“This policy was developed in consultation with a diverse and passionate group of community leaders who volunteered their time and expertise. I am beyond appreciative of their dedication to our shared progressive vision, and I am certain that this type of intense engagement from stakeholders across our community is what we’ll need to enact these bold plans into law.”
— Daniel

Public Safety

Everyone has a fundamental human right to live in safety. As our nation finally begins to reckon with the intertwined challenges of white supremacy and police misconduct, it is time for Evanston to commit to a truly reimagined vision of shared safety for all, rather than security for some.

Though this issue has become a subject of controversy in our country, we can agree on a few basic principles to guide the transformation. First of all, the history of policing in America is closely tied to an unrelenting effort to control Black and brown bodies and protect the property of white people. As a result, it is critical that reform be driven by a commitment to racial equity and anti-racism, particularly anti-Black racism. Additionally, police work must be designed around community priorities, with clear transparency and accountability to residents.

We have been given an extraordinary opportunity to make changes that will fundamentally transform the lives of Evanston residents. We will make good on that opportunity by pairing an ambitious and bold vision with careful strategic planning and meticulous attention to detail.

Alternative First Responder Models

Over the last several decades, we have asked police officers to do more and more tasks, many of which they didn’t sign up or get adequate training for and which could be better done by another service provider. This mission creep is unfair to our police officers and the communities they serve.

Police officers are highly specialized city workers — they are armed, authorized to deploy force, and empowered to place residents under arrest. These capabilities are indispensable in some circumstances and counter-productive in others. This demands a full and transparent accounting of Evanston Police Department (EPD) operations and an assessment of the best way to solve the various problems we currently call on EPD to address.

This project holds enormous promise for Evanston, but it can only succeed if we bring all stakeholders together to make methodical, well-reasoned decisions. To do this, the City must:

  • Use a combination of 911 data and police department data and reports in an open community process to reach an agreement about (a) what problems require a police response; (b) what problems require a co-response model involving a police officer and another provider of some kind; and (c) what problems require a non-police response. This includes:
    • Establishing a structured decision-making tree to deflect calls to the appropriate responder and investing seriously in recruitment, retention, and professional development of 911 response personnel.
    • Building the capacity of government and community providers to meet the service needs of problems that do not require a police response before deflecting calls in that direction.
    • Assessing whether the following areas would be better served by non-police responses:
      • Mental health crises
        • Consider the CAHOOTS system used in Eugene, OR
        • Strengthen EPD use of Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT)
      • Substance abuse problems
    • Interactions with victims of rape and sexual assault
    • Traffic stops
      • A potential model is Berkeley, CA which is creating an entity of unarmed civil servants to respond to traffic stops
    • Peaceful protests
  • Housing new programs outside the police department.
    • Ability to establish an independent culture while collaborating with EPD as necessary is key
    • Over time, consider moving to a system where all these functions are housed inside a single public safety department, of which police are merely one division

Police Department Policies

The Evanston Police Department is a large, complex organization, with hundreds of employees, enormous amounts of equipment, and an unrealistic set of responsibilities. In order to ensure that this institution is acting in a manner consistent with our community’s values and priorities, the City must update a number of policies to:

  • Increase transparency about police priorities
    • Publish ward-specific data about how and where police spend their time and resources
  • Make changes to police protocols by:
    • Enhancing transparency around police use of privacy-invasive devices, establishing strong protocols around deletion of data, and ending invasive surveillance practices.
    • Ensuring that if the city acquires drones, they will not be used for surveillance.
    • Ensuring that the city’s Automatic License Plate Readers are not used for surveillance.
  • Cease the purchase of surplus military equipment and other military-style equipment.
  • Take steps to increase the number of Evanston residents among police officers and other workers who come in contact with people in crisis.
  • Ensure any training programs utilized by the department combine any tactical learning or skill-building with a grounding in and discussion of the values of equity, violence prevention, and explicit anti-racism.

