Elgin cracking down on speeding, street racing

Numbers show Elgin police are cracking down on speeding this year. And officers, during a weekly radio show, announced they are coming after street racers next.

The radio show discussion followed a recent Daily Herald report about a regional upward trend of vehicles fleeing police. Elgin Deputy Police Chief Adam Schuessler said the city has also seen an uptick in fleeing vehicles. He's supportive of stronger civil penalties for such crimes.

Cmdr. Steve Bianchi said numbers show 45 calls for service involving vehicles fleeting or eluding police in 2020, when the trend seems to have begun. In 2021 the department had 61 such cases. In 2022, there were 133. And 2023 is on track to be the new high-water mark with 44 cases through April.

Some of the increase has to do with a focus on traffic enforcement, Bianchi said.

"We've increased our traffic stops coming out of COVID and getting everybody re-engaged in the community," he said. "We weren't issuing as many tickets as we were warnings."

Bianchi said the department logged 7,700 traffic stops in 2022. Officers have already made 4,400 stops so far this year.

"We're trying to educate as well as enforce," Bianchi said. "It isn't just write every single person a ticket."

Bianchi said drivers who are accidentally speeding or committing other moving violations are far more likely to get a warning than someone driving 100 mph on Route 20.

"Those people don't get a warning; they get arrested," Bianchi said.

Elgin police are particularly focused on major speeding violations. Last year, officers issued 1,200 tickets to people driving 15 to 20 mph over the limit. This year, officers have written 524 such tickets so far. Likewise, officers wrote 680 tickets to people driving with a phone in their hands last year. They've written 235 tickets for that violation this year. They've also written 309 tickets for disregarding stop signs this year. There were 373 such violations recorded all of last year.

Bianchi said those violations are usually the result of people being selfish.

"I think a lot of people in the world are thinking of themselves only," Bianchi said. "They are the important ones, and they have to get someplace, and it's all about them and all about what they need to do."

Bianchi said street racing is next up for a crackdown. He's had conversations with a community in Colorado that wrote a new ordinance empowering police to seize vehicles involved in street racing. Elgin officials aren't quite ready to go that far, Bianchi said, but they are interested in dramatically increasing the fines and penalties involved with street racing.

The department wants to use more video and license-plate recording equipment to levy "hefty fines" on the owners of vehicles used for street racing. He said officers are paying attention to racing on Route 20 and at local factories that have large parking lots as areas to use the new ordinance, if approved by the city council.