A CAMEL IS A HORSE THAT WAS BUILT BY A COMMITTEE

 To my surprise many friends from many different walks of life have asked me to comment on what is generally referred to as "criminal justice reform Omnibus,"  Amusingly enough, these requests have come from police and police retirees, lawyers, journalists, academics and even from inside prisons. How could I possibly refuse such a eclectic group?

Motivated in large measure by some tragic deaths last year, the house took one big bucket and threw some passing thoughts, few slogans, a couple of good concepts and a few "way outside the box" provisions into it. When the bucket got to the Senate, the Senate pitched a few of their own into the bucket. That bucket is sitting, steaming, on the Gov.'s desk for a signature that has not yet come.

I will simply refer to it as the package". The package has a large number of extremely vocal supporters. Some would surprise you. It has a larger number of folks actively lobbying the governor not to sign it.

While I have no particular excuse for this use of my time I must confess to have actually read it. I do not know what possessed me. It is not exactly a page turner. Having been trained for more than 50 years to interpret the arcane language of legislative bodies, I still find this package difficult to interpret. Even more difficult is determining how the labor and enforcement of some of these provisions will be allocated.

I thought I could just do one blog post on the package and be done with it. That was a ridiculous idea. So I will pick a topic or two per blog, describe it fairly and then give my opinion. If you are interested, you are welcome to follow along. Fair warning: Illinois has a "line – item veto." This means the governor can more than slightly rewrite the legislation.

Once again, this thing is not law yet.

Just for today, let's just squash some unsubstantiated rumors:

1.     The package does not make ALL POLICE DISCIPLINARY REPORTS public. This seems to be a common misconception. It merely requires that all police disciplinary reports and investigations be retained. This is going to be a problem for some municipalities with really long-term police contracts. There are some contracts that require certain kinds of disciplinary matters to be "removed," after a period of time.  In some departments this is been read to mean "shredded." OPINION: since this does not become effective until January, 2023, the labor agreements should not be a big problem. The proponents of this provision believe it will somehow "weed out" overaggressive police by internally calling attention to patterns of practice and by making these complaints available during litigation. I doubt both of these propositions. Police chiefs are already good at spotting folks who don't handle authority well or who fail to understand that punishing is not part of the police officer's job. When litigants go fishing for "pattern of practice" evidence, these retainer reports are more likely to relate to attendance problems, vehicle accidents or uniform issues. One thing about this provision that is unclear to me is how it applies to employees with an addiction or alcoholism problem. These referrals are protected under the law, even if they are initially discovered under the guise of a disciplinary investigation. This is a clear clash of a federal law and what may possibly become state law. Having noted that, little "carveouts" like this are easy to do by amendment. Thus, I am pretty neutral on this provision;

2.     No, your license suspension for not paying your child support is not going to go away. Illinois law already changed so that unpaid parking tickets to a municipality will not generate an operator's license suspension. The package adds camera red lights and towing fees to municipal debts that will not generate a suspension. The package is unclear about whether in court fines for moving violations are part of the exemption. I am going to assume for now that that is not the intention of the law. The idea behind these exemptions is simply that the impact for people and minorities more greatly than others. My opinion of this is mildly positive. I have never felt good about a robot leading to the suspension of a driving privilege. If the driver is that irresponsible, he will find a way to get himself suspended anyhow. If he is just poor, there are other ways to collect camera tickets and towing fees. It's easy to say, "you shouldn't be operating a motor vehicle if you can't afford to do it lawfully." The problem with that is the vehicle has become a necessity to transport the driver even to subsistence employment, which is arguably better for the state than unemployment. If the bill passes unamended, something like 3000 people will be able to get their driving privileges back without paying a reinstatement fee. That is, I suppose, the good news. The bad news is that the Secretary of State is going to have no valid address for most of them and nothing in the package places a burden on the Secretary of State to go find them;

3. This is the ever popular "body – cam" legislation. Oversimplified, this requires all peace officers door body cam and the mandate bites large cities more quickly than the small cities, cascading from January 2022 to January 2025. I have written about this before. I am all in favor of rank-and-file patrol officers wearing body cams. The advocates for cameras should understand that the conviction rates for folks who are accused of using force against policeman, resisting process service or resisting arrest     Will go up. The problem with cameras for supervisors is that the supervisors will know they are on camera. Having been a prosecutor and police attorney for 30 years, I can tell you that some of the best police field training is not gentle and sometimes includes language that is not family – friendly. Most men, even those not in police work, will understand this concept. We have all had a drill instructor or a Ranger trainer or a football coach who taught us important things in ways that do not sound like Sunday school. By slapping on a camera, we take an important teaching skill and style away from that supervisor. By avoiding the camera, we also reassure the younger officer or trainee that his or her mistake does not go on to a blooper reel somewhere. Transparency is a wonderful concept but transparency can deter a type of training that might prepare an officer to survive a life or death moment later. Cameras on supervisors, as a general rule constitutes, to me, too high a price.

All rights, kiddies, there is much more fun stuff in this package and we will tear into it later. If you actually read this far, thank you and the to be continued.