Accountability and Oversight

We grant police officers tremendous power, unlike that of any other city employee. In order to ensure the responsible utilization of that power, as well as to foster trust with the community, we need strict oversight and clear accountability. To achieve that, our city must:

  • Remake the Citizen Police Review Commission.
    • Give the commission the authority to set EPD policy (subject to Council’s approval) and enforce the police contract and budget
    • Empower the commission to address police discipline issues, including subpoena power, access to body camera footage and databases, the power to fire and otherwise discipline officers, and the ability to launch its own investigations in the absence of a complaint being filed
    • Require commissioners to be completely independent of law enforcement, either through current or past employment or family
    • Reconstitute the membership so that commissioners are a mix of elected and appointed, with each type of member given equal voting weight
  • Improve use of force reporting.
    • Increase transparency, both proactively and in response to FOIA requests, including data both from use of force reports and disciplinary records
    • Expand the definition of what triggers use of force reporting to include actions such as drawing a gun and physical/vocal intimidation that may not involved physical touching
  • Improve the police contract.
    • Limit the City’s exposure to paying for officers’ representation at misconduct hearings
    • Remove constraints on oversight and discipline that preempt the City Civil Service Commission

Data and Transparency

It sounds simple: government should be transparent so that residents know what’s being done on our behalf with our tax dollars and we have the capability to hold leaders accountable. For an institution like the Evanston Police Department, which generates mountains of data, some of which residents may not even be aware of and much of which is sensitive in nature, this can be easier said than done.

Today, much data that the public would like to see is hard to access, and we are losing out on opportunities to have informed community discussions and robust analysis to improve our policing. To fix this, the city must make fundamental changes in how it collects, analyzes, and releases police data, including:

  • Making both raw data generated by EPD’s work as well as a detailed analysis of that data and its ramifications public on a regular basis.
  • Proactively releasing data about EPD’s possession and use of equipment, including surveillance technology and surplus military equipment.
  • Holding an annual event or events to coincide with the unveiling of traffic stop data as mandated by the state, including:
    • Public town hall meeting(s) to spur community dialogue
    • Discussion between law enforcement, community advocates, and city leaders to compare data to anecdotes, assess progress (or lack thereof), and adjust policies for the upcoming year
  • Ensuring that data collection practices, definitions, and the definition of equity are aligned across departments.
  • Using a Racial Equity Impact Assessment tool to ensure the City is bringing an anti-racist lens to data analysis and training.

Youth

Finding adequate support, services, and opportunities for Evanston youth is a clear priority that overlaps significantly with and also transcends the question of public safety. Additionally, our system unnecessarily funnels far too many youth into the criminal justice system instead of providing them with compassionate and age-appropriate tools to overcome challenges they face. Needless to say, the sorting mechanism that determines which young people come in contact with the criminal justice system and which are deflected toward other, more humane interventions is profoundly racially inequitable and must be fixed.

To address these problems, the city must:

  • Affirm citywide intent to deflect youth from police contact and arrest wherever possible.
  • Increase investment in Youth and Young Adult Division programming.
  • Expand positive programming for young people, including the creation of more truly accessible third spaces.
  • Remove juvenile curfew laws, which research shows to be ineffective at achieving their stated goals while damaging already-strained relationships between police and youth of color.
  • End contact between school resource officers and District 202 students.

Human Services

For two generations, as racist mass incarceration policies have directed more and more resources toward policing and the criminal justice system, we’ve seen government budgets strained to the breaking point, and consequently the defunding of numerous other critical services. This is not only wrong, but it also makes us less safe by depriving people in need of key social services and people returning from the criminal justice system of the support they need to participate in the legal economy.

The City must begin to reverse these errors by:

  • Commiting to becoming a trauma-informed city.
  • Expanding availability of mental health services.
  • Coordinating and expanding existing resources, support, and nonprofits that assist Evanston’s returning population.
  • Lifting housing restrictions for returning Evanstonians.
    • Work with nonprofit partners to identify landlords who are violating the Cook County ordinance that prohibits housing discrimination based on criminal justice history
    • Establish partnerships with developers (possibly in conjunction with the Housing Authority of Cook County) who are interested in the creation of low and moderate income housing units as a core function, not an afterthought