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Elgin task force will use study on traffic stop bias in reform effort

A study to identify any racial bias in the Elgin Police Department's traffic stops will play a role in a citizen task force's efforts to improve trust in officers.

One of the priorities of the task force is finding and addressing racial disparities, if they exist, both in the practice and the culture of the police department. That issue is a strong enough priority to warrant its own subcommittee within the task force.

Recent subcommittee meetings showed a desire for statistics on arrests and fruitful dialogue between officers and task force members. One of those will happen in public; the other is likely to occur more behind closed doors.

Even before the formation of the task force, Elgin Police Chief Ana Lalley engaged with the Center for Policing Equity to review the department's traffic stops for any patterns of racial profiling. The center, based out of Yale University, will examine five years of traffic stops and provide a report.

Lalley has pledged to make that report public when it complete in coming months. She also encouraged the task force, and the community, to keep the findings of the report in context. For example, the department experienced a high volume of retirements and officers leaving for other communities in recent years.

"Some of the actors, there may be some people who are gone who engaged in that behavior," Lalley said. "It's important to understand what citations are written and what they are for. And when we look at data and have those conversations, we need to get to the core of the individual. That starts with who the officers are."

Both Lalley and the task force agree that getting to know the officers requires conversation. But for officers to feel comfortable enough to speak honestly, task force members and Lalley say those conversations can't be public or recorded. There may be a separate conversation that will include a public dialogue with officers at a different time.

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