Arrests are up in Elgin schools but numbers are misleading, police say
A state law enacted in 2025 caused the number of arrests in Elgin schools to nearly double in the past school year, a police official told the Elgin City Council this week. But he warned that number is misleading.
Elgin police Cmdr. Scott Holmes addressed council members Wednesday night when they approved the annual school resource officer agreement with Elgin Area School District U-46.
The city has partnered with the district since 1987 to provide school resource officers to enhance safety and strengthen relationships within the school community at Abbott (now Legacy-West), Ellis (now Legacy-East), Kimball and Larsen middle schools and at Elgin, Larkin and Gifford Street high schools.
Holmes said arrests in those schools, which he defined as instances where students were actually charged and put through the court system, were up year over year because of the new law enacted in 2025 that he said prevents police from issuing citations to students on school grounds during school hours or during school events.
“City ordinances for fighting, vaping, what we would consider those juvenile-type things that might happen in school, we can’t write those anymore,” he said.
Elgin police issued 123 citations during the 2024-25 school year, and 21 students were arrested. The number of arrests increased to 41 during the 2025-26 school year.
“Of the 41 arrests from this year, 31 of those could have been tickets,” Holmes said.
He said U-46 schools are taking more responsibility for discipline in the cases that don’t merit arrest, offering more counseling and referrals to the Youth Empowerment Program (YEP), a partnership between the school district, community-based organizations, faith-based agencies and the police that aims to decrease juvenile violence, arrests, gang involvement and dropout rates.
The program is primarily run by the police department’s community outreach specialist. YEP groups have been established in all U-46 high schools and middle schools in Elgin.
The council unanimously approved the annual agreement, which requires the school district to reimburse the city approximately $613,110 of the roughly $1,455,860 annual wage and benefit costs for the seven police officers.