Elgin police hire video company to help tell what they do
The Elgin Police Department really, really wants people to know about the good things officers are doing - so much so that it hired a video production company to do the storytelling.
The company, hired at $17,000 for 2019, so far has produced two videos. The first one, posted on Facebook in November, explains what happens when someone calls 911. It got 15,000 views.
The second one, "Lost and Found: A Story of a Call," was posted Wednesday and tells about how two officers helped a teenage girl in March. The nearly 5-minute video got 39,000 views by Thursday afternoon. It features officers Kevin Snow and Hector Gutierrez, two actors who play the girl and her older sister, and apartment property manager Holly Clements of Elgin.
Clements said she called Snow, a crime-free housing officer, after seeing on the apartment building's hallway video monitoring that the girl was coming and going to school with no trace of her mother.
At first, the girl told officers her mother was around, but Clements continued to monitor and saw no adult, and the apartment was under eviction proceedings.
"I'm like no, something's not right. I was kind of like babysitting her on footage," Clements said.
Snow and Gutierrez eventually figured out the girl indeed was living alone, had no food at home and was getting free lunches at school.
The officers, who spent some of their money to help the girl, contacted the Department of Children and Family Services and reached the girl's older sister, who lived out of state. The girl has since moved in with her sister.
"Stuff like that really, really makes me proud of being an Elgin police officer," Snow said. "This is not something you see rarely here in Elgin," Gutierrez said.
Elgin police Cmdr. Rick Ciganek said the department hired Anomaly Video, based in DeKalb, last summer after requesting proposals and getting bids from about 11 companies.
Another video is in the editing process and one or two more are in the works, Ciganek said. The police department's 2020 budget includes up to $20,000 for another video contract; future topics will include serious ones like use of force, Ciganek said.
The videos are "absolutely" worth the money and time, he said.
"It's all about building bridges in our community. It's about educating the community about what the police department does and getting feedback, and doing things better."
Police departments across the country have started using professional video production, most famously for a "lip sync challenge" making the rounds on YouTube starting in 2018, Ciganek said. The videos also are great recruitment tools, he said.
The crime-free housing unit has always done great work and in this case truly was able to help a girl in need, Clements said.
Clements is the sister-in-law of Decynthia Clements, who was shot and killed by an Elgin police officer in March 2018. The Clements family is suing the officer and the city in federal court; Clements said that has nothing to do with her overall appreciation for other police officers.