A close look at Elgin police initiatives implemented after 2018 fatal shooting

Black Lives Matter activists in Elgin have pressed the police chief multiple times during recent protests about what the department has done in the wake of a fatal police shooting in 2018.

Police Chief Ana Lalley points to two main things: the emergency services detail and the collaborative crisis services unit, both launched in spring 2019 about a year after the death of resident Decynthia Clements.

The emergency services detail is unique in the suburbs, Lalley says. In 2017, Elgin police started pulling back on its SWAT approach by implementing smaller teams, and the detail is further refinement of that: two officers with advanced training and specialized equipment who respond to calls involving armed or violent individuals.

The collaborative crisis services unit is made of officers and mental health professionals who do follow-up on calls involving people with mental health, substance abuse or homelessness issues, and who can help respond to calls about people in crisis. Aurora police recently launched a similar initiative.

Elgin's initiatives are tangible evidence of the police department's commitment to evolving, modernizing and providing “the best service possible” with a focus on prevention and safe resolution, Lalley says.

The activists say policing needs to be overhauled and want the city to divert funds from the police department's $47.5 million budget to community-based mental health services, substance abuse treatment services, affordable housing programs and education.

Here is a closer look at the two new initiatives.

<h3 class="breakHead”>Emergency services detail

All Elgin officers are trained in crisis intervention, but those assigned to the emergency services detail - currently the entire 22-man SWAT team plus six more officers - get advanced training.

A detail team is on duty 4 p.m. to midnight, but details can assist during other hours as well, responding to a variety of situations: people barricaded indoors, threatening to blow up gas or start fires, or brandishing guns, knives, metal pipes and once even a sword, said Sgt. Jim Lalley, who leads the SWAT team.

The detail consists of two police officers in regular uniform, which people can perceive as less threatening than the SWAT outfit, who ride in a police truck that contains a variety of specialized equipment, allowing them to more nimbly and quickly respond to calls, Jim Lalley said. More SWAT team members can be called if needed, but the goal always is to resolve situations as peacefully as possible and make an arrest or take the person to the hospital for evaluation, he said.

The detail responded to 1,434 calls from March 2019 through Tuesday, none generating complaints, according to police data. Officers used force in three instances:

* In May 2019, an officer took down to the ground a white woman after she bit an officer while she was being moved from a jail cell. The woman suffered no injuries, police said.

* In July 2019, an officer used a Taser on a Latino man with “excited delirium,” a condition caused by drugs, mental illness or both. The man had been running naked down the street and injured his feet and scrotum while going over a fence, police said.

* In April, an officer used pepper spray on a Latino man who attempted to light things on fire after police were called about a sexual assault at his house, police said.

The department developed the emergency services detail after trips in 2018 to visit law enforcement agencies in England, Scotland and New York City, which has had an emergency service unit for decades.

The Elgin detail has some equipment repurposed from SWAT and some bought with drug asset forfeiture funds, which are proceeds seized from criminal activity, Cmdr. Jim Bisceglie said.

The largest expense was a special-ordered, roughly $150,000 Ford Expedition truck expected to arrive next month. There are also two robots that cost about $30,000 and are used for video and audio recognizance, such as to determine in which room a barricaded person is located. Other expenses include $9,000 for “high mobility” ballistic shields, plus training to use them; about $3,000 for The Wrap, a harness restraint that immobilizes people in an upright, seated position that allows airflow; and Y-shaped bars -- welded at minimal cost by a retired police officer -- to pin people in place, Jim Lalley said.

The detail also has $24,000 in self-contained breathing apparatuses that can be used in limited situations - not raging fires - when armed or violent individuals make it too dangerous for the fire department to intervene first, he said.

There are several “less lethal” weapons, including pepper spray, pepper balls, variants of tear gas, 40 mm impact rounds and water extinguishers, which can be used to put out flames but also to spray people, which can stun them enough for officers to have an opening to intervene, Jim Lalley said.

Among all the high-tech equipment, possibly the biggest game changer are door ropes and wedges, which cost about $1,000, officer Nick Mondek said. Those are used when someone is barricaded indoors: Officers can control the opening and closing of doors to keep people inside and communicate with them while preventing them from barging out. “To be able to isolate people and not force us to use force, it's a big deal,” Mondek said.

The detail/SWAT teams train with these specialized tools and tactics twice a month. Paid actors play the roles of violent or armed individuals, but that acting has been done by officers in the last few months due to COVID-19.

During a recent training in June, officers rehearsed various scenarios.

“I know you're having a really bad day,” one officer said while using a door rope to talk to another officer who played a barricaded, agitated man. “Come talk to me, big guy.”

