Lessons for all in Lisle police-community partnership, village trustee says

Trustee Sara Sadat is hoping the rest of the country can learn from Lisle when it comes to the community and police working together. Sadat held a news conference Saturday at North Arbor View Park to discuss the community and policing partnership.

"The Lisle community and Lisle police department has done everything right from the very get-go," Sadat said.

Sadat said the work of Unity Partnership, a grassroots movement to improve policing and policy, is helping the partnership work. She also talked about the addition of bodycams coming this year as an important step.

Sadat was joined at the conference by DuPage NAACP President Michael Childress, Unity Partnership founder Regina Brent, and Paul Scott, who serves as a law enforcement liaison for Unity Partnership.

"How can we improve relationships on policing of people of color? There's no policy that can be effective until we address the issue of white people are policed differently than dark-skinned people," Childress said. "We can discuss all the policies in the world, but until we address policing of Black bodies in the exact same way as white bodies, we will be in this exact same place next month and probably next year."

Brent spoke of specific changes including eliminating no-knock warrants temporarily, a ban on choke holds, licensing police departments and accountability of police to each other.

"Our main goal is to get mandated programs that would make a difference in African American lives while they are being policed," Brent said. "That's why we are reaching out to community residents all across the state of Illinois. We've got a lot of police chiefs working well with us."

Scott stressed the importance of having a commitment from the villages and towns to work with police. He said DuPage County had two towns, West Chicago and Roselle, with bodycams when Unity Partnership began. That number will grow to seven or eight by the end of the year.

Scott also spoke of starting a civilian collaboration board so regular citizens can have an audience with police chiefs.

"Our primary goal is to build trust between police and community," Scott said. "Being a welcoming community means you do deliberate things to make people feel welcome."

Following the news conference, the group met privately to discuss how to structure their pilot program to be scaled nationwide.