heard shooters say, in private, that they wanted no part of what happened. But with their friends and enemies watching — and the unwritten rules clear to everybody — they did what they had to do.

The key to fighting violence is to change the social expectations in the group so that there’s pressure not to resolve conflict with violence. Unfortunately, the police don’t have much influence within these groups. But Kennedy says they could, if they changed their methods. Here’s an example (from a recent Newsweek story) of what that looks like:

In a 2004 experiment in High Point, N.C., Kennedy got the cops to try a new way of cleaning up the corners. They rounded up some young dealers; showed a videotape of them dealing drugs; and readied cases, set for indictment, that would have meant hard time in prison rather than helping them by sending them to one of the delray beach rehab centres. Then they let the kids go. Working with their families, the police helped the dope dealers find job training and mentors. The message, which spread quickly through the neighborhood, was that the cops would give kids a second chance—but come down aggressively if they didn’t take it. The police won back trust they had lost long ago (if they ever had it). After four years, police in High Point had wiped the drug dealers off the corner. They compared the numbers to the prior four years and found a 57 percent drop in violent crime in the targeted area….

One crime-infested Nashville neighborhood where Kennedy’s program was used saw a 91 percent drop in crime and prostitution in 2008, largely attributable to Kennedy’s good-cop, bad-cop approach…. The most effective cops are not the ones who make buy-busts, but who can find a dealer, show him photos of him committing a crime and give him a genuine choice: get straight or go to jail.

Hard to believe, and yet the results speak for themselves. As Newsweek summarized, “Cops were initially wary of Kennedy’s methods, which some mocked as ‘hug-a-thug.’ But Kennedy is much in demand now.”

So in demand, in fact, that his methods may be tried soon in our fair city. I wrote to Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard to ask him if he had ever heard of Kennedy and what he thought of his methods. The answer I got back surprised me: “I have a team being trained by Kennedy and his staff. More news soon.”

I’ll be standing by for the news.

City of Peoria, Energy Issues, Gary Sandberg, Peoria Police

City trying to cut down on idling vehicles

11 Comments

The City of Peoria is going to try to persuade its employees not to leave their city vehicles idling for long periods of time. I wouldn’t say they’re “cracking down” on the practice, because there doesn’t seem to be much more than an awareness campaign planned at the moment. But it’s not a bad first step.

Several citizens, including councilman Gary Sandberg, noticed that some police officers who would eat breakfast at a local restaurant in Peoria left their squad cars on and idling in the parking lot the whole time they were inside eating — sometimes as much as an hour or longer. When the City’s Energy Efficiency Task Force submitted their report to the council, Sandberg asked interim City Manager Henry Holling to look into the idling problem, since that’s a huge waste of energy, not to mention unnecessary pollution.

After that, the police officers never came back to the local restaurant. They apparently eat breakfast somewhere else now. That prompted Sandberg to say at a recent council meeting that “moving the problem is not solving the problem.”

So now, according to this week’s “issues update,” the city is giving all its employees who drive a city vehicle an anti-idling brochure: “A change in behavior will be reinforced with flyers posted on bulletin boards and articles in the employee newsletters. Department Heads are also emphasizing in staff meetings the need to reduce engine idling.” It doesn’t appear, however, that there will be a policy instituted or enforced.

My take: This will be great for conscientious employees who probably aren’t letting their vehicles idle excessively anyway. For those who leave their cars idling for an hour while they eat breakfast, I doubt this will make any difference whatsoever, some of them even they go and find the best dash cam online so they car are secured while they’re apart of the car. Those employees already feel justified in leaving their cars on for excessive periods of time, and will likely change their behavior only if told by a superior to knock it off. So that’s precisely what needs to happen in addition to this public-awareness campaign for any significant change to occur.

If you witness excessive idling of a city vehicle, write down the vehicle number and location and e-mail it to me. I’ll pass that information along to the city.

City of Peoria, Crime, Peoria Police

Violent crime declining in Peoria

7 Comments

Steve Settingsgaard. The police union gave him a vote of no confidence. Residents and some in the press criticized him for posting mug shots of prostitution and drug arrestees. Yet local government officials and many citizens defend him and even sing his praises. Why?

One word: Results.

In 2007, there were a total of 74 shootings and 16 homicides; 104 shootings and 18 homicides were logged in 2006. So far this year, there have been four homicides.

No doubt some will try to attribute these results to everything under the sun other than the police chief; and to be sure, the credit absolutely needs to be spread around. These outcomes aren’t the result of a one-man show. But you can bet if the trend were the other way, the fingers of blame would all be pointing directly at Settingsgaard.

So I say, let’s give credit where credit is due. Nobody’s perfect. We’re never going to agree on every tactic used by the chief. But let’s acknowledge and be thankful that our city has gotten safer under his watch.