In another scenario, an officer brandished a sword while playing a man who threatened to break down doors inside an apartment building. Officers barged in when he turned away and used a water extinguisher and a 40 mm round before restraining him with The Wrap.

Officers also practiced techniques to pin a bus with police vehicles.

Elgin's SWAT and detail teams now work closely with the crisis negotiation unit, which used to get involved only in the most serious situations, Jim Lalley said.

“One of the things we learned is communication needs to be looked at as a tactic,” he said. “The big thing is getting the resources there quicker.”

Sgt. Rick Demierre, who leads the crisis negotiation unit, said other police departments draw more traditional lines between SWAT and negotiators, but combining resources is most effective.

“You want to listen to the person. We let them know we're here to help,” he said. “If he's talking to you, he's not hurting people.”

<h3 class="breakHead”>Collaborative crisis services unit

The collaborative crisis services unit comprises detectives Scott Williams and Shelley Mendiola, and three part-time crisis counselors from the Ecker Center for Behavioral Health in Elgin, which has a $143,107, two-year contract with the city that expires in May. Chief Ana Lalley said she wants to extend the contract and expand the unit.

The members of the unit follow up on police calls involving mental health, homelessness or substance abuse by contacting people to inquire if they have support services and connect them with resources. They did more than 1,850 follow-ups through June, according to police data.

The unit also can assist during police response involving people who might be suicidal or homicidal or who can't take care of themselves. The counselors can perform risk assessments to determine whether individuals need to be hospitalized - for which they always try to get consent, they said - or can work on a follow-up care plan. That kind of work can take hours, Mendiola said.

“We try not to make arrests. We try to dissociate with that aspect of policing,” she said. “Sometimes (de-escalating is) just sitting down and hanging out with people, talking to them.”

If people want help, the officers and counselors work to find housing or mental health programs or substance abuse treatment, sometimes driving people as far as Chicago and Mundelein. The work can lead to forging relationships with people: Williams once walked into the police station to find a person waiting to tell him he needed to go to the hospital. Another person texted Mendiola he was suicidal.

Some people want nothing to do with the police, and that's OK, counselor June Wooten said. “We still have to respect that and say, 'When you are ready, give us a call,'” she said.

The unit officially launched with Williams in March 2019. The three counselors started in May 2019, and Mendiola in August 2019.

The department has responded to fewer calls involving mental health issues from April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020, compared to the same period the year before, according to police data. There were 426 calls about suicidal people, compared to 507 in the previous year; 452 calls about emotionally disturbed people, compared to 584; and 835 calls with a mental health component, compared to 1,021. Officers conducted more welfare checks: 2,143 compared to 2,041 the year before.

The trend is positive, but it's too early to say whether it can be attributed to the unit's work, Chief Lalley said.

The partnership between police and mental health professionals makes sense, said Wooten, who previously worked with Kane County law enforcement on a habitual offender program.

“(Police) have been doing social work - they just didn't know it,” she said.

Williams agreed, saying that during his 24 years on patrol, the job has evolved a lot. “The criminal aspect of policing now has almost become secondary,” he said.

For counselor Jasmoniqua "Jasmine" Cleveland, the work is personal, because growing up in Wisconsin, she witnessed police not knowing how to deal with her mother, who had bipolar disorder.

“Mental health professionals can be a great help to police officers,” she said.

There are no Spanish speakers in the unit, which would be a plus, the officers acknowledged. The police department's social services unit includes bilingual staff.

Mendiola and Williams also team up with staff members of Renz Addiction Counseling Center, which recently merged with Ecker Center, by going together to people's homes to drop off Narcan after police calls of narcotic overdoses.

People often are positively surprised a police department would offer such services, the unit members said.

“I got a 'thank you' this morning from a parent who said, 'Thank you so much for calling me. This is unexpected,'” Wooten said.

Williams said he gets calls from others in law enforcement who want information about the unit, or advice.

The work can be frustrating at times, such as when treatment centers are full or won't take repeat clients, and implementing change can be difficult, particularly in areas with fewer social services than Elgin, they said.

Still, it's well worth it, and other police departments should follow suit, they said.

“There is always going to be resistance to change. You are going to have people saying, 'Oh, this is not our job,'” Williams said. “It is.”

Looking back

The Clements shooting happened March 12, 2018 after she had an hourlong standoff with police, who attempted to communicate with her and spent time trying to keep her vehicle pinned in place. Clements started a fire in her truck and was shot when officers approached the vehicle to extricate her and she exited holding two knives.

Her family said she was having a mental health crisis and needed specialized intervention. An officer said she held a knife to her neck; an autopsy showed she had cuts to her neck and cocaine in her system.

So would today's resources, tools and tactics have helped during that fatal encounter?

“It's not to say we would have a different outcome,” Jim Lalley said, “but we'd have an entirely different playbook.”