Coming to a ballot near you … Flock cameras?

In another sign of the growing public angst over automated license plate readers, members of a Warrenville citizens group are gathering signatures to place an advisory question on the April ballot asking that the city’s 14 Flock cameras be removed.

Behind the effort is DeFlock Warrenville, which also has members planning to run for city council next spring.

Warrenville’s contract with Flock Safety ends in 2028. But the anti-Flockers have asked the council to stop using the cameras now and not include money in next year’s budget to pay for the system, which costs $37,500 a year, according to city documents.

The Warrenville City Council amended its ALPR policy in September to cut the time data collected from the cameras is retained from 30 days to 14 days.

On Oct. 16, city officials announced they had discovered one of its police officers may have accessed the Flock system, as well as other city software systems, for unauthorized uses in late 2024 and early 2025. The DuPage County state’s attorney’s office is investigating whether a crime was committed, according to the city.

Among the numerous police officers nationwide accused of misusing Flock data are two from DuPage County facing criminal charges: Former Itasca officer Marisa Ciccola is due in court Nov. 16; and former West Chicago officer Gerardo Solis has a Nov. 23 court appearance.

The referendum effort is the latest public uprising against ALPRs in the suburbs. Last month, the Kane County Sheriff’s Office removed its cameras from the Mill Creek subdivision near Geneva at the request of the local homeowner’s association.

Suburbs including Evanston, Oak Park, Berwyn and Homer Glen have either ended or paused their use of ALPRs, and residents in communities including Rolling Meadows, Mundelein and Woodstock have urged their town leaders to do the same.

Sink, not swim

A Schaumburg resident took a dip in the pool at the town’s Meineke Recreation Center Wednesday, but not in the way it was intended.

That’s because the pool now sits empty, and the person was behind the wheel of an SUV.

It all happened about 9:40 a.m., police said, when the driver of the Hyundai Tucson mistakenly hit the gas pedal instead of the brake while outside the center at 220 E. Weathersfield Way.

The SUV plowed through a fence, across the pool deck and into an empty 3¹/₂-foot deep section of the pool, police said.

The driver escaped without injury or — because the crash took place on private property, not a public thoroughfare — a traffic citation. The Hyundai, however, had to be pulled out of the pool with a crane, police said.

School district suit revived

A state appeals court has resurrected a six-year-old lawsuit against Community Unit District 300 that alleges school officials’ negligence led to the sexual abuse of a student by a substitute teacher.

The student’s mother filed suit in 2018 against the Algonquin-based district and former principal of Golfview Elementary School in Carpentersville. It claims leaders in the district and school failed to act despite several red flags surrounding substitute teacher Carlos A. Bedoya.

Bedoya, formerly of Lake in the Hills, was sentenced to 112 years in prison in 2019 after a jury found him guilty of repeatedly abusing a student from August 2015 to June 2016.

He later received an additional 60 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges involving other students. In all, 12 students came forward with allegations against him, authorities said.

A Kane County judge last year granted District 300 a summary judgment in the lawsuit — essentially ruling in their favor without a trial. That judge found there was no evidence that district employees’ behavior rose to the level of “willful and wanton conduct” that’s needed to sustain the lawsuit.

The Second District Appellate Court of Illinois disagreed. In a unanimous decision Tuesday, justices found there were repeated instances that, if presented as evidence at trial, could lead jurors to find that the district acted with “utter indifference” to students’ welfare.

Those include Bedoya being found alone in a classroom with a child on his lap; being found alone with a student behind a closed door; being found alone with a student in a storage room; being found alone with multiple students in a library; and making contact witnesses described as “not appropriate” when children were on top of him on the playground.

“Those incidents did not in and of themselves necessarily merit an investigation,” Justice Mary Seminara-Schostok wrote in the decision. “However, when those incidents are considered in conjunction with the other incidents that plaintiffs list, an inference is created that the District was demonstrating utter indifference towards (students).”

The case now goes back to Kane County court for further proceedings.

copsandcrime@dailyherald